Poker Strategy Article: Min Raising at Party Poker and oh What a Mistake!

One of the biggest mistakes I see online players making is the dreaded MIN-RAISE whereby from any position players will make the minimum bet in order to accomplish. er.. well, it actually rarely accomplishes anything except in building the pot for one of your opponents. It also has the tendency of alarming shrewd players to your inexperience, and they will make notes on you.

Let's say you are in late position in a NL hold'em tournament and 4 players have limped before you at a paltry 50 chips. You are holding pocket 44 and decide since no one showed strength you are going to add to the pot, and raise to 100. Well 9 times out of 10 each of those players are going to call, and well they should as you are serving up pot odds for virtually any two cards they deemed strong enough to limp in the first place. In this spot your weak holding has an equal chance of taking the pot as everyone else. It does not offer you a distinct advantage to keep the pot multi-way. You are giving your money away in this spot.

You may wonder why I used 44 here, as an example holding. It is because I witnessed my friend doing the exact same thing in the same spot with the same hand. I asked him why he min-raised on the button there and said it was "because nobody showed any strength." Oh man did he get a lecture! In this case, chances are the flop is going to check all the back to you where you will have to bet at least half the pot. Now you may win it, but not likely. In fact, a pro will very well be waiting for you to raise and he will re-raise you back, knocking your silly little pair right back where it belongs - in the muck. If its going to cost you a half pot raise after the flop anyway, invest at least some of that in making a more serious effort at taking the blinds or getting heads up. Your bets have meaning, and are not just a nuisance.

Oh, and the other 1 out of 10 times, you will be re-raised by a clever poker player and put to a tough decision preflop, while losing credibility as you sheeply call his re-raise.

I must say here that there are a few select opportunities for min-raising, like when blinds are so huge in the late stages of a tournament. Usually by that time one raise is a good chunk of many players' stacks so it essentially does the same job as does multiple blind raising in the earlier stages.

Another time you may do it is if you are a big stack late in a tournament and the blinds are huge. You do this to put out a message to limpers on your button, and to generally pressure small and medium stacks to play strong on you, or just leave you and raises alone.

Other than that, stop the min-raising! You are embarrassing your families and losing money.