Pushing the Action
There are times when a table is playing very slow or weak. No chips are really moving around the table. In a tournament this can be fatal, while your table is playing tight with little action, other tables are seeing big bets and bustouts, which means some players are building big stacks. You can’t win a tournament if you can’t acquire some chips. So you might consider “Pushing the Action”, which simply means you play aggressively. You might start by stealing the blinds, not once or twice but every time you are in middle or late position. You want someone to play back at you, you want to get some “action”.
Pushing the Action can have several results. One is that no one plays back and you build a stack based on stealing the blinds and antes. More often, one or more players will get the message and also get involved in more hands, if this happens your table will simply have more action and you have changed the table texture. You can also get caught stirring up the action because you are generally doing so without any real hands. But without action the table will limp along and no one will have a shot at the big money, so pushing the action is often the only way to wake up a sleeping table. The player who first pushes the action is often the beneficiary of a good stack of chips before anyone catches on.
-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #177
