K, I took Deme's advice and now mix up my shortstacking and deepstacking. I usually play 30-50 hands short and get an idea about the table and the players then usually top up to the max buy-in and play deep. So far it is working good.

Now that you have some reads you can play the players. One of the most common mistakes I have noticed is players min-reraising when they have AA or KK, deeped stacked this is awful since you get no implied odds on a safe flop and the better opponents will pick up on it.

Example:

This afternoon playing .5/1 NL on Betfred, 10 player game

Hero is on the CO andhad 300$ in chips (doubled up off a few idiots already )
The button had about 80$
The BB had 65$

Hero is dealt

Folded to hero who decides to raise to 4$ total, button calls, BB raises to 7$ total (min raise), hero and button call.

Flop (21.50$ pot)



BB bets out 20$, Hero raises it to 60 total, button folds, BB calls and goes all in.

Turn and river were blanks

BB berates the hero for being a fish, hero explains he is new to poker and explains how he has a hard time folding suited cards.

Anyway I was just pointing out how stupid min-reraises are with big hands, I got lucky hitting the flop but I had major implied outs for hitting my flush, straight, trips or 2-pair. If you are going to raise-RAISE.

standard stacking there, good advice, nh

I'll use the min. re-raise very sparcely only isolate and trap and that requires me acting immediately after a well-sized 4-6bb raise to induce all-in. The guy's gotta be a real fish for me to do it, too. Like I said, very sparcely. Even when I get this situation, I'll do it 1 in 4 times with AA or KK of these rare situations. Maybe 3 in 4 in 6max.

The only I've ever used the min. raise is to induce a right here-right now all in. But it's dangerous, which is why it sickens me to see it. Call it arrogance, but I trust my instincts and if I feel that it's the right spot, I'll do it with a huge hand on the flop/turn/river. Not menaing one pair. I don't give a fuck how big and hidden the pair. Once you've seen 5 cards, one pair of Aces isn't huge.

__________________

yeah perhaps ill use the min raise to bleed somones stack into the pot on the turn or so with the absolute nuts, but never with a vunerable hands like 2 pair or AA pf

the only time i will use a min raise is if its heads up or 3 way in a PF raised pot and i just flopped a set on the PF raiser, who has bet the ps into me.

How can you not love the players that can't wait to get stacked with monster pairs.

Min-raising pre-flop must be on of the worst moves in cash games, especially out of position.