Miniraising preflop
 

As a lot of you know, I like to miniraise preflop. Various people have had reactions ranging form interest to surprise to outright hatred.

The purpose of this post is to explain my reasoning. One thing I will say at the beginning -- a lot of thought has gone into this on my part. This is not some random whim. If you want to persuade me it's wrong fine, but doing so will involve engaging my reasoning on its own terms. Kitten jokes, arguments from authority, and the like will not dissuade me.

Part of what led me in this direction -- I hate limping in!! Limping cannot fold out the big blind, gives away information about my hand, and is an invitation to players behind to take my money.

This has led me to reject the standard opening strategy of sometimes limping and sometimes making a big raise.

By basing the size of my raise on my position, and not on my hole cards, I avoid giving away information about the strength of my hand. So I need a standard raise size. The question then becomes -- how big?

I believe the most important considerations in preflop raise size are:

1) Knocking out the big blind
2) Pot size with cold callers behind me
3) How much I lose to a big hand behind me.

Let's look at each of them in turn.

1) From the point of view of getting rid of the big blind, obviously a bigger raise will be more effective. However, my experience is that the difference is very small. If they have garbage, they will throw it away in either case. If they have a good hand they will play. There a few intermediate strength hands that they will play against the miniraise but not against the big raise. However this is not a horrible thing because these hands are on average weaker than my average raising hand, and I have position on them.

2) From the point of view of someone calling behind me, it's a wash. Regardless of whether I make a miniraise or a big raise, we are both putting in the same amount of money preflop. And I'm not afraid to play with them after the flop. They have the advantage of position, but I have the advantage that my average starting hand is stronger than theirs.

3) Lastly, if someone has a big hand like aces behind me, obviously it is better if I miniraised.

So of our three situations, #1 is a slight reason to make a bigger raise, #2 is a wash, and #3 is a reason to miniraise. Taken together, I believe the balance is in favour of miniraising.

If I have the cutoff or the button, #3 becomes less important, which is why I make a bigger raise from those seats.

Based on all of this, the raising strategy I have come up with is to open raise to twice the big blind whenever all of the following are true:

A) I am not in a blind, the cutoff, or the button.
B) I am the first to enter the pot.
C) No one has posted any money other than the usual two blinds.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

alright, let me be the first to point out that i highly doubt anyone "outright hates" you for mini-raising pre-flop

and to post an response to your question

have you ran into anyone that has noticed you will mini-raise with hands as low as ATo, or T9s (from some of your hands posted), and have they been actively re-raising you pre-flop? once i see someone mini-raising pre-flop or post-flop, i see what they show down, and most of the times, i'm re-raising them pre-flop with a lot more than just AA-QQ, AK (so you might "save more" against aces .....or you might have just folded to 55)

how do you deal with that? i think thats an argument for the mini-raising NOT controlling the pot size, as a mini-raise just opens up the betting for another re-raise. for example, say in a 10/20 game you open up to 40. guy behind you opens up to 120, now the pot is a lot bigger. then say instead you just limped in. the guy behind you doesnt open up to 120 now, but instead opens up to 100.

i dont understand why you advocate "pot control" with mini-raises, yet youre already inflating the pot OOP with hands like AT and T9s

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

Id call w/ any hand preflop getting 3-1 closing the action HU.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.ya...f_daniels1.jpg

http://www.overyourhead.co.uk/images/misc/dumb-omg.jpg

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

nh

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

I only use minraise in SB vs BB situation. My reasoning is quite simple : if I am in UTG, UTG+1, CO or on the button I will quite often play a pot against blinds in position so I like it to be a big pot and I dont want BB sticking in with almost any two and play hit or fold because of 3-1 odds so I make standard raise.
But if I am in SB I will be OOP so I want it to be small pot. I would limp and I did this for some time but so many ppl have "fold in turn" checked that opportunity to win some hands without fight is just too tempting.
To sum this up: I normally raise big to play bigger pots in position and minraise in SB vs BB to play smaller pots when OOP. (This is the same reasoning which convinced me to always limp with AA/KK UTG and UTG+1 in full ring game but I dont care anymore as I dont play full ring now).

Best wishes

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

Chuddo -- what is your problem? Is it your goal to get in the way of any serious discussion of this issue? Or do you just like being a [censored]?

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

yves -- Any opening strategy has to deal with getting reraised. Mine is no different. If I miniraised with ATo or T9s and get reraised, I will dump it. But if I miniraised with AKs or AA and get reraised, I can now punish them.

I don't think this is any different from people who start out by raising to 3 times the big blind.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

I like your reasoning with raising differently just depending on position. Its obviously better to play bigger pots with position and you are not giving up any information about your hand. So why not take it some steps further? Like minraising utg,utg+1,1.2*minraising in mp etc?

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

yves -- I'm not going to give away my specific opening requirements from various positions. But if I open with T9s or ATo, I'm getting close to the button.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

[ QUOTE ]
yves -- I'm not going to give away my specific opening requirements from various positions. But if I open with T9s or ATo, I'm getting close to the button.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...e=3#Post3918187

T9s opened UTG in 6-max game

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

Keepit -- My criterion was: if I think it would be correct for the big blind to fold most of the time against a miniraise from the given position, I didn't see any need to try anything bigger. I felt that from the hijack, the BB should already fold most of the time to a miniraise, given my range, but by the cutoff this was no longer the case.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

I was thinking of full ring when I wrote that. In 6 max, UTG is only 3 off the button. From that position, you need to start opening with hands like T9s some of the time. This is not an excessively wide range. According to PT, my VPIP is 17% from that position when it is 6-handed. Which means that when I raise from that position, half the time I will have a hand in the top 8.5%, strengthwise. Which means that a reraiser behind will run into me with a big hand plenty often.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

no sorry catlover. i just found the logic and reasoning in your post so incorrect that i did not think it warranted any more of a response.

more importantly i think there are many important factors in the big picture of playing a solid game which you either fail to understand, or you blindly disregard to support your opinion.

not trying to be that big of an ass, it is just that i think we may think so differently regarding a number of fundamentals of no limit holdem that it makes it impossible to to simply discuss an individual topic such as this.

hope it works out for you. good luck.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

Im going to start being "one of those people who dont divulge everything," but I've started to minraise some hands pf, and I must say, the results have been astounding. Those of you who are so blatently against it are being close minded, and on the other spectrum, those who onlyminraise are just (if not moreso) as daft.

It's a tool to incorporate into your arsenal, I recommend testing it out.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

bobbo, not saying im against it 100% at all, and i don't think anyone is.

but every serial preflop min-raiser i have known has not been close to good enough post flop to keep from getting rolled by solid players.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

[ QUOTE ]
bobbo, not saying im against it 100% at all, and i don't think anyone is.

but every serial preflop min-raiser i have known has not been close to good enough post flop to keep from getting rolled by solid players.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with you here [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Those who only minraise tend to be very weak players postflop (and preflop, as it's easy to exploit their "strategy"!)

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

[ QUOTE ]


From the point of view of getting rid of the big blind, obviously a bigger raise will be more effective. However, my experience is that the difference is very small. If they have garbage, they will throw it away in either case. If they have a good hand they will play. There a few intermediate strength hands that they will play against the miniraise but not against the big raise. However this is not a horrible thing because these hands are on average weaker than my average raising hand, and I have position on them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you really want to see a miniraised flop in position against 22-77? In my opinion small pocket pairs are why it's so important to raise big with your big hands. With AK, you want to be able to play a flop like A-2-6 very aggressively, and you simply can't do it with the same assurance if the BB was able to limp in for less than a tenth of his stack.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

No, if a little fairy told me the BB had 22-77, I would raise bigger.

But usually they don't. For instance I just won a nice pot because I miniraised UTG with AKo, the big blind was kind enough to call with K8s, and king flopped.

And then there was the time I miniraised with QQ, the big blind called with QTo, and we were lucky enough to catch the case queen and a ten.

Obviously this sort of thing can go both ways. But since I have the narrower hand range, more often than not it will be in my favour.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

I disagree.

In the situation I described, you have TPTK against concealed trips. In the situations you described, you have TPTK versus TPNK, or trips versus two pair (an unusually perfect flop for you.)

If I'm going to be on the losing end, I'd rather be in the second situation, because it's a lot easier to get away from top pair if your kicker is bad. The trips vs. two pair case is going to be awesome for the trips no matter what happened with the preflop raising.

You should also ask the little bird about Ax and maybe Kx, both of which will make your AK pay dearly when two pair flops, and both of which will often call a minraise from the BB while folding to a real raise.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

Catlover,

You are completing ignoring stack sizes, which I think is a huge factor in determining whether a minraise preflop has any merit. In a super deep game, you can play for 12 hours and never see a minraise, and I think that the reason is obvious. In addition to narrowing/expanding the field, preflop raising affects pot size. Good players want to force their opponents to make a pot-committing decision within a defined number of "moves". This is an advanced skill, I grant you, but a critical one nonetheless.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

I minraise from time to time for the following reasons.

1) To gain position.
2) To freeze someone from making a play at the pot.
3) To induce someone to make a play at the pot.

These all come up in very specific situations. In most situations, there is usually a superior move to min-raising.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

if you raise less preflop there is less to win postflop

Marnix

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

I think I've played you catlover.

Re: Miniraising preflop
 

"You will automatically be a better poker player if you never min-raise again." ---our own Greg Raymer. (paraphrased)