Miniraising preflop

[catlover]

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.

[yvesaint]

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

[JMa]

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

[chuddo]

[fsuplayer]

nh

[punter11235]

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

[catlover]

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]?

[catlover]

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.

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?

[catlover]

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.