Situation: No-limit Hold'em game, middle of a large online multitable tournament, you have an healthy stack size compared to the blinds but the blinds will soon raise and catch on you. 9 players at the table and you are on the button. Everybody folds to you.

Your hand: A hand in the top 40% of the hands.

What to do?

Your hand is mediocre. Your stack can withstand some negative fluctuations. Should you raise?

PokerMuck provides 4 useful statistics to help us decide (Preflop tab):

• Fold big blind to a raise
• Fold small blind to a raise
• Fold big blind to a steal raise
• Fold small blind to a steal raise

A steal raise is defined by the program as a raise coming from the button. Additionally the HUD shows a gold icon whenever the average of the first two is higher than 80%.

Using this information you should be more likely to put a small raise (3x or 4x the big blind) when both the small blind and big blind display a gold icon (but you should examine the statistics about the steal raises too). Of course if you get a re-raise you would probably fold.

Another statistics you should take into consideration is the "Fold to a continuation bet" (Flop tab). This statistic will tell you the frequency that a player will call a raise preflop and check-fold on the flop to the player who originally raised. Even if the big blind calls your steal raise preflop, if the statistics show you that a player will fold to a continuation bet 100% of the times, you should go ahead and bet half the pot if he checks on you on the flop (whether you hit your hand or not).