Poker betting strategy

The ‘minimum raise’ is the black sheep of no-limit Hold’em. It’s often seen as a ‘donkey move’ made by inexperienced players who don’t understand how to size their bets properly. And often this is true, as weaker players make small bets when they’re weak and are afraid to commit themselves, or when they don’t want to scare off others because they’re strong. Despite this, the min-raise does have a number of valid uses that should be added to your no-limit game, no matter how experienced you are. First though, I’ll explain why min-raises can be bad and how you can play against them, before discussing some situations where you can use the min-raise to your advantage.

INHERENT PROBLEMS

When raising pre-flop most good players will make an increase on the minimum bet. This will be at least two-and-a-half times the big blind, but often more, leaving those still to act with a serious decision. Players raise more to extract value from opponents when they have the best hand, to apply pressure when bluffing, and to create unfavourable pot odds for their opponents to outdraw them.

The main problem with making a minimum raise is that you create an extremely favourable proposition for opponents. A minimum raise gives another player in the pot at least three-to-one odds to call, but often a lot more if there’s antes in play or other players in the pot too. Pre-flop weaker hands get an inexpensive chance to outdraw a stronger holding, but the biggest mistakes are made post-flop. For example, let’s say you’re heads-up on the flop and there’s $50 in the pot. You bet $50 and someone raises to $100, meaning you only need to call $50 more into a pot of $200, giving you odds of four to one. Your opponent’s min-raise here is often a mistake because it gives you the right price to draw to a flush or straight on the flop. Most of the time in no-limit Hold-em it’s important you do the opposite to this and make a bet significant enough to charge opponents the wrong price to outdraw your better hand.

A second problem is that if you’re making a min-raise with the best hand you’re very often failing to extract the maximum value possible. If you’re raising because you think you have the best hand, you should be attempting to maximise your expected value, or, in simpler terms, be looking to make as much as you can. Given that your opponent has already made a bet, and often his hand has some value, it’s rare that merely doubling his bet will achieve that goal.

EXPLOITATION

Taking all of this into account it’s fair to conclude that min-raising is often, although not always, a bad play made by inexperienced players. And on that basis, it’s exploitable. So how do you profit from your opponents’ mistakes?

First, let’s consider how to play if you’re min-raised. As ever this is a player-dependent decision. If you think your opponent is a competent, thinking player, then you have to assume he’s choosing the min-raise over a normal-sized raise for a reason, rather than as a bad play or mistake. With a less experienced player or someone who doesn’t seem to put much thought into their decisions, it will often be a mistake so it’s important you look to exploit it.

The most common use of the min-raise is when a poor player has a big hand and is looking to get paid. The player min-raises to avoid scaring players away. And the classic example of this is when someone calls a bet on the flop and then min-raises on the turn. If a weaker player takes this line with you, you should often forget the great pot odds you’re getting and head for the hills, as you’re almost always up against a monster.

Not all min-raises from weak players are monsters, however. In fact, they can often be ‘feeler’ raises with mediocre hands or weak attempts at bluffs. If a player makes a min-raise on the flop he will often have a hand like middle pair, or top pair with a weak kicker, and wants to ‘find out if he’s ahead’. You can either attack this bet by raising again or, because you have such good odds and perhaps you don’t know the player well enough, you can call and see what develops on the turn. Once you know a player makes this kind of minimum raise, you can attack them with re-raises on a regular basis. After all, they’re making a small raise for information, so you can give them the answer they don’t want.

JOIN IN THE FUN

So if standard plays don’t include minimum raises and it’s the play of a weak opponent, are they worth considering as part of your arsenal? Hell, yeah! There are a number of situations where you can use them effectively. The clearest advantage is perhaps late on in a tournament when the blinds are big in relation to the stacks. In this situation a min-raise is a significant bet in relation to the stacks and will put the same amount of pressure on other players as much as a bigger raise will (and can even appear stronger because it looks like you want a call or for someone to raise). If your objective is to take down the blinds and antes then it makes sense to make the smallest bet needed to do that job. So let’s say the blinds are 3000/6000/a1000 at a final table, and the average stack is 40k. Here it’s probably true that doubling the big blind will have the same effect on players’ decisions as a bigger bet would – this is particularly true if you’re one of the bigger stacks and therefore have a big threat to back up your raise.

Good tournament players have started making their first raise smaller earlier in tournaments. It used to be that three times the big blind was a standard opening raise, but now experienced players tend to open for about two-and-a-half times the big blind. Some – notably Daniel Negreanu – have started min-raising pre-flop even from the first level.

The benefits of making these small raises are twofold; first, they make it more likely that you’ll see flops, which benefits the better player, and second, it often forces players to play mediocre hands out of position against you as they have such good odds to call. For example, if a player has a hand like Q-9 offsuit and he’s facing a raise of three times the big blind he’ll often fold, whereas he may call a min-raise and end up playing this weak hand out of position. The disadvantages of this approach is that you’re giving your opponents an invitation to attack you by re-raising, as it’s cheaper for them to do so, but most importantly, as I mentioned earlier, you’re giving players – especially in the blinds – better odds to out-flop your superior starting hand.

There are some other situations where min-raising has its advantages. If it’s often done when players are weak or have a weak hand then it can evidently be used to appear weak and induce a mistake from your opponent when you’re actually trapping with a good hand. One way of doing this is min-raising on the flop to appear weak, which you hope entices an aggressive opponent into coming over the top with a worse hand. Effectively you’re giving your opponent the illusion he has fold equity and can push you off the hand. You have to be careful not to overuse this play, though, as it does give your opponent odds to take off a card. For that reason, it’s best used when the pot is already a little bloated, perhaps by a re-raise pre-flop, and your small raise on the flop is more likely to get a push-or-fold response.

ADDED VALUE

You can also occasionally min-raise for value. Earlier I said that usually you’d like to raise more to extract more chips from your opponent, but there are some situations where the most you can make may actually be the minimum. For example, let’s say you’ve made a flush on the river; your opponent makes a small bet and you’re sure this is a defensive bet with a worse hand. In this spot you might try a min-raise to extract a few chips where your opponent will almost always fold when his defensive bet gets attacked, but will not be able to refuse putting in a few extra chips with a hand that has some showdown value.

This can be used very effectively against players who are always seduced by the pot odds argument and will never fold for a small raise. This also has future value, as when a player calls a small value bet then sees he wasted those few chips it can be very frustrating – credit to online legend David ‘Raptor’ Benefield who has christened small value bets ‘head explosion’ bets, because of the effect they can have on opponents.

So there you go – making minimum bets or raises isn’t quite so silly after all. But having looked at ways it can be used effectively, always bear in mind that most of the time min-raising is not the best play as it fails to put pressure on your opponents or extract maximum value, while pricing players in when you want them out. When you encounter a weak player making these bets, make sure you quickly suss out whether their min-raises are strong or weak, and then take them to the cleaners!