Poker Articles

There are people in poker who feel that some plays in poker should never be done regardless of the situation. I often feel that these players are both less resiliant, and easier to read.  One of the most hated plays you will find out there is the min raise.  You will often find people making fun of players who min raise, degrading their play.  I'm here to make a case for the min raise.

Why the min raise?

I began to be interested in min raise, during the late stages of tournaments.   I found my self trying to steal blinds in the right situations and being more aggresive, but resteals were coming too frequent, and i felt like i was -EV when i was raising 3 x the bb.  So I dicided to do an experiment and min raise to steal the blinds.  Suprisingly I would steal the blinds at just about the same percentage i did raising 3x the bb, but i was risking less.  This made it alot easier to get away from sub marginal hands(say raising with 99), when I was repopped especially by tag players.  This was allowing me to both grow my stack faster and I got in less tough situations.  From there I started experimenting with using it in my play through out all stages of tournaments, and I have found that when used correctly, the min raise can be vastly successful in tournament play.

Keys to the min raise

There are several keys to how and why the min raise works.    One of the most surprising things I found was how much it pisses people off.  This is a huge advantage!  Sure your not going to make any friends at the tables, but when people are pissed at you your at an advantage.  They are going to try too hard to knock you out, and they WILL make mistakes.    It also makes people discredit your play.  Min raising makes people think your clueless,  and they underestimate your poker ability.  Again, in discrediting you, they WILL at some point make mistakes.

Another way the min raise is successful is when using it with the theory of leverage.  If you want a detailed and excellent explanation of leverage,  Howard Lederrer does a phenominal job of explaining it in the Full Tilt Poker Tournament Strategy guide.  I will give you the gist of it here.  Leverage is the implied threat of future bets on future streets.  If you make a history of betting on all streets along the way, then people begin to realize that if they are going to win hands against you, not only will they have to call the bet you have made on the flop, but they also know they will have to call 2 more bets on the turn and the river as well.  Now obviously if they have a monster hand they will do so, but the point is that your getting credit for 3 bets on the flop, turn and river, while only making that intial bet on the flop.  This adds pressure to your opponents, and that in turn gives you more fold equity and an advantage.  When using a min raise strategy i strongly suggest making leveraged bets after the flop.  Generally betting just less than 1/2 the pot is enough to apply pressure.  It is also a scary bet because it looks like you want calls. 

Now on the surface, the combination of min raises and consistant leveraged bets can look like its making you an idiot.  This is exactly what you want.  Have you ever been in the later stages of a tournament with an average stack and you look down to see pocket aces.  With excitement you make a small raise only to have everyone fold and you only win blinds?  While there will be times where you will wake up with Aces while everyone else is holding 2-7 3-8 offsuit, alot of people dont maximize their Aces holdings because they arent willing to get caught bluffing. 

Once you start min raising and leverage betting with frequency, your opponents are going to start reraising you consistanly to apply pressure.  In fact, not only will they reraise you, but they will over raise you, trying to prove a point.  Now when you get your monster hands, like AA, KK, QQ, etc  you will be able to make your standard raises, and expect to get repopped, allowing you to get more value for your premium hands. 

In addition to leveraged betting, and extracting better hand value, this will allow you to expand your starting hands, and win more unopened pots, even when the cards arent strong.   Once you have established your self as a "Min raising donk",  you can start playing hands like suited connectors, ace rags, or even blackjack hands, as long as you do two things.  One you need to keep a very good inventory of how each player at your table is playing.  The frustrated players that are LAG will often try to catch you, and will even call leveraged bets with draws or 2nd or 3rd pair holdings.  If you get a TAG player though that starts to pressure you or reraise you, dont be afraid to give up hands, even top pair, when you know your outkicked.   Alot of people feel like if they bet out at a pot and get reraised and have to fold, that they have made a mistake.  But that play is only a mistake if you dont capitalize on the fact that your play is less credible at that point, and when you get a big hand, ull be able to make that same bet at the pot and get reraised and get it in with the best.

The final Key to the min raise is sticking to it regardless of how good your hand it is.  If your goingto min raise 90% of your hands but then raise 3x the bb with Aces, then you have lost your ability to disguise your raises.  By making all your raises min raises regardless of your holdings, there is some good news and some bad news.  The bad news is that there will be times where you min raise your kings, and a guy calls you with A 3 and hits an aces on the flop when perhaps you could have raised him off his hand.  More often though whats going to happen is that you are going to take away your opponents ability to read your hands.  While there is luck in poker, it is also about every advantage you can get.  The more information you can gather, and the less that you can give off, the more of an advantage you can be.  After you catch a few people with monster hands in a tournament, you will find that all of the sudden people are very perplexed by your min raises, and actually are less likely to get involved in hands with you because they cant get a read.  This comes into play in the later stages because when you start stealing with min raises, they feel very uncomfortable repopping you with no clue as to what you have....

When to minraise?

I am not suggesting that you raise every single hand.  That would be foolish.  Generally when I am in a min raise strategy there are a couple rules I follow.  First, in middle or late position I want to raise any unopened pot, regardless of my cards.  This in general allows you to establish a LAG style which is important if you want to get repopped with your monster hands.  Second, I never limp.  Limping does not give you any information on your opponents hands, and if you NEVER limp, then you give no information on your hand either.  The only time I don't raise preflop is in situations where im in the Big blind, I might just call because my range is wide open at that point. Finally I like to raise limpers.  This is for 2 reasons, first raising limpers frequently will make them think twice before limping in the future(they know they will have to call an extra bet), and it also gives you more information on their hands by what they do.  Players who are limping in early position with monster hands are likely to give a small reraise to your raise, where as small pair set miners will often be content to call your bet.

How often should you raise?  generally if your in the 20-30% range with your pre flop raises you will be in a good position. As you get in the later stages of the tournament you may need to tighten to 10-20% or even expand to 30-40% depending on the image of your table.

 Min raising in different stages of a tournament

Early Stages of a tournament

This is the place that I see min raises blasted the most.  Why? because when the blinds are 10/20 and you raise from 20 to 40, you accomplish nothing.  After all no one is going to fold to a 20 chip raise, and so you are throwing chips away.  At least thats what people say :).   In reality min raising even at the first level is accomplishing a couple things. First you are gaining information on your opponents hands and even more importantly their style of play.  By making 40 chip raises early on your not risking any substantial part of your stack, but over the first 20-30 hands, you can start to see who the LAG players are who will attack you, and who are the TAG players who will fold, sometimes even literally folding that extra 20 chips(if that doesnt smack you and say TAG nothing will). Second, again your establishing yourself as a donk that doesn't know what your doing, discrediting your self with other people.  Third, your telling people they need to reraise you so that when you hit your big hands you can get repopped and make bigger pots for yourself. 

In early stages you will also find that leverage will help you start to build a decent stack.  Even in first hour of a rebuy, where you adapt the rules slightly(im more willing to call all ins when I have the favorite),  I have been able to double my stack just by making leveraged bets.  This is because generally your table will slide into one of two ruts, one they get pissed and constantly try to reraise you, and you wait for your bigger hands and get paid off, or two they get timid and you end up in a constant state of betting half the pot or less to win the pot, and you get them folding half the time, thus getting pot odds and building your stack.

Remember that when your making leveraged bets, you will win more pots before showdown, and that is a HUGE statistic.  The more hands you win before showdown, the less you have to win at showdown, and in turn the less bad beats your going to face. This adds to the skill and takes more of the luck out of the game.  It also helps your tournament play to be more consistant. 

Middle stages of a tournament

Once you reach the middle stages of the tournament, the min raise strategy starts to separate the men from the boys.  You still need to be very aware of your table, and who the tag and lag players are.   You want to be lag, stealing blinds and building your stack, but at the same time you need the sense not to raise a guy who reraises every time with moderate holdings.  Likewise if the guy 2 to your left is waiting for that perfect hand, you need to raise him religiously. 

One big thing people dont realize or understand in the middle and even late stages of the tournament, is pot odds in regards to stealing and restealing.  Lets say that we are in the 100-200 level with 25 antes, and your in middle/ late position and everyone folds around to you.  The standard raise would be to 600, 3x the bb.  So essentially your betting 600 to win 400,  meaning that you need to win 3 times out of 5 or 60% of the time to break even.  With a min raise your matching the pot, 400 to win 400, and you only have to win 50% of the time on your steals.  The other key here is the implied odds of the reraise.  When you raise 400, the total comes to 800 in the pot.  now to raise you off your min raise and make a statement(and people always seem to make over raises to make statements), people will often raise to 1200 to even 2000 chips, to take down that pot... This is exactly where you want your opponent.  Even if they raise 1200, you have risked 400 chips, they have risked 1200.  Your opponent is more exposed, and their pot odds are consistantly worse than you.  At 1200 chips, they are risking 1200 to win 800.  Now think about this.  If your risking 400 to win 400,then for every 800 your risking 800.  If you are consistantly risking 800 to win 800 and they are risking 1200 to win 800, then you are at an advantage.  On top of that often times people will raise to 1600 or even 2000 making their pot odds greatly decreased, and putting themselves in a situation where they will get crushed when you wake up with your monster hands.

 Late Stages or final tables of a tournament

In the late stages of a tournament, the min raise works similar to middle stages except for a couple things.  First, at this point you are established in your play and style (if you have been consistant),  most of the people at your tables have a good knowledge of how your playing.  So what is just as important as figuring out what style each of your opponents are, is figuring out what strategy they are going to take to counteract your style of play. 

One thing I have noticed with this style of play is that certain people try to constantly reraise you off your min raises late.   Why is this important, because it makes hands like AK stronger.  People will start repopping you with small pocket pairs and alot of Ax hands. 

Once you get to the final table, and your play has been established this is one of the few places where I might stray from a min raise strategy just to get an extra advantage.  If I have min raised the entire tournamentand people know that I have been doing that constantly, there may be a few key hands where throwing in a strange sized raise, can psych them out, or add confusion to their thought process.

In Conclusion

I realize I will get blasted for this article,  but I'm telling you if you will be open minded you will find this strategy can work.  Why a strategy that gives less information to your opponents, disguises your raises, wins more pots before showdown, makes people not take you seriously, and allows you to build bigger pots with your monster hands is considered a stupid strategy I will never know.  Then again, Im sure there was a time and day where people criticized Loose Aggressive play too.....