stop minraising

I play mostly limit, where every raise is a minraise, but I do follow what goes on here and I do try to keep up on what is being posted about no limit, and I have to say, the number of recent hands that have been posted here that featured min-raises is disturbing.

I am not going to claim that you should never min-raise (even pros do it every once in awhile), but 99.9 percent of the time, a min-raise in a microstakes game means someone was lazy and was not thinking about betsizing.

Remember, there are three main reasons you bet your hand. (There are other, secondary reasons such as to get information or maintain a table image, but they are much less important than these three.):

1. To get better hands to fold (bluff or semi-bluff).
2. To get worse hands to call (value bet).
3. To protect your hand.

Min-raises tend to do none of these things well. Better hands tend not to fear min-raises, because you haven't put enough money at risk to force players off their hands or make them worry that you have the goods. You have given them good pot / implied odds to call your bluff / semi-bluff.

Min-raises also do sometimes get worse hands to call (the best thing in their favor), but this doesn't work nearly as often as min-raisers think it will, except when the worse hands calling have correct pot odds to improve. A min-raise announces you have a better hand, but doesn't look like a bluff because you aren't putting enough money at risk. It looks too much like a value bet.

Finally, min-raises don't protect your hand, because they almost always give speculative hands decent odds to continue playing. Nor do they effectively thin fields or get you heads up when you want that.

In addition to not being particularly suited to the goals of betting, min-raises also create additional problems, often having to do with pot size. There are lots of hands where you think you are a big favorite and want to force villain to get pot committed so that you can stack him. But min-raises keep the pot relatively small, and allow villains to make the big decisions after they have either drawn out on you or can still fold cheaply.

Bottom line: if you are min-raising other than in very specific situations for very specific reasons, STOP. Or, if you can't stop, come on over and play limit-- I'll save a seat for you.