Set Drawing Odds, Blind Stealing, Trap Hands

After making that thread about doing poorly at 25NL, I've played more hands and am almost back to where I started. I've been trying to take advantage of their weak tight mentalities by stealing, but it seems that unlike limit, blind stealing can be more risk than reward.

In NL, is it profitable to steal the blinds from CO and Button with mediocre hands? For example, in Limit, Ax and K6+ are insta-raised on the button, but what about NL?

Also, in 6 max, what is the value of trap hands, especially the "juicy" ones like KJ and KQ (as well as the others like QJ/QT)? Are they good to steal the blinds, or are they worse than a PP or suited connector because of the "win small pot, lose big" domination aspect?

Finally, set drawing odds - after reading Elky and Floofy's threads, what is a correct reraise in order to give them bad set drawing odds?

Say I raise to 4bb (1$) with 55, button reraises me to 2.5/3/4 - at what point is it unprofitable for me (assuming he has 100bb)? I'm familiar with the 10x stack rule, but is it so simple? (Can I be calling 8xbb (2$) preflop raises if he has 20+ behind him?)

If he's deeper (or we're at a FT deep table), can I make a looser call, seeing how the price of my preflop "mistake" is small in comparison to potential implied odds? Obviously if he's very aggressive I would be more willing to pay more preflop, but are there other factors that I should consider? i.e. If he's very tight preflop, should I be more inclined to call (because I won't get action if he has a blank AQ/AK)

just wait for hands in 25nl dont bluff it's pretty easy when you have patience over your opponents
u shouldn't raise small pairs just limp them at this level

set drawing = 1/10 so if they call more pre flop than 10 times what they can win, they don't have the odds

set drawing works this way:

1. the exact odds against you flopping a set with a pocket pair are 7.5:1, or the probability is around 11.8%. now, since we know that you need to be able to win more than 7.5 times what you're paying (since your odds are 7.5:1 against "winning", which we call just flopping a set here), we can just sum the size of the immediate pot (all the money that has been bet so far) and the size of our opponent's stack, and compare it to the amount we have to call. if that total is at least 7.5 times what we have to pay now, then we should be +EV to call, right?

well not exactly. sometimes our opponent will make a set against our overset. sometimes he'll make a straight or a flush to beat our set also. even though we'll make straights and flushes against him, too, we won't do so as often, because we won't see the turn or river without flopping at least a straight draw. and most importantly, our opponent will not always pay off our sets, and he's not always reraising with AA anyway, so even when we do hit a set, we don't always get his whole stack.

overall, if your total immediate and implied odds are about 20:1, you probably have a clear call, because the amount you can win is so much greater than the odds against you hitting your hand. so let's do an example...

you are playing 1/2 NLHE, and you and your opponent have stacks of $600. you raise preflop w/ 55 to $8, and your opponent, who is exceptionally tight against raises and almost never 3bets, reraises you to $24. essentially, you know he has AA or KK, and because you know him to be inexperienced, you don't think he folds these hands on safe boards when facing resistance. so it folds back to you, and you have to call $16 more in a pot of $32 (let's take out the blinds to account for rake, since we are counting on the pot getting very large). your opponent has $576 left, so in total you can win $32 + $576 = $608, and you have to pay $16 for the chance to win all that. since 608:16 = 37:1 total odds, you have a clear call with your 55 because of the enormity of the pot you can win.

what if we change the stack sizes? let's start with stacks of only $200. going through the same calculations, we will have to pay $16 for a chance to win $208, so we're getting about 12:1 total odds. now since we're out of position and we have to account for the overset/flush/straight possibility when we lose the hand, the call with 55 is not so good. we might barely have enough odds, but that is only because we KNOW our opponent has KK-AA and we also KNOW that he can't get away from these hands on safe boards. but sometimes when he has KK and you flop a set on A5X, he's not going to pay you off. so with normal, 100bb stacks, even against the ideal opponent, calling a 3bet out of position for set value is marginal at best and most likely a -EV play.

blind stealing: if you're going to try and do a lot of blind stealing, do it with hands that flop well frequently. suited connectors, unsuited connectors, suited 1 gappers, the such. if you do the usual 4x bb raise, you don't want to be afraid of seeing the flop because your steal will probably get called at least 1 out of 4 times making the steal itself slightly -EV, so your flop play with position needs to make up for it. not too hard to do though if you're smart with your cont. bets

trap hands: these are only trap hands if you don't know when to get away from them. if you catch top pair and hit an abnormal amount of resistance its a pretty obvious fold. otherwise, they aren't that bad to play with, especially if you know the bb likes to see flops and struggles to get away from top pair no kicker.

set drawing odds: the general rule i've heard is 20:1 opp. stack to amount to call ratio or better is a clear call, 10:1 or worse is a clear fold, everything in between depends on the player. without any reads, i call probably up to 12:1 and fold the rest.

[vital] thanks a lot for your explanation that really clarifies a lot for me!