Min Raises

I recently have been encountering a large number of players (mostly Brazilian and Russian) who are Min Raising regardless of the cards they hold. Like a couple times I have seen min raises with AA and other premium hands and the same players min raise with 78 offsuit. I find this strategy hard to play against as it is difficult to put this type of player on a range. Suggestions?

CDNMAN 42 said:

I recently have been encountering a large number of players (mostly Brazilian and Russian) who are Min Raising regardless of the cards they hold. Like a couple times I have seen min raises with AA and other premium hands and the same players min raise with 78 offsuit. I find this strategy hard to play against as it is difficult to put this type of player on a range. Suggestions?

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Good day!
I agree that it is difficult for such players to imagine the opening range, especially if they open hands of different strengths from early positions, always with a minimum raise of 2 big blinds. But you can also use this tactic and mark such a player, they say, there can be both junk and premium range in his range.

And I don't see anything strange in it, now everyone is playing like this.
I remember that they used to open with a 3bb raise, which is classic)), but now they open with a 2.5bb or 2bb raise.
Therefore, you can determine the players, I think the old-school players open 3bb, and the new players, modern open 2bb.

CDNMAN 42 said:

I recently have been encountering a large number of players (mostly Brazilian and Russian) who are Min Raising regardless of the cards they hold. Like a couple times I have seen min raises with AA and other premium hands and the same players min raise with 78 offsuit. I find this strategy hard to play against as it is difficult to put this type of player on a range. Suggestions?

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Clearly min raise (with any cards) is never wrong specially if you recognize players who are most likely going to sit out and/or just afraid to call to that lol ...

Min raises are much more common now than years ago when it used to be 2.5-3x. You say you find them hard to play against which is exactly what they are aiming for. If you are difficult to play against then you will have more success.

If you mean preflop, then any reasonable player will use the same opening size with all the hands, they want to play. If you use one size with your best hands and then another size with all the rest, that will make you really easy to play against. Small sizes are pretty common in tournaments, because there is a lot of value in reducing variance. Personally I typically dont min-raise, until the effective stack is 25BB or less. There are also some players, who prefer to make it 2,1 or 2,2BB, but really it makes no particular difference.

CDNMAN 42 said:

I recently have been encountering a large number of players (mostly Brazilian and Russian) who are Min Raising regardless of the cards they hold. Like a couple times I have seen min raises with AA and other premium hands and the same players min raise with 78 offsuit. I find this strategy hard to play against as it is difficult to put this type of player on a range. Suggestions?

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Yeah, I used to struggle against such players, and sometimes I still do, especially in KO tournaments.

But I found an OK answer to that, and still use it. Its not perfect, but at least I'm never owned in these spots.

So when I face a min 3-bet out of position, I will 4-bet with my entire continuing range, and fold all marginal hands. But when I am in position, I will call with ALL my continuing range, and never 4-bet, so that I could also have AA and KK when I call.

It is much easier to play postflop with such opponents in position, and simply horrible out of position, that is why I think this strategy works best for me.

One important note though! The above-mentioned strat only works if there is only you and him in the pot. If there is someone else in the hand, I would simply play tight and just fold all speculative hands. Especially if we do not have position on all opponents.

Mini-raises are in vogue now, it is very difficult to determine the strength of the opponent's hand.But it can be very easily identified by the flop bets and draw certain conclusions

3-bet wider

The Min raise still is a raise and the amount should not mean so much. A tight player is still tight and a loose player is loose. 2 ways to handle them. 3 bet them with your better hands more and calling more hands that have good equity will not be a bad idea. either. the issue with the min bet is in the BB i will call any 2 if there are antes. The odds we are getting are to good to pass up,

CDNMAN 42 said:

I recently have been encountering a large number of players (mostly Brazilian and Russian) who are Min Raising regardless of the cards they hold. Like a couple times I have seen min raises with AA and other premium hands and the same players min raise with 78 offsuit. I find this strategy hard to play against as it is difficult to put this type of player on a range. Suggestions?

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The minimum raise is a trick that needs to be handled carefully. I'm not talking about the preflop min-raise right now, which has become popular in high-level tournament play. Here I will analyze postflop min-raises in cash, and show that they are often a big mistake.You can min-raise as a bluff, but this sizing looks very weak, and you will be called by anyone who is even slightly hooked on the board. A player with good reading skills may even re-raise your bet with nothing, simply because your min-raise looks very weak.Here are a couple of other situations where you can profitably use a min-raise: 1. You have a monster, you know your opponent is weak, and a min-raise is the maximum you can get from him. 2. You have a very aggressive opponent who will probably see a min-raise as a sign of weakness, but you actually have a very strong hand. Then the min-raise becomes a trap and you hope to re-raise back.

If you have a strong enough hand to play a check / raise line here and put up against your opponent, you bet on the turn yourself, the river would not bluff against phones. You should not try to bluff big in them if you have nothing at all.

They still can't hide their preflop position. Also, that sizing make them give up pots easily and allows to open more wide. You can try to press that with a bigger flop bet size, I guess? They basically want the same as limpers does, but with "preflop initiative". With smaller pots it's cheaper to show aggression so go for it.