Let’s talk about why open min-raising has become standard in tournaments
Hello poker players! After a 15 year hiatus starting on Black Friday I’m excited to be back to playing SNGs on WPT Gold. I played over 30,000 SNGs on Stars 2008-2011 mostly at the $16 level. Even though I haven’t been playing for the past 15 years I’ve been watching poker content very regularly & I’ve never lost my love for the game.
My question for you today is
Why has open min–raising become standard?
I started watching and studying the game in 2003. I’ll never forget Mike Sexton always emphasizing the importance of raising to 3x times the BB and all the players did that. The idea was that raising any less would give your opponent odds to play almost any hand and give them an opportunity to beat your strong hand with their very weak hand.
So here we are over 20 years later and open min-raising has become standard. With the addition of the antes this gives even better odds for your opponent to call almost any hand out of the BB. We call with any suited combination and hands as bad as 3/4 off.
I have my own thoughts on why this has become standard and I’m wondering what you think. I’m guessing that by open min raising before the flop we allow the opponent to see the flop with any two cards. Solvers and GTO strategy has made it clear that the player in later position has a very big advantage on the player in the early position. So even though the BB can call with almost any hand they will be out of position which greatly reduces the value of their hand. I also believe that more experienced players gain more advantage post flop. So by allowing less experienced players to see the flop with weak hands out of position the experienced players can take advantage of this and make more money.
What are your thoughts on why open-min raising has become standard?
By the way not to brag but I am absolutely crushing the games on WPT Gold. I haven’t seen games this soft since the early 2000s. I deposited $100 in September last year and playing initially only the $5 SNGs and eventually at the $20 level have built an $8000 bankroll. Just this month I started playing 8 tables at a time with usually five or six of those games being at the $20 level.
I’m really excited to be back playing the game that I love. It’s very nice that I basically can pay my rent at these very easy games with almost no risk of ruin.
10 Replies
My preflop sizing is based on effective stack size.
The only thing that is important in my opinion is that we raise the same same size with all hands at that effective stack size. Now GTO/Solvers will have several different sizing algorithms based on the strength of hands so that with hands like AA they will min raise instead of jam and get called and possibly double up. But there have to be other hands that would be min raised in that spot to balance and, well, people won't actually do it in a balanced way.
For me I will preflop raise 3x over 100 bb effective stack size, 2.5x between 50 and 100 bb effective stack size, and min raise (in my case to 2.1x) < 50 bb effective stack size. I also will typically jam with <15 bb's effective stack size. Unless I am at the final table and ICM actually matters, then it is a min raise situation.
In reality what you will notice over time is that people will raise JJ at a much higher pre flop sizing than other hands. This also happening with AK now as well. They just don't want to play these hands OOP. Or in the case of AK when they miss the flop 67% of the time.
The main reason to lower the raise levels with shorter stacks is to be able to play far more hands that we raise, especially in position. This assumes that we are actually better than most of the players. Which is obviously the case for you Mr. $8,000.
I think Sexton had it backwards. Why do you WANT weak hands in the BB to fold when you have a much stronger range? Yes, they will beat you sometimes with their weak hands, but so what? Getting an opponent to call your strong range with a weak, capped range is obviously going to be profitable.
Not only this, but solvers have led to an increased frequency of light 3 betting from the BB, especially against late position raises. If you face a good player in the bb you will be facing a lot more three bets than you would have when Sexton advocated for a 3bb open. The min open simply costs you less when you open the bottom of your range and are forced to fold to the three bet.
This of course assumes a strong field, especially in the bb. If your field is full of mostly passive players who limp a lot and who only really 3 bet when they have a premium hand, then a 3bb (or even larger) open probably works better. You build pots faster with your better hands, players like this are fairly inelastic in terms of their calling range as a function of size, and when you are three bet, you can safely fold (and this won’t occur often).
OP I feel you have got the wrong idea about modern MTTs, maybe the content that you looked at only involved the late stages of tourneys? I'm not sure what sort of SNG's you are playing so I guess that may be appropriate, but speaking about MTTs in general its not possible to say min betting is standard. I believe the best players are varying their bet size not only by the depth of the effective stack, but also the position at the table.
I would also be wary of variance. I have heard WPT Gold is soft, but I wouldn't necessarily count on the sort of return you have had so far to continue long term.
If you are playing MTTs, I would watch some more content that includes deeper play.
Good luck at the tables!
Hello poker players! After a 15 year hiatus starting on Black Friday I’m excited to be back to playing SNGs on WPT Gold. I played over 30,000 SNGs on Stars 2008-2011 mostly at the $16 level. Even though I haven’t been playing for the past 15 years I’ve been watching poker content very regularly & I’ve never lost my love for the game.My question for you
I'll start by reposting my own thoughts from the previous thread, with some slight additions:
Well, as someone who started in the early 2000s as well, here's what I can tell you:-We don't really need larger open sizes unless our goal is to take down the pot preflop, and by and large we don't need to focus on that in tournaments because they're not raked. In a raked cash game we actually lose money and EV from the rake if we go to a flop, so we might want to size up to d
I have my own thoughts on why this has become standard and I’m wondering what you think. I’m guessing that by open min raising before the flop we allow the opponent to see the flop with any two cards. Solvers and GTO strategy has made it clear that the player in later position has a very big advantage on the player in the early position. So even though the BB can ca
Well, the smaller opening sizes are game theory optimal, which means they are in theory unexploitable (at least when paired with the proper ranges). There are a few reasons why they are preferable:
- As you point out, big blinds can defend wider, but that's not really a problem, it just requires us to sharpen our postflop skills a bit. The bigger our raise sizes are, the tighter the ranges our opponents will play in response. You don't really ever want to put yourself in a position where the only hands our opponents are playing are better than ours.
- GTO involves a lot more preflop 3-betting than was common back in the day, and raising smaller offers some protection from that - keeping the pot small enough to be able to play it and have some postflop moves, costing you less when you 3-bet/fold.
- Combining the two ideas, the larger we raise, the tighter our range has to be to stay balanced. And if we don't adjust that accordingly, our opponents can exploit the hell out of us by 3-betting us. (And if we do adjust accordingly, then we probably aren't playing enough hands to win enough chips to have a chance in the tournament, and observant opponents are less likely to pay off our big hands because we have such a tight range.)
I think if it comes down to one principle, it's being as profitable as possible, and to be as profitable as possible, that means playing as many hands as we can while keeping a balanced range that our opponents can't exploit. (i.e. If we open too many hands, our opponents can profitably 3-bet us a lot more often, and if we open the wrong class of hands, we can risk getting into postflop situations where we stand to win small or lose big-- dominated top pair deep, for example.)
And if that means more postflop decisions, that's fine. 40BB deep, do you really want the BB to fold A8o if you open AKo in early position? Or the button to fold ATo instead of 3-betting it?
I’m getting this idea that min raising is standard from watching a lot of online poker. Lex, Spraggy,Ben from Raise your Edge, SpracesAces and quite a few more. They almost universally open pots with minimum raises.
I could be wrong but it doesseem to be the common opening size.
Its standard because we learned through solvers that opening to 3x is usually too much.
But whether you open your HJ at 50bb to 2x or 2,3x doesn't matter, the EV is basically the same. Even 2,5x would be fine, at least from later positions. There are 100 other more important topics to focus in your game than open-raise sizing (as long as you use something vaguely normal).
I’m getting this idea that min raising is standard from watching a lot of online poker. Lex, Spraggy,Ben from Raise your Edge, SpracesAces and quite a few more. They almost universally open pots with minimum raises.
I could be wrong but it doesseem to be the common opening size.
I explained a lot about raise size earlier, so I'm not really sure what your question is.
Its standard because we learned through solvers that opening to 3x is usually too much.
But whether you open your HJ at 50bb to 2x or 2,3x doesn't matter, the EV is basically the same. Even 2,5x would be fine, at least from later positions. There are 100 other more important topics to focus in your game than open-raise sizing (as long as you use something vaguely normal).
Minraising became standard before there were solvers. It is about stealing the blinds and antes for the cheapest price. If the BB defends, the BB is OOP with a capped range.
It's tough to min-raise in live small buy-in tournaments (sub $1k) because you'll see the flop with 4 players a lot of the time. I find that doing 3x at the beginning when super deep works, then moving it down to 2.5x as we get in the 50-100bb range, and then in the later stages with shallow stacks and more aware players, I'll move it to 2x or 2.2 or something. Players play way too many hands (which is good), and you end up not getting value out of your medium strength hands when up against multiple players
It's tough to min-raise in live small buy-in tournaments (sub $1k) because you'll see the flop with 4 players a lot of the time. I find that doing 3x at the beginning when super deep works, then moving it down to 2.5x as we get in the 50-100bb range, and then in the later stages with shallow stacks and more aware players, I'll move it to 2x or 2.2 or something. Players play way
This is more or less what I do.
Nath made most of the points I would make.
Mr.Rick, yes you want to have 'one' raise size at each blind level...except I have seen good players size up a bit from exactly the button. There you can't get 3! from an IP player, and since our range is weaker, we don't mind the folds as much. It's a minor nit to pick, but it doesn't go against your theory; we aren't using multiple sizes for different hands, we are using them for different positions.
Of course the SB is a completely different animal. Min raising there is quite poor, imo. I usually go about 3-3.5x even late in a tournament.
