Min-Raising - 4 Hand Play

Primewise

A common strategy when the blinds are very high relative to the stack sizes is to go All-in when it is folded to you, or else just fold, since if you raise/call anything else then you are leaving yourself open to re-steals, and if you are called on a small raise you are near pot committed.

However I came across an effective shorthanded strategy yesterday, which was totally dominating the table.

I was playing in an online $10 rebuy tourney, and I got down to the last 4 players. The blinds were 5000/10,000 and then 10,000/20,000 , which were quite high compared to the stacks, so there was very little post-flop play.

The stacks were something like this (in order of position, i.e. clockwise)

Player A 200,000
Player B 200,000
Villain 150,000
Me: 150,000

Since the blinds were so big, it was basically an All-in crapshoot to steal the blinds. Player A, B and myself were routinely raising all-in first and folding to other people’s raising.

However the villain was repeatedly min-raising from UTG and on the button and still winning the blinds, with little risk. He was obviously doing this with any 2 cards since it was so frequent.

This went on for quite some time, with the chip lead being swapped back and forth. The villain was getting much more than his fair share of blinds, and if he was re-raised all-in he usually fold but often would call a reraise with trash like A8, thus making it very difficult to re-steal. I had position on him, which meant I was losing my first-in Vig, and he looked near pot-committed after his min-raises which deterred my from taking a stand without a good holding.


Anyone care to comment on the benefits / weaknesses of this min-raising strategy for 4 handed play? Anyone had success with it?

The villain went on to win the tourney by the way

cooker3

If he has 150,000 and the blinds are 10,000/20,000 and he is actually folding to a re-raise all in then this is awful as he has committed over 25% of his stack.

LuckyLloyd

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Primewise

1 of us was often coming over the top of his raise, but he kept on min-raising, and called sometimes. It wasn't stopping him.

Regardless of whether or not he was pot committed when he was folding, he was still winning enough blinds to compensate for every time he had to fold to a reraise, i.e. his strategy was working.


p.s. the payouts were roughly
4th 400
3rd 600
2nd 850
1st 1500

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

califano

Primewise wrote:

It wasn't stopping him.

He sounds like the T-1000 from Terminator2.

It all depends on who the opponents are each time you get to that position. Ive raised like that and got away with it and others too but overall players will know enough or find hands to be re-raising back so im not sure if your onto something here.