Question about pre-flop min-raising

Earlier today in the HA section we were discussing a hand in which the OP min-raised pre-flop with pocket 7s. Many people criticized the OP for this move, but several others defended it.

Zachvac posted the comment below, which really has the wheels spinning around in my mind:

Quote:

I hear minraises bashed so much in general but fwiw there are many great players who minraise exclusively preflop who play 200nl up to at least 1knl if not higher. Now granted maybe you could argue that at 100nl you will get more people stacking weaker and should just do your best to build a pot with a pair, but I'm kind of surprised at some of the negative responses to an unconventional play rather than asking for explanation. If you balance your play a minraise can be a good play preflop. That said, op what kind of hands do you minraise? Just PPs? Just in EP? Because those are exploitable.

I almost never min-raise. My biggest problem with it is the same problem I have with limping – someone gets into the pot cheap with almost any two cards. So, after the flop – even if it’s a flop that looks harmless to my pocket holdings, I can’t put my opponent on a range of hands and don’t know what to do when/if they push back at me on the flop.

Can someone take a little time to explain to me when min-raising pre-flop is a good strategy and how I can get a little better at putting my opponents on a hand after the flop in a situation where I min-raised pre-flop?

In regard to cash games or Tournaments? It matters in that the two games aren't always trying to achieve the same things preflop.

Essentially it's good if you want to build a multiway pot with a good multiway hand, or if you want to steal against someone who doesn't alter his calling ranges enough vs a 3bb raise to make a difference.

It's something that's a little complicated to implement into your game since people do some wierd things in minraised pots.

Cash game is mostly what I was thinking about.

That makes perfect sense - thanks, Chuck.

Don't overlook this either, I min raise PP sometimes to make it easier to get all in on the turn in multi way pots. For instance if I am on the button with 55 with 4-5 callers ahead of me and I am 90% certain the blinds won't raise me. I can minraise and really swell the pot preflop making is easier for me to get it all in before the trappy/maniac players realise they are behind. Of course I play micros so they are usually dumb anyway but it is an effective strategy.

How much you raise depends alot on the people you play with and what will get the draws to fold and allow you to isolate a big pocket pair against hopefully one or two callers. The basic theory being that pairs don't draw well so limiting the field aids you in this regard. If you have a bunch of calling stations you may have to raise more to limit your field.

ok guess I'll expand a bit. First off I'll explain what I think is the history of players doing it in general. A few years ago everyone scoffed at it, obviously not a very good strategy because no one does it. Along comes a guy Kelisitaan. If you have any knowledge of mid to high-stakes full-ring NLHE games on Stars you'll recognize the name. From what I know he plays from 400nl up to 1knl and I think even higher to 2knl or 5knl. Not many full ring games run higher than that. Anyway I just recently read the thread on 2+2 but he didn't have an account there and a few people were talking about his minraising and saying he was weird and probably didn't even win. So of course he makes an account and posts there giving screenshots of his winnings and cashouts. Basically he had almost 300k in the account and cashouts of thousands of dollars each week. Basically he was killing the games bigger than anyone was before. And to my knowledge that's when people started exploring it being a good strategy.

Basically here's how he does it. He runs extremely lag by most full-ring standards, I think like 24/20ish and exclusively minraises. I've played with him a bit at 400nl but not enough to really explore his game any myself. But from what I hear from people I talk to that play with him basically he's extremely good at adjusting. He minraises preflop with a wide range and if people start 3-betting him light he'll 4-bet light. If people start calling him light he can fire a wider range. The way he wins is he out-adjusts people and is able to outplay them postflop.

But basically the advantage to the minraise is it creates deeper effective stacks. This allows more mistakes and gives a bigger edge to the more skilled player. I've been experimenting with that recently and doing it on the button. I don't like doing it earlier because it gives a cheap price for the button to call and has position with the deeper stacks. But I can then call with pairs and set mine, fold and make it a cheaper steal, or make all kinds of adjustments that end up favoring me since I'm in position .

Another reason for them is shortstacks. Shortstacks generally are pushing over your raise with premiums and you can't call a lot of the time. So the smaller raise gives you a cheaper bluff and they still can't really call with implied odds hands because they don't have the implied odds being shortstacked.

But another strategy is limping a lot. It's similar to the minraise but there are many successful players who limp a ton preflop. They can then limp-raise if anyone squeezes and as long as its done with their whole range (or a balanced range ie they can't just limp low pairs but raise AK/AA/etc.), and they are able to adjust to the way other people play it can be profitable.

Anyway my main point was don't just take catch-phrases like "minraises are bad" as the gospel truth. I think now more than ever it's important to think about everything. There's more and more strategy material out there every day, and it all advocates the easy way to play. Less and less people are going broke with top pair. More people realize that big hands want big pots and small hands want small pots. Anything done to make people like that uncomfortable is becoming more and more profitable. It just takes a lot more thought and is very tough to perfect. I just think the way to continue to beat the games as they get tougher is to adapt and continue to think of unconventional things that can be used to exploit the current tendencies. So although I'm not saying minraising pairs from EP is a good strategy, I just said it's not necessarily bad if it is balanced. Also in lower-stakes games it's probably best to just raise good hands and limp speculative hands a lot because people fold less and probably don't pay a ton of attention and the money comes from getting paid with big hands not from outplaying them postflop by making moves or anything. Obviously adjusting has to depend on the tendencies of the opponents you are playing against.

I've always considered the min-raise preflop to be a bad play, but I've changed my mind. It's a potentially good play overused by a lot of bad players.

I came across a reg on PS that plays very much like Kelisitaan. I laughed at him min-raising 30% of the hands (even into fields of limpers) until I got enough PT data on him to see that he's a pretty big winner. But, like LAG style, I imagine it's a style that requires a lot of skill to pull off.

What do you guys recommend as far as bet sizing preflop in cash games? My rule of thumb is it's harder to extract value oop when you have flop-sensitive hands such as medium pairs or higher cards (AK, AQ). It's obviously easier to play with AA/KK/QQ as well as 55- (for alternative reasons). Therefore in EP I like to raise more. But I'm primarily a tournament player and decisions are based on maximizing chances of winning each pot I'm in. I am only playing like top 9-10% of hands and when I open the pot it's because I intend to win it.

Cash game strategy differs greatly, so do you do with hands like suited connectors in various positions? I know people like to sometimes three-bet with JTs or 87s in BvB or BvBTN battles because they fit so well on many flops and can produce disguised monsters/overpair crackers. My thinking is I would still want to keep the pot as small as possible with speculative hands until they become monsters.

Zach - Thanks for taking the time to expand on your comments... it's given me a ton to think about. I'm not at the point as a player where I think I can use that strategy effectively, but it's certainly worth thinking about and observing how others are using it as a profitable strategy.