We don’t talk about it too often, but one must always ask the question ”What am I trying to achieve by playing this hand?” If you are first to act, then the answer is typically one of the following:
- A. Gain equity with a strong hand
- B. See a flop cheaply with a potential hand
- C. Steal the blinds
Gaining equity with a strong hand
Let’s say you have AA. You will gladly get all your chips in the middle with this hand, but you don’t want to scare away all the action. AA vs 1 player with a random hand is 85% favorite. However, vs 2 players you drop to a 70% favorite and vs 3 other players you are down to close to 60%. In other words, you decrease your equity with each extra player. Limiting the number of players is an important way of ensuring that your premium hands hold up.
See a flop cheaply with a potential hand
Let’s say you have Axs, medium sc or a small pocket pair. In these situations you want as many players as possible seeing the flop. This pads the pot. More importantly, when you flop a monster, the extra players increase the likelyhood that someone will pay you off.
With premium hands you are ahead preflop but usually end up with top pair, top kicker. With potential hands, you are behind preflop or at least vulnerable, but are hoping to flop a set, straight or flush. These monster hands hold up better than TPTK in multiway pots.
Furthermore, you want a minimum investment since you are only flopping a set 1 in 8 hands. A small investment makes it easy to fold the hand the 7 times that you brick the flop. Small investment is also why these are profitable early in the game, but less so as the blinds increase.
If someone reraises preflop, you have an easy fold.
Stealing the Blinds
Now you have a decent hand in late position and an unopened pot. The blinds have become worth stealing. Min-raising makes calling with ATC mathmatically correct for the bb. A larger bet increases the likelyhood that they fold and makes it incorrect for the bb to call with a less than average hand. Remember, you are trying to steal, your cards only matter if have to play post flop.
It might seem like min-raising saves you chips if the bb reraises and you have to fold. However, agressive players will view your min-raise a sign of weakness and thus be more likely to reraise you then if you had made a lagrer bet in the first place. (I do this all the time.)
Min-raising from the btn or sb with a monster may often be smart if you expect the bb to reraise you.
Post Flop Play
Since you raised so little preflop in all the situations above, putting the other players on a range of hands is difficult. The may have small pocket pairs, suited connectors, Ax, or pretty much atc.
Reading the texture of the flop in a multiway hand is difficult. Most of the time you miss the flop. Someone might already have a set and someone else will often have a strong straight or flush draw. It is worth noting that these are the hands that would often be folded to a larger raise preflop.
Against one player, few flops will concern you with AA. However, with any other hand it becomes difficult to know where you stand. Is your AKs good vs 269 rainbow flop, or did the bb just flop bottom pair? This in turn makes Cbetting more difficult. A larger raise preflop would have helped you put the player on a range of hands, thus allowing you to better read the flop. Be agressive with the best hand preflop and make them pay to draw out on you.
This is obviously my opinion as a TAG player. Min-raising probably has its place, but be sure you know why you are doing it. Furthermore, why don’t one of you min-raisers keep track of all your min-raises to see if you are profitable over 100 min-raises for example. Even better, group them into the categories above and post your results. Convince me that min-raising is better than the fundamental principle of aggression :)
Roland
Great post Roland, and nice try - I am getting uncertain!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all is there any others than me that does the mini-raise? If, so it would be interesting to hear form them.
I tried to explain some of the logic behind as a response to your comments to my game - see earlier comments.
I am not sure whether its possible to convince you that this could pay off (no even sure its EV positive in the end), as this has to do with prefered style of play, but it might be good to play with some flexibility in order to avoid being too easily read by your opponents.
I think one of my key arguments to defend mini-raise would be that it camouflages your hands and thus increase the chance of
a) getting more chips from your premium hands beacause TAG players tend to call or re-raise you more often with mediocre hands due to the mini-raise. It's no fun to only get the blinds with AA and KK etc. You do not get these hands often enough, so why not try to get more out of these hands. Yes, the downside is that you might have to fold some of them post-flop. On the other hand how often do we not complain that we had a bad beat with AA and KK against a mediocre hand beacuse it basically ends with an all-in, because some donk get pot-committed and gets lucky. It basically happens 1 out of 3 hands. Winning major pots without all-in keeps you alive longer - statistically.
b)mini-raise with a good hand tend to pay off long-term as people will have problems to read you. Having seen a couple of mini-raises with AA/AK/KK etc will make players think twice about a re-raise. Thus, after a while you might be able to steal blinds without the standard 3x raise.
Its probably less effective in a MTT where you constantly play with new players (thats my major concern).
This is about style as well. I know that TAG-players tend to read mini-raise as a weakness, so again - a major re-raise from me as a response will often make them fold. Believe me, after such a move many will stop re-raising a mini-raise, and you will start to steal blinds with a wider range of hands, because they will be uncertain whether you have a camouflaged monster or not, and you could afford to do this more often. This has probably more to do with psychology than anything else.
I also do the 3x raise in many situations. This is dependant on the kind of players you would meet. If i am constantly re-raised and forced to fold - I simply will change to a TAG-style due to preserve my chips and to re-gain respect at the table. Until I am ready to make a new mini-raise :)
I am sorry, I am not going to do the analysis, but I am more than happy to post my games - even the one i loose :)
I would be more than happy to change my game play if it turns out that this is my major leakage of chips.
Appreciate the discussion. Please help me to improve.
Good reply klokkhammer. Im playing as I write, but will give you a proper reply tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteHi again klokkhammer
ReplyDeleteYour reply seems well thought out, but I have two points where I am not sure I agree with your logic.
1. You said "one of my key arguments to defend mini-raise would be that it camouflages your hands" I understood this to mean your AA, KK and AK premium hands. If this is what you mean then we need to do some math.
How often are you getting dealt these hands? How often are you min-raising with mediocre Ax hands? And how much are you winning in both these situations? I don't think you get these monster hands often enough during a tourney to make much of a difference. Furthermore, if you want to take this "concealed monster" approach, I actually think limping would perhaps save you chips from all the lost non-monster hands. If I get the time, I'll do the math next week.
2. You talk about going over the top of a reraise with a 4-bet! This is a bold move, however, in most tourneys this will mean moving all in with a marginal hand due to stack sizes in a situation with little fold equity. More importantly, after the early stages of most tourneys, Ms have gotten so low that the opponent's reraise to your minraise will have to be all in, or if they still have chips you will both be priced in.
I agree that this move will get people's attention, and that they will leave you alone for a few rounds. I would love to see you post a few examples of this in action. I do it if a situation arizes, but usually it is in a big mtt with deeper stacks. I find these situations rarely turn up in sngs or turbos.
In both points above, I would be surprized if these situations occur often enough to make them worth basing a strategy on. For me they are exceptions rather than the rule.
If however, they are frequent enough for you then perhaps the min-raise has its place after all...
Post some examples or numbers. I'll do the same.
Finally, MrSmith has been known to make a min-raise or 5 in the later stages of the 45s...
Roland
And my 10% ROI in the 45's makes a point, hehe! It's not part of my strategy to minraise, so I'm not sure where you picked this up Roland. I surely do it with monsters (AA, KK), but almost never with AK,QQ,JJ,QJ,TT,etc. My usual raise is at 2.75 to 3x, but then again I sometimes use the minraise as a mix-up in style to put the opponents off if I think it's worthwhile. I haven't done the math, but like Klokkhammer explains it can be used to set off opponents if it's mixed in and not a regular feature in your game. Everything depends on your reads and gut feeling.
ReplyDelete