I know nobody is reading this any longer and almost nobody who could have answered this question ever DID. Good thing I write this for me. Someday I may look back on this and know the answer, but I doubt it.
The question that has me puzzled is this. I am playing a lot of low buy in NL tournaments and cash games lately. Over and over I see people make mini-raises, raising the minimum. What do they hope to accomplish?
Do they think doubling the big blind will scare anybody out? Do they just want people to defer to the raiser, even if the raise was nothing?
I realize there are certain circumstances when it's handy to do. I'll do it with a good hand I want to get action on if my raises have been folding the table over and over. I'll do it with a hyper aggressive player behind me who will raise with a wide range of hands. If he raises me then I can slam in a big re-raise.
Mostly it seems like people just say "gee I have not raised a pot in 5 minutes, I don't have much so lets raise the minimum." You'd think they were afraid if they didn't use the raise button every so often it would wither and die on the.
Oh well this is, I suspect, one of life's little mysteries and probably due in large part to the fact that most of the people at these low buy in tables (myself included no doubt) are really not very good.
I'd love to hear thoughts on this though.
