Theory Post: Calling minreraises from half-stacks
 

I'm often concerned at what to do in these situations:

assume it's a 6-handed game, your oppenant in the BB has between 25-40 BB. You raise on the button with a hand like QTo 3x the BB and your oppenant reraises 3x more, what do you do? I feel like if you hit a flop that gives you top pair or any decent draw, you're compelled to push/call and it commits you to the rest of his chips and you could very well behind given his reraise, but folding seems ridiculous seeing how it is 3x the BB more to go preflop. Are you just stuck with this nasty situation because of the inflated pot? Do you just have to "go with it" on the flop if you catch a decent flop? With stacks deeper, its quite clear what to do... call and bust him, but with shorter stacks, your ability to outplay him is decreased. Thoguhts? comments? Recommendations?

Re: Theory Post: Calling minreraises from half-stacks
 

A minraise can be a good thing. The ol' keep-the-sucker-in fish play can be a good play. But the circumstances must be right.

I.e: You hold AA in the BB and you have a 12BB stack. If someone raises your blind to 3*BB and you minraise, any hand that wants to call must pay 3*BB to win 15*BB (this includes the rest of your stack) No hands has the odds for that call (they only get to see three cards before committing their chips).

In this case villain's stack is to large for a minraise to be correct with AA. But it is not sure that villain is holding AA and thus your implied odds decreases (But if you flop TP stack sizes makes it awkward to fold as you mentioned). Actually I kind of like the BB's play because it screams fish-AA and this is a very good thing for him if he holds 42o.

Your job is to read your opponent and find out the strength of his hand and evaluate if you have implied odds and to find out if TP can be good. To do this you must find out how often he raises from the blinds, how often he minraises and what cards he if holding, how he plays his hands postflop...

You have to play poker...

In the situation you described I would fold and take a note, and then start watching this player more closely. Like Dannenman said: "Folding to a reraise is only a small mistake" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
If he's pulling this crap on a regular basis I decide TP can be good and take it from there.

Re: Theory Post: Calling minreraises from half-stacks
 

For short stacks with 25-40 BB who reraise me preflop, if I can't push I usually fold. This isn't for everybody, but I don't think my postflop play against short stacks is good enough to do otherwise.