Whenever I see high stakes pros play heads up sit n gos, they frequently min-raise preflop.. sometimes when deep-stacked and sometimes not. I am simply wondering what is the reasoning behind the preflop min-raise in heads-up sit n gos? It seems to be a borderline consensus that this is a good play cause i see it so often.

I've been playing alot of heads up sngs at the micro level (6-10 bucks) and was trying to figure out if this is something I should be introducing to my game since is 3x generally from button and 4x oops if button limps.

Im not completely convinced its applicable to my stakes because I dont think i always need an image to get alot of money in preflop and i can three-bet pretty huge and still get called alot of the time. Still, maybe I should be doing this cause I can prolly outplay most people post-flop and ill still look aggressive if i min raise.

Also, is this a tactic people recommended for the 22 dollar heads up tourneys, cause I suck at those.

Thanks.

Not much difference from 10-22, your game matters much more than the opponents you'll be facing until you get to higher levels.

Players mainly minraise to keep pots small going into the flop, that way they have more maneuverability postflop. A few other reasons would be to avoid being exploited by aggressive 3-bettors and to play more pots OTB where you have a positional advantage (You can minraise many more hands 20-40bb deep than you can 2.5-3x).

While good/great players vary on specifics, generally speaking 50+bb you see 3x raises and anything less than that you see 2x raises, though 2.5x raises are used by some, mostly 25-50bb deep.

At your level I'd suggest something like 3x raise until effective stacks are like 50bb, then 2.5x raise until around 25-30bb then 2x raise. That's default, so you obviously want to adjust accordingly if your opponent warrants it.

QFT.

I think the main reason the high stakes players do it sometimes is like Ry said, to avoid being exploited by frequent 3-betting. Not something you really need to worry about at low limit sngs.

minraising on the button is also a good way to play without giving your opponent information on your hand. The number of hands you can minraise with from the button are virtually any 2 cards, so your opponent can't get any kind of read on your hand and he will be playing the rest of the hand out of position. that gives you a big edge.

Stop looking at what the high stakes players are doing and try to emulate it and/or incorporate it into your own game. It took me years and years to even realize the difference between the lower and higher stakes games, let alone start to realize who, how and why you can get tricky with.

It's really best to learn from those in your buy-in range. Talk to some winners and post some hands here. If you want to look at someone's game to learn, look at the people playing the next highest tier.

And after all that is said and done, remember it's the reasons for the plays that are important, not the play themselves. I see it time and time again, people say something like "hey, high stakes guy X minraises, and he wins at poker so if I minraise I'll win too." That relationship is not transitive. You should really be looking more closely at the conditions surrounding a play like a minraise and understanding why player X went with the minraise.

EDIT: Just for clarity's sake, I'm saying that it's going to be impossible for us to tell you why the minraise works well at those stakes and it's more important to focus on why you should/shouldn't minraise at your stakes. That said, at the higher stakes a minraise is generally regarded as strength.

He's talking about preflop, a minraise wouldn't really be regarded as strength if it's done as a standard raise preflop (as it is in many games, especially higher stakes with lower effective stacks).

The rest of your post I think is very very good though.

Railing a really high stakes game, seeing a hand played a certain way, and trying to copy that is never a good idea. There's often a lot more going into these hands then what is seen. If you are interested in min raising try experimenting with it and see how it fits your style. I wouldn't suggest it because players are loose enough at the low levels to call raises out of position to 3x raises and aren't going to randomly 3-bet hands very often.

Thanks for the responses. I was simply curious since I saw the min-raise so frequently at high stakes that I was wondering if it was some overarchingly applicable fundamental concept to heads up play that I missed out on. Im guessing its not, and nothing really is lol.

if you min raise

a) you will get 3bet less
b) you will be able to call more 3bets
c) your opponent will probaly fold to cbets more
d) smaller pots and less spewing
e) fwf does it so its cool and therefore you=cool(maybe?)

fwiw i do minraise hu as of now

mini rasie=pointless till u get to at least 25/50

Hero 600 chips
Villain 2400 chips

Blinds 15-30

Orly?

Obv i can see why some people would begin to mini raise there but, i personally dont. There are certain cases due to opponents playing style/situations where I will mini raise but, normally im not gonna.

Erm, since I'm always one to try new things (yea, try playing my last 1500 games without ever calling preflop for more than a minraise, as well as never limping (I slipped once or twice)), I'm really strongly under the impression now that a min-raise is "better" than larger raises for all stacksizes >6BB or so. Probably going to play my next 500 games or so with that.

What's the difference between

Hero 2400
Villain 600

Blinds 15/30


and

Hero 2000
Villain 1000

Blinds 25-50

You have a 4-1 chiplead in one, 2-1 in the other, ldo.

Should I play more aggressive with my 4-1 then Skates? You know, like put some pressure on him....