Checking With a Chip

I noticed that sometimes (in tournaments mostly) people try to rob others off their cheaps making tiny bets with good hands all the way and then bet large on river.

ED says: “It may sound like a basic lesson,” but its really not.

You used this phrase in response to a hand of mine a while ago that I posted on NPA and I use it often in discussing hands with friends.

It’s a great phrase for teaching players to actively read hands and motives.

There’s a LOT of min betting at small stakes NL (on the interweb). In tournaments I can deal with it (because even a min bet is decent sized part of my stack) but in cash games it drives me nuts.

My experience is it mean one of;

Villain is hoping you have the check/fold button clicked and he’ll take the pot

He doesn’t know how much to bet, maybe he doesn’t even know he’s playing NL, and he just bets.

He’s hoping that you come back at him with a meaningful bet.

My experience is the last one is the most frequent. I get so fed up with.

Yesterday, it happened twice against the same villain. First time it happened I had an open end straight draw but i folded. Second time I had nothing, made a half pot sized bluff and got put all in.

I hate no limit. Tournaments I can play, but cash games drive me nuts. I’m not playing them any more.

Well, to min-bet is to invite people to draw out on you with good odds. I know I’ll call who ever min-bets down, if I have TPTK and unsure where I’m standing.

Thanks for pointing this out. I am pretty sure I made this post after I had read your original either/or article.

Also, I think the example you gave could actually be a useful tactic in weak-tight games.

I forgot to add that I personally appreciate the psychology articles. I feel this is the area of my game that needs the most attention at this point.

I was checking out Boss network for the first time, and I found out that the .25/.50 FL games (my game) were insanely tight, and there were not much tables open either. But then I found one table with a flop-% of 45 which is fine and sat in. I get pocket jacks on bb and do the standard raising thingy, flop a set and keep betting til the end, and my hand wins (I think there were 1-3 people with me on the flop and one continued til the end).
Nothing out of the line, except in the next hand there is furious raising pf and finally there are two players all-in. WTF?

It seemed that I had sat in a NL50 game, and the reason I didn’t notice it was that the $50 buy-in
was exactly the amount I had deposited on Boss, and also the standard amount I take to a FL table (100BB) – it was also 1/3 of my whole bankroll at the time. The minraisements may have seemed awkward to other players (still there were folders though). I don’t know what the caller had but it was luck I didn’t get outdrawn on the river and lose 1/3 of my bankroll (of course had I known better I might have got $50 more…)
I excused being a fixed limit fish who joined a wrong table and sit out.. that was and will be the last time I have ever played Unlimited Hold Them Donkey Poker Cash Game. Something to tell your grandchildren about.

Of course I sometimes play $1-$5 NL tournaments, and the min-raise is a deadly weapon there, people fold to a bet which may be something like 1/100 of the pot. It’s nice to call down a minraiser til the river, then hit your straight draw or whatever and finally he donks your whole stack to you. Usually the chat comments after this are along the lines of “FU fish how did you call when i kept betting????”. Who can’t beat these guys?

This advice is disgusting. It makes me want to puke. It may work one or two times, but if you play against anyone that is not hopeless, after a couple of times you will get raised off it frequently and you usually won’t be able to call with a decent but marginal hand like JK on K high board because you can’t call when they double barrell and you end up being out played and you would have put yourself in this whole mess.