[PujolsOfPokr]

Barry,

I understand that aspect and see where you're coming from. Technically, Bill might be put at a disadvantage in not being allowed to raise exactly what he wants. But practically, yes, I tend to agree with you. If Tom is a solid enough player (and I should mention that I know nothing of Tom Franklin), he should see the min-raise and the BB reraise and fear that if he calls Bill still has the option to push and force Tom's decision to be for a lot more than the initial reraise of the BB. So yes, I agree with you that in practice the disadvantage is miniscule at best.

The sort of hand I was thinking about when I made my first post would be: say Tom had AK. Say Bill has J-J or maybe Q-Q. Tom raises from the button. Bill raises a solid ammount. BB then raises again himself and at this point commits a large # of chips. Now it's back on Tom, and seeing the action in front of him he may very well fold his hand.

Now, if you make Bill raise just the minimum, if the BB makes a standard reraise (but perhaps one that does not commit more than say 20% of the starting stack), Tom might be inclined to call with his AK assuming that if Bill also flat-calls, he puts himself in good position with AK on the button and less than 1/5th of his total chips commited to the pot. Bill is now disadvantaged b/c even if he does raise, he would have more trouble forcing Tom out of the pot given that Tom has already commited a decent ammount of chips to call the BB's reraise. So while Bill's original raise might have been high enough to force Tom out of the pot with his AK, making him min-raise and giving him the option to reraise when the action gets back to him might still prevent him from being able to shut Tom and his overcards out of the pot in the end.

Again, this is a very specific (and unlikely) example, but it's this sort of hand where Bill might be hypothetically at a disadvantage if he is forced to min-raise, based on the fact that if the BB's reraise is a manageable ammount the button might call with his high cards and position. Of course, in practice, I tend to agree with you Barry that forcing Bill to min-raise will likely NOT have this sort of disadvantageous effect on him.