I was watching the WSOP streams from Daniel Negreanu (like this one

You Tube

) and I noticed that he almost exclusively min-raises preflop when he has a good hand. To my knowledge, raising in the ballpark of 3 big blinds is much more commonly accepted. Can someone explain the strategy behind those min-raises?

I haven't seen his stream recently, but my guess is that he's min-raising both strong and weak hands? It would definitely be true that if he min-raised strong hands and raised larger with weak hands, that would be a real mistake!

Generally it's a good idea to min-raise if you're shorter-stacked, such as 25bb or less in effective stack (your stack, or the shortest remaining stack if you cover everyone left to act). With deep stacks I prefer raising larger just like you're saying.

I would say min raising helps to preserve your stack because online poker there is a bunch loose callers that no matter if you raise 5x you could end up losing more money in the long run.

Small raise sizes have become very common in tournaments, and basically its because of ICM. When the pot gets really big, chips won are less valuable than chips lost. So there is an incentive to keep the pots small most of the time. In the video DNEG started with 45BB, and with that stack size I usually open to 2,5BB. But you definitely see some good players going smaller like 2,2BB or even min-raise.

I think, generally speaking, the tougher the game, the more you want to lean towards small sizing. In soft games people will call with anything, and therefore its more about printing value even with ICM implications. So just because you see DNEG use a certain sizing in his high stakes games does not mean, you also need to do it in your 2,2$ tournament full of recreational players.

But generally speaking if you still open to 3BB with a short stack like 18BB, that is going to be a mistake. You simply lose to much, when someone jam, and you have to fold. So at least learn to adjust your open size based on stack sizes as mentioned in the "become a winning poker player in 30 days" course.