SnGs, 6Max's, and Min-Raises... oh my

Time for a quick update on Bug's week in poker....

Been playing more single-table SnGs lately. I'm trying to bump my Official Poker Ranking (OPR) numbers back up where they were in early 2008 (i.e., 92%). January was a little rough, but during this month of February, I had a respectable (but not great) ITM of 39% (19/49). That's nice, but the real good news is the +7% ROI. I'd obviously like to see this number up higher, say, in double digits (and the ITM up above 43-45%), but for now I'll take the results and build on them.

I've also been playing more and more 6max limit ring games... with mixed results. The action is faster at these short-handed tables, and the swings/variance is certainly greater, but the tables generally have much fishier play than the full-ring games, which makes them worth considering. For instance, I just finished playing 25 hands of Perfect Poker at a $1/2 6max table where two of the opp had VPIPs in the 40% range and another one had an astounding 85% number. All of these guys were very aggressive, too, which made it very hard to manuever, but I still managed to pick up a couple of decent hands and made an easy five bucks in about ten minutes.

I'm not going to be able to play much this weekend, as family commitments have commandeered my life, but I'll leave you with this question I've been pondering lately: When, if ever, is a min raise appropriate? I see this behavior a lot at the low- and (especially) micro-stakes tables, and often I'm priced in to making the call from late position with any two after 3 or 4 other people join the limpede in front of me when an early position player min-raise opens. In multi-way pots, the original EP min-raiser usually turns over a medium pair-- and loses to someone else's junk two pair or better. If you're going to play 88 from EP, you simply have to discourage other players from entering the pot, and the way you do that is by 3-4x open raises. Two times the BB simply isn't going to git'r dun. And yes, I know Daniel Negreanu is a fan of min-raises (as part of his whole "small ball" approach), but at the low-stakes where I prowl, I don't think the strategy usually works. So: when, if ever, is a min-raise called for?

All-in for now...
-Bug