I was OTB with [5c] and $7.30. It was folded to me and I raised to $.40 to steal the blinds.

SB called (he had $3.65) and BB called (he had $17.73).

Flop was

SB checked, BB bets $.50 and I raise to $1.60 trying to scare off the SB and BB and pick up the pot. SB folds and BB calls.

Turn is a mighty nice and BB bets $1.50.... I do exactly what?

I didn't have reads on the BB but I figured that he is either a fish that had some luck and therefore had a nice stack, or he really is a solid player that grinded his stack...

As for my reasoning.... I wanted to pick up the blinds initially and when I hit the middle pair and had position I wanted to be aggressive and take it down on flop.. When the turn came another 5 I was glad but didn't exactly know how to proceed to get the most value in the long run...

thoughts?

p.s. I am not using the hand converter because I extract the hand histories from PT and when I use them with hand converters it gets messy and wrong info is listed (or no info at all)..

Shove the turn. You have the best hand almost always and his bet smells a lot like a draw, make him pay and get the most value.

Don't steal blinds for the sake of stealing blinds...ESPECIALLY when you're just learning. It's -EV.

No, that's our point. Please reread your post: "even though stealing blinds insn't essential to proifts"..."it's a big part of earnings" WHAT?!

Stealing blinds isn't worth it...you raise with a wide range in OTB to protect your good hands and to put pressure on the blinds...NOT to actually steal them...you shouldn't be doing this anyway when you're learning...you have to have great postflop skills and hand reading skills to really open up in late position...and get THAT before you 'practice' stealing blinds.

yeah, what I said came off wrong.. What I really meant is that I was doing that NOT because of the .15 cents but because that gave me the chance to try and play more from position post flop... To try and see what and how can I do with different hands and how I react and play iif I get an answer from the SB or BB depending on the board and their possible hands.. as for those hand ranges.. as I see it, in NL10 there is a question if it's an AK, AQ or some pocket pair most of the time so putting people on hands isn't really too hard at this level... .. the part about "it's big par of earnings" is also wrong.. I was actually thinking about something I read somewhere and I put it to wrong use due to misunderstanding me thinks...

...

look, guys, I know I make a lot of mistakes and probably big part of my thought process isn't entirely as it should be (It just might be that I am a donkey), but that is probably the main reason why I started posting at BTP and why I even joined this forum after reading the articles on the main page (when they were directly accessible.. good I have them bookmarked)... I just want to say that I really appreciate all your answers (even though they sometimes feel/seem very harsh) and I am really trying to improve my poker based upon those answers... thanks..

Your winrate will go up if you don't make position raises with hands worse than AT.

you can't just make lp raises with nothing just because you wish to learn to play position and marginal hands better because doing so is a player dependent proposition. I can't think of a time at the micro limits where they were the type of opponents you wish to do this against. Its ok to try it with a hand like 86s maybe if you are semi deep or at least full stacked, or other similar hands, 95o, 85o, 97o and such are just gonna get you in more trouble than its worth and should just be folded. its not a crime to fold a button when folded to.

also, you should have a full stack too, especially if you try to make more marginal plays on the button because you want room to work and be able to escape if you choose. if you are semi short, you make one move at the pot and you can be pretty much committed.

Is 87s to 65s better or worse than AT?

VERY worse. We're talking about a novice at micro stakes...