Explain Open Min Raising From Every Position as Endorsed by Sauce
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 23
On Sauce's stream on RIO like a week ago, someone asked if it would be a good strategy to open min raise from every position except for the SB. Sauce said this is a very strong strategy. Can anyone explain how to implement this well and also why it might be so strong?
Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 5,263
My guess would be he thinks it's strong because:
The cost of the min-raise vs the reward of the blinds is as low as it possibly can be.
Players very likely don't defend well enough vs a min raise (i.e. over folding blinds)
Ranges can end up much wider which tends to be an advantage for a better player in some respects.
Leaves SPR higher on average over the course of the hand which tends to favor better players.
A couple of draw backs could be that it may prevent a player from easily getting all in by the river (i.e. it might take overbetting post flop to get all in) and 2 it might make it more likely for postflop to go multiway.
I don't think the first is much of a problem but the second could definitely negate some subtle edges from the advantages I mentioned earlier.
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 23
I would think the multi-way aspect would be somewhat challenging to work around, especially at micros. I only mention micros because I would think Sauce would know most of the viewers are probably 50nl and lower players. It’s probably not relevant though.
Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 5,263
Oh one more thing I forgot is that slightly higher spr is an issue for us when oop so not always an advantage. But it's likely to be very negligible at this point in the hand either way.
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 13,256
If you're playing against strong opponents, you're more likely to face a 3-bet, and/or be playing OOP. You don't want to put lots of money in the pot when these challenging outcomes are quite likely. (If there's a 3-bet after your minraise, there's still plenty of stack depth for you to profitably call at a reasonable frequency. You can't call so many 3-bets if you open for 3bb and face a 12bb raise, as the SPR won't be so good.)
In the micros, it's different, as you're more likely to get flat-called by weak players with junk hands. In that world, opening bigger and going for immediate value (i.e. bigger open, c-bet and take the pot quite often) makes more sense.
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,373
Sauce does not recommend opening with min raises in the relatively soft games found at the lower limits.
He opens much larger in these games and recommends opening larger in these games.