Art of the Min Raise (Part 14)

Usually this series is about ridiculing donkeys in cash games that either min check-raise sets on very drawy boards or min 3-bet AA and KK preflop. But I do occasionally use the min-raise myself, particularly in tourneys. You want to make bets smaller in general in tourneys because you have to be more conservative with your chips, as you can't buy any more. Whereas in a cash game 100 bbs deep usually the min-raise means a monster (or sometimes air on a dry board), in tourneys (and sometimes vs. shorties in a cash game), the min raise often means a weak made hand such as top pair-weak kicker or even A-high. For me personally, I most often use it when I call a pre-flop raise in position, usually in a blind battle, and want to min-raise a c-bet. Here are a couple of examples:

Seat 5: SB (1,455)
Seat 6: bruechips (BB) (1,500)

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bruechips [Ad Jd]
7 folds...
SB raises to 90
BB calls 60 (I'm very tight early in tourneys so I don't want to re-raise here although I would often in a cash game, but AJs way too strong to fold to a SB open.)

*** FLOP *** [Kc 9d 2s]
SB bets 90
bruechips raises to 180 (This is a good spot to min-raise because it's a dry board that he'll be c-betting every time, and this is how I would play weak-ish made hands such as KJ as well as 99 and 22. I'm also just forcing him into a really tough spot. Even if he has a hand as strong as JJ, he's faced with the possibility of either re-raising and getting shoved on by all the hands that beat him and folding out all the hands that are behind, or calling and having potentially to face a couple of big turn and river bets. By putting in 180, I force him to make a decision for a much larger portion of his stack.)
SB folds

Just to prove that I don't have just bluffs there:

Seat 4: SB (5,420)
Seat 5: bruechips (BB) (5,345)

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bruechips [Td Kd]
SB raises to 600
BB calls 300 (Deep enough to just call and use position here.)

*** FLOP *** [Tc Ks 6h]
SB bets 900 (c-bet he'd make every tiem)
bruechips raises to 1,800 (Now I'm hoping he has KQ, or that he has nothing and the min-raise just makes him go nuts, since he knows that I know he'd c-bet every time, and thinks I have AJ or J9 or something.)
SB raises to 2,700 (Sure enough he min 3-bets like a complete donkey)
bruechips raises to 4,720, and is all in (He looked committed enough to me, so I shoved...calling the 3-bet and just getting it all in on the turn is fine too, but just calling the 3-bet with 2,000 behind might set off alarm bells for him, whereas shoving might look bluffy)
SB calls 2,020
SB shows [8s 8d] (Sure enough, the min raise made this idiot go nuts)
*** TURN *** [Tc Ks 6h] [4c]
*** RIVER *** [Tc Ks 6h 4c] [8c]

Unfortunately, this donkey nails a two-outter on the river to bounce me from this tourney. Fawking donkeys....

-BRUECHIPS