Another good cash

Last night was a great game at the office. Ten players were there including myself, and there was quite a bit of cash in play. I walked away with a nice profit, as did a couple of other players. Of course, that means some of the players got hurt a bit, but those are the breaks I suppose.

I wanted to use this post to address the topic of minimum-raising. I know that there are plenty of players out there that like to do a lot of min-raising, but I really don't like the play in very many situations other than high-blind situations late in a tournament. There are several reasons to raise a pot, and one of the reasons which shouldn't be overlooked is raising to eliminate opponents when you likely have the best hand already.

This may seem counter intuitive. If you have the best hand, don't you want as much money going into the pot as possible? Yes and no. When you have the best hand, it is often correct to make large bets, thereby protecting your hand by forcing your opponents to pay (more than they reasonably should) to outdraw you, or fold. Often, monster pre-flop hands actually play better against fewer opponents. Aces are a huge favorite against one random hand, but their expected value drops a whole lot for each extra person in the hand. Put another way, the flop has to be pretty good to connect with one opponent's hole cards in such a way as to crack your aces. But if it can connect in such a way with any of several opponents, this can lead to trouble, especially if you have a tough time getting away from a big pair on the flop.

I tend to prefer opening for a standard 3 big blind raise, plus 1 BB for each person who's limped in before me. This helps build a bigger pot when I get called, and provides me a maximized chance of winning the pot because it helps thin the field against my raise.