[DLizzle]

ok, I'll try to make my point again. Do not tell me that it's wrong because of all the reasons just stated. I KNOW. that is not the point. It's a theoretical point that I don't even actually use. I raise to 3xbb preflop. I understand that a 2xbb raise gives the blinds great odds to call, and that given what I said before it is impossible to make an efficient raise preflop by my standards. That was a very good point. Kind of stopped me in my tracks, but then got me thinking again.

What is the purpose of the preflop raise? In my personal opinion, it shouldn't be to take down the blinds. In tournaments I have often raised to steal the blinds with weak hands but I'm trying to stop. I've thought about it and this approach doesn't work for me. I steal when I need the blinds or else I'm making value bets.

Look at it from the perspective of what you are winning. A 3xbb raise risks 3bb to win 1.5 if everyone folds. That is what I mean by inefficient. So then that makes me think you don't want everyone to fold when you make a preflop raise, so why not a minraise? There are two reasons to make a larger raise, for which I have answers to.

The first is that you may want to build a pot. This is easy to take care of, in tournaments you don't really want to build pots preflop, pot control is extremely important. A 2xbb raise works better in this way than a 3xbb raise.

Second, you want to thin the field. For this reason, I think that a minraise would only be beneficial from fairly late position. A minraise from EP will often be called by many players, and this makes post flop play difficult.

I hope you got this so that I won't have to go over it again, because I obviously suck at explaining. I'm not saying we should all switch to minraising maniacs, just trying to provide a theoretical position to the topic of the thread.