In every form of poker there is a minimum amount you must bet in order to raise the pot, how the minimum is calculate changes from game to game but every form of poker has a minimum raise.

Perhaps even more controversial then limping into a pot is just making the minimum raise or “Min. Raise”. If you are playing a tournament and the blinds are 25/50 then entering the pot for the minimum raise would require you to bet 100, double the big blind. The reasons some players find this a weak or passive raise is that it really doesn’t put a lot of pressure on players to fold and in the case of the blinds, might actually price them in to a call.

Suppose and early player makes it 100 and another player calls. When the action comes to the big blind, who already has 50 in the pot, the call is 50 more into a pot that has 275 in it already. Those are pretty good odds (5 1/2 to 1) to play just about any two cards.

Many players like to standardized their opening raise and that is often three times the big blind. The reasoning is that a min. raise of 2X the blind just does not get the job done, but 3X will get those drawing hands to fold pre-flop. A bigger raise also makes it more difficult for another player to reraise with the minimum raise now that much higher.

On the other hand, there is the logic those says any raise is better than a limp call and the min. raise is not great but much, much better than just a call. Remember that variation is one of the keys to disguising your hands from other players, so perhaps both the min. raise and the limp should be options in your poker arsenal.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #125

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Poker Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.