NL CASH: article by me in 2+2 magazine

[People_Mover]

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I think it's a great article and very well written, however I don't completely agree with #5 as small or minbets throw opponents off and the opponent will raise to find out where he's at, then the opponent will 3 bet. It's a different tactic used to get your opponent to raise (if he's aggro)

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In an unraised pot there's certainly a place for a minbet; that represents a little over 50% of the pot so it's a reasonable size for a bet.

In a raised pot -- your play is interesting, but it's not really any different from a checkraise, is it? Do you find that people fold to minbets in raised pots much before the river?

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I use minbets (1/2 psb) in limped pots, I don't really find that it has much value anywhere else.

The only use a minbet really has in raised pots is as an expensive check or as a psychological advantage. You may face an opponent who is prone to betting when you check but does not like to come over the top, so the min bet may confuse him a little bit although it is not much different than a check. As far as an expensive check goes, that is pretty much it. Against a smart player who will consider this to be nothing more than a bluffy check, he will come over this often. In this case, it can be used as a pot builder because he will probably end up putting more in with his raise than he would normally bet if you checked. However, if you are not doing this with your weaker hands as well a smart player should recognize that your min bet often represents stronger hands. If done correctly I think it is =EV to what we would consider standard, but in my experience almost all villains who do this are clueless and very -EV.

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this is what i was trying to say. I've seen minbets used as halfassed blocks trying to either 1) hit a draw cheap or 2) get raised by an aggro to 3 bet
essentially putting more money into the pot than a regular bet if checked to like xSCWx is saying above.

[TNixon]

I dunno if this is really a good idea or not, but I pop a minbet in raised pots for 2/3 pot to pot very frequently, no matter what my cards are or what the board looks like, and my opponent almost always folds.

Of course, if they call or reraise, then it comes back to what I think they have vs what I have (I run into so few opponents that are thinking about more than their own hand that going deeper than that is almost never worthwhile), but certainly at $50 and less, and for most of the $100 opponents I've played, a minbet seems to be extreme weakness much more often than not.

And for what it's worth, I don't think I've ever minbet either (I don't consider a minbet in an unraised pot as a minbet really, it's a 1/2 pot bet). If I've got a strong hand with an aggro on the other side of the table, 1/2 pot is usually my "sucker" bet, because most semi-thinking aggro players are going to instafold if I repop his raise after minbetting, but 1/2 pot makes his raise big enough for many players to fight over.

[jay_shark]

Limping otb is a great strategy to use against aggressive players .

You should never say never in poker . There are exceptions to every rule .

[MasterLJ]

I don't agree with #1 or #5 at all.

Watch Phil Ivey play, you will see rules 1,2 and 5 violated with frequency.

One of my greatest moments while playing HU was when I was playing a semi competent player who I realized played very similarly to my "normal" style and that we were just passing around blinds, we weren't going to stack eachother unless some type of cooler was involved.

So what did I do? I limped the button, min-raised pre and he just had no answer. I literally played every hand in position. I quickly started grinding on him and varied my raises pre from min to 4xBB. I ended up 4 buy-ins on him mostly because I did a total 180 from what he was expecting.

[creedofhubris]

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I don't agree with #1 or #5 at all.

Watch Phil Ivey play, you will see rules 1,2 and 5 violated with frequency.

One of my greatest moments while playing HU was when I was playing a semi competent player who I realized played very similarly to my "normal" style and that we were just passing around blinds, we weren't going to stack eachother unless some type of cooler was involved.

So what did I do? I limped the button, min-raised pre and he just had no answer. I literally played every hand in position. I quickly started grinding on him and varied my raises pre from min to 4xBB. I ended up 4 buy-ins on him mostly because I did a total 180 from what he was expecting.

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If your opponent sucks, then you can turn folds into limps; it's turning raises into limps that's the problem. Someone who routinely limps is usually passing up raises to do so, not playing 100% of pots.

I really don't see what good minraising preflop does, unless your opponent's folding most of his hands to your minraises, which is, again, not standard.

[MasterLJ]

That's the thing, you can watch otherwise competent players go on massive tilt because things like minraising and limping the button are looked down on so much that good players don't do it.

I semi-agree that min-raising pre doesn't do a lot, but to say it does nothing isn't accurate (imo obviously). If they are calling too much OOP that's just bad, if they aren't calling enough you are getting a cheap steal. If they start to play back, you've set yourself up to win bigger pots since you are IP. Basically everything they can do to counter your button limping and minraising can be counter exploited.

I also feel that minraising is an effective tool for extracting river value on flops like 4-straight or what not where most opponents aren't calling a 3-4x river raise, but will call a min-raise with 2 pair,TP, set, etc.

[creedofhubris]

If you switch from a pot-raise to a minraise, but raise the same number of hands, and he calls with the same number of hands that he's calling with before, then you generate smaller pots while in position, with the same hand mix. So that's a net negative for you.

You save money when he reraises you and you choose to fold, but that's a lot less common than him flatcalling your raise.

[creedofhubris]

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I also feel that minraising is an effective tool for extracting river value on flops like 4-straight or what not where most opponents aren't calling a 3-4x river raise, but will call a min-raise with 2 pair,TP, set, etc.

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Meh. I think it's a lazy shortcut. If they're not calling a bigger river raise then you're not bluffing enough in that spot.

[MasterLJ]

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If you switch from a pot-raise to a minraise, but raise the same number of hands, and he calls with the same number of hands that he's calling with before, then you generate smaller pots while in position, with the same hand mix. So that's a net negative for you.

You save money when he reraises you and you choose to fold, but that's a lot less common than him flatcalling your raise.

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You are absolutely correct.

In my example above I went from playing 60% of my SB (which is standard for me) to 100%... not only that but I was mixing up the ranges too. I minraised with AA once, and limped JJ on to LRR (he called, I stacked him).

So yes, based on your assumptions it would be terrible to ever minraise or limp.

I believe cwar once said that you can never judge someone's HU play from pre-flop and I generally believe that to be true. I think it's the optimal strategy to mix up your pre-flop ranges so that patterns aren't detectable.

The same could be said about "passive drawing". I love it. If you call OOP with a set just the same as when you are drawing or have TPTK, 2nd pair or even bottom pair, it is very difficult for your opponent to counter even with the positional advantage. All of your hands look the same and your opponent is going to start checking a lot of turns IP where you can capitalize.

[MasterLJ]

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I also feel that minraising is an effective tool for extracting river value on flops like 4-straight or what not where most opponents aren't calling a 3-4x river raise, but will call a min-raise with 2 pair,TP, set, etc.

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Meh. I think it's a lazy shortcut. If they're not calling a bigger river raise then you're not bluffing enough in that spot.

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I've given up bluffing on the river in low stakes games. I can rep a hand perfectly and it seems I will get looked up by TP type hands way way way too often for it to be profitable.

I just had a nice conversation with a friend the other day, I truly feel that most low stakes "bluffs" only work because your opponent didn't have anything anyway.

But I could dedicate an entire thread to bluffing at low stakes and I'd probably still be confused.