Poker Strategy Article: Min Raising at Party Poker and oh W

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

Author: Lyla Duke

Article:
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.

About the author:
Lyla Duke is ano online amatuer poker player. She writes for
http://www.PokerBookReport.com and
http://www.PokerStrategyArticles.com