Handling min raises

[bullet_head]

Now they are fantastic if you are on a draw and some fool is giving you a 50 chip bet at a 300 chip pot and you have a nut flush draw or whatever, but what about when you have a made hand?

Say I have top pair top kicker, I bet out and get my bet doubled. This seems to either mean a very strong hand is trapping me, or a very weak hand is going for a weird kind of post oak sort of thing or just feeling me out. Just calling is clearly terrible I would think, but folding seems completely out of the question. So do you always push or what? Assuming you have no reads on anyone in the hand.

[bigballz]

I hate min raises so much. It really depends, but you can see whether he was trapping or bluffing with a small raise back at him.

[suzzer99]

Seems like I saw more minraising this weekend on the $60s and $100s, MTTs, on PS than I used to in an entire month. It's an epidemic. Preflop mostly, but some postflop, lots from UTG/+1. There must be some book about smallball minraising from EP. And almost everytime minraise meant minraise. IE - AJ or 77 or something. Now that doesn't mean they won't still call off their whole stack wiht T9s if you put them all in. A lot of these guys get really testy when you try to deny them their god-given right to see a flop.

But I've learned to completely not fear the preflop minraise. If I'm in the BB and I don't have total trash, I'll just call. Unless they lead out, just 2/3 pot bet after almost any flop, and they usually go away. This is the weekend guys though, regulars is a very different story. But they don't minraise much.

[FoldYourLife]

If I think I have the best hand, I push. The only time to call is if you have a very strong draw.

[imsobroke]

Min raising, I shake my head every time I see it, especially early. I will employ it now and again with monster hands late in the tourney or ITM (AA/KK/etc). The best is when there are 4 or 5 limpers and then the button min-raises.

I do tend to fear the min-raise later on with 4 or 5 people left, this is probably a huge leak on my part but I always think they have a monster when 8 out of 10 times they probably have only a decent hand.

[david050173]

I think the miniraise has a lot of value late if you know people will fold to it. It allows you to raise with anything without risking your whole stack. The problem comes when everyone starts coming over the top of you with crap.

Now the miniraise into 6 limpers from the BB has to one of the most useless moves ever. But it is a lot of fun when someone else also miniraises. It feels like a limit game has broken out.