I wanted to open a full discussion of upsides and drawbacks to both opening sizes in MTT's.

It all starts with your opening raise size, as everything that happens in a hand grows exponentially from the beginning of the hand.

There are top players in MTT's using both opening sizes both with and without antes.

There are many many reasons for both sizes. I will give a couple just to get the discussion going.

2x opening raise allows you to call 3 bets more cheaply.

2.2x opening raise gives worse odds to other players entering the pot, in particular the big blind ( of course mabye you WANT to play the pot in position).

Thoughts, Arguments, Theories, ETC....

Long Days and Pleasant Nights, David

0.2 of a blind makes so little difference IMO. Maybe you should adjust your raise size depending on the table, if they're aggro with lots of 3 bets make it 2x so you can steal and fold cheaply, if they're passive callers make it bigger to get value and discourage multiway action.
Also raise bigger in early position with your stronger range as you want bigger pots with your stronger hands, then min raise steal with your wide weaker range in late position to give your steals a better price.
Also I just don't get why people min raise in the small blind? It almost forces the big blind to at least call any 2, and can be tough to play out if position.

I vary my raise sizing based on the effective stacks. 3xing while deep down to 2x as stacks get shallower. I dont do a lot of 2.x as it's so much easier to just click the raise button without typing #s in.

Skill level of the BB is a huge consideration as well as how you view your ability to play post flop vs your opponents. If you think you have a bigger edge post, try and put less $ pre and more there. Or vice versa.

Long days and pleasant nights for you too David.

You would get better responses if you posted this in a strategy forum David.

Jason Mercier minraises

/thread

A+ gif haha

be creative wit it

(Y)

I thought this WAS a strategy forum. Anyway, appreciate the responses so far.

I have been almost exclusively 2x for a year now ( used to be bigger ).

My personal biggest conflict is between the upsides of the great price you get for stealing when you 2x, and the ability to call reraises cheaper.

And the downsides are that you give the big blind a great price to call and can be a tricky spot facing postflop aggression with an overpair vs an undefined hand range.

Also you may miss some value with your bigger hands ( though you may get MORE value with more initial callers?)

To pokern1nja's point about .02 not being too big a difference: in my opinion the beginning bet size will cause all future bets to be bigger, so in a hand that goes to the river, that initial .02 can become over 2BB by the river.

Making Moves: i agree with you on the clicking, 2x is easier particualrly when I have more than 2 tables going. However i wonder if this is costing me EV. On your other point, is 3x too big for todays tourney environment??

2x is going to end one day

1.7x

not one "move up to where they respect your raises" yet?

astonishing

bit of a deep conv for marginal difference

Pre-ante min raising is pretty bad I think since the goal should be to build pots instead of stealing meaningless blinds.

Once antes kick in I think its pretty irrelevant whether you go 2-2.2 and that its mostly a stylistic difference, especially since most every mtt reg still overfolds their big blind.

I've heard using random numbers argued for before because psychologically opponents don't perceive steals to be as frequent as opposed to when you're just min raising every open but I don't know if I really buy into that.

Sigh, if stacks are still deep post ante, minraising is even worse. The reason the minraise 'was invented' is to allow you opening up with a wide range when shallow. I see fishcakes minraising w 70+bb effective stacks all the time post ante, and they just dont understand how insanely bad it is.

Limp is the new 2x.

I prefer to ~3.5x

It may be bad in theory but in reality almost everyone overfolds their bb so it is still very effective.

And I agree that the deeper you are the worse it is. But in the current mtt environment when stacks are 30-40 effective or shallower it makes virtually no difference whether you're min raising or 2.2ing given how people respond to preflop raises.

As people begin to defend their bb more correctly then the min raise will lose its effectiveness but until then there is not much wrong with it.

Hi Max Steinberg

It's definitely costing you ev if you think opening to another number is better. I'd just prefer to think about something else when playing. You could come up for reasons to change your opening sizes every hand if you wanted based on game flow and hand strength.

As far as 3x being to big for today's tourney environment, not exactly sure what you mean. I think you mean that opponents nowadays play a certain way where larger opens is not ideal?

As stacks get deeper, having larger opens pre makes sense as it represents a smaller portion of your stack. Then if you see your table is folding to much, a good adjustment would be to risk less on your steals while stealing more frequently. If the table is calling opens to often, a good adjustment would be to charge them more to call you while stealing less often.

One thing I have thought about: yes, the big blind gets 3-1 or 4-1 odds to defend. BUT, what is the loss of equity having to play out of position the entire hand worth?

I think in micro/lowstakes this is true, same with nashranges etc. However, the reason why i like to add the .2 extra is purely psychological. It's a bit like having 8bb and minraising the c/o rather than jamming. Or having 3bb and minraise from ep, it just gives that extra bit of fold equity (whether its because they are masstabling and don't check my stacksize is somewhat irrelevant). If it works, and allows me to have the same range w/o valuecutting myself too much on the .2 extra in cEV, i'll keep doing it until people figure it out.