1bb is generally a sub-optimal size in many configurations, but that doesn’t mean everyone who uses 1bb as a standard bet size is weak.
I am having a heck of a time adjusting my ranges against this sizing, however!
Players who are balanced with 1bb sizing present a weird scenario where we are ALWAYS getting odds to call, but often (or often enough) way behind/drawing dead.
Surely this doesn’t mean we should simply never fold?
I have no idea how to respond!
Facing a player like this in an MTT right now. He covers me.
First hand I value bet 2nd pair after he checked back twice, he calls and wins with KK.
Second hand I don’t raise the AJK flop when he leads 1bb into my weak backdoor flush ace. He continues for 1bb on turn and river and I call down; he wins with K9 for turned 2pair.
In the second hand, we would benefit from raising. In the first hand, if we raised we could donk off a lot more chips.
I have no way of telling the difference between these scenarios as villain always uses the same size: 1bb.
Really confused how to construct my ranges and actions in response to this strategy 
Howdy my friend, I am not one to tell a Replay Pro like you of how to construct your ranges and actions for this strategy. However, to me sounds like you have a conservative player with premium hands in both hands & I think yes we fold if we need to learn the player, before going for the win. Ex:) in business it takes money to make money, here thankfully it sometimes, takes chips to win chips:)
I think that’s exactly what it means. If they’re giving you direct odds to call with most of your range, they’re exploiting themselves. The 1bb bet is really just an expensive way to check.
Sounds like you saved money here. They could have likely got two streets of value by betting.
Again, you’re probably saving money here too, or at least not losing any more than if the hand plays out in a more standard way. You’re probably betting the turn or river, and they’re always calling, and that bet is likely to be close to 3bb.
You don’t really need to do anything special against these players. You just need to realize that most of your gains are in losing less than you would have if they’d bet larger. Losing the minimum never feels the same as getting thin value, but there’s value in both.
Younguru, what I have noticed, when players minbet, its the following things.
It’s either semi polarized to either a good to great hand. Top pair eweak kicker to semi slowplaying 2 pair, trips, set, etc. Or it’s bottom to midd;le pair, weak kickers. Or its a draw.
Also what it may be also depends on their stack sizes, how tight, passive or aggressive they play, and by observing them. If they are a tight, passive, shorty stack, then they are more likely weighted to a good hand, good combo draw, or good hand + good draw, when if they min bet. If they are more semi moderate to semi loose, semi bigger stack, semi aggressive, all combined together, then their min bets are likely a draw, or testing, probing against tighter, passive, semi aggressive players. If players call minbet, then they put opponents on draws, bottom pair, and bet bigger on turns, rivers. If get minbet reraised semi big then either they fold or call.
If minbettor is midstacked size, and semi tight, semi passive, semi aggressive, then they min bet bottom to middle pair, draws, top pair weak kickers, etc, because they are semi very careful, and as Lihiue said they are just doing a expensive check. A semi good move against those players, can be to call their minbet, then next street check reraise their min bet semi moderate to semi big, 3/5 to 2/3 to 3/4 to 4/5 pot to pot to 1.15 x pot to 1.25 x pot to 1.35 x pot, depending on how drawy board is, depending on players, stack sizes, tables, situational nuances.
Observation over time is a key, combined with all of the above mentioned things. If a player seems like falls into the above mentioned things, and if suspect player, an or see, observe player doing something that confirms suspicion, then I test it. If I think a player is semi probably min betting bottom pair, middle pair, draw, or with nothing to test whether get min bet called, so that can maybe semi probably bet bigger on next street, the, I reraise between 3/5 pot, 2/3 pot, 3/4 pot, 4/5 pot, 5/6 pot, pot, depending on pot size, stack sizes, blinds, etc, to test to see what they do. If they have something they call. I have a good something they reraise semi big. If they fold I get the pot and they probably had bottom pair, draw, nothing, etc.
Following these things usually semi tells me what players min bets are, hand ranges that likely are, etc.
Its a little tiny bit harder to handrange min bettors, but usually it can be done.
yeah this is my problem
surely what @lihiue says is true and we can’t be exploited by simply calling down 100% of our range (or whatever part of our range we deem playable given the board) against such lucrative pot odds
but I am greedy! I don’t just want to not be exploited; I want to exploit them!
so there is a difficulty in knowing when I can profitably apply pressure, given that a 1bb lead WILL often represent a vulnerable/non-nutted holding, but also given that Villain still has all his strongest holdings in range
well, the strongest holdings are still only a fraction of the range, even if Villain is tight, so I can probably do naughty/silly stuff like minbet c/r OOP and bomb scary turns that don’t favor what I perceive his range to be
hmm… will try some things and report back here later!
In short, I believe always calling can’t be bad but perhaps some exploit bluff raises will be even more profitable! A lot of these guys ARE fundamentally nitty in terms of their approach to using/responding to aggression, so finding the right bluffs can be very rewarding 
there’s gotta be some nasty “capped range” bluff lines we can take here on certain runouts if we assume Villain is reasonably tight, especially in 3bet pots, right?
and in those cases another exploit Villain is exposing themselves to is the fact that the SPR will remain relatively high on turns/rivers which means we can leverage some pretty hefty sizings relative to the pot
like one thing I know I enjoy sometimes about using bigger flop sizing with my TPTK/overpair type holdings is that it’s harder to bluff me off my equity later as there is less behind to play for
Very small bets are quite common on the flop, or in some other spots where you have a range advantage and wish use a construction where you bet with a large fraction of your range. It is also common to size down when facing a large number of opponents, as the risk that someone has connected strongly with the board goes up with every active player.
If the pot is already heads up (and even if not to a lesser extent), smaller bets do generally mean that you should call with a larger fraction of your range, but there should still be some hands that will not have the equity needed to continue (and some hands with no equity at all that should continue with a raise). Where life gets tricky is that against a reasonable player, a small bet on the flop will often be followed by a larger bet on the turn or river.
That said, especially in the past (and in tournaments here), I see a large number of players that use this as a range bet with almost 100% of their range, on almost every board, against any number of opponents. In an environment where almost everyone is over folding to bets of small sizes, this will actually be pretty effective, but against players that realize that smaller bets demand that they defend with a greater portion of their range, this doesn’t work out so well. In general, smaller bets (more true on the river because of the lack of leverage) can’t support bluffs as often (precisely because opponents are forced to call so wide).
Another thing that can do, if players do what Yorunoame talk about, where they min bet 100% of their range, on every board, on every hand, flop, turn, river, against any number of opponents, and if that makes them harder to read, and if that gets you beat, etc: Then try to play hands that have good playability postflop, that make good draws, against them, and try to have draws against them, because they will give you cheap cards to complete your draw, and bloat up the pot for when your draw completes, and then when they lose to your straights, flushes, made draws, they will gradually, eventually get tired of losing pots to straights, flushes, etc, and will start to raise bigger, to where they then become readable because they wont bet big on their whole range, like they do with min bets.
So if do a mix of calling min bets to make 2 pairs, trips, and occasionally reraising them 3/5 pot+, and calling min bets with draws, and folding no equity hands, etc, then gradually, eventually, you will start to exploit them, cause them to bet bigger, etc.
It maybe be harder to read those players, but those players can be exploited, etc.
I love calling minbettors with bottom pairs, mid pairs, crappy kickers, draws, and then making 2 pair, trips, sets, straights, flushes on them.
Its like they are begging to get beat, exploited by hands that become 2 pair, trips, sets, straights, flushes.
So its win win either way. Exploit them with a hand that becomes a monster later, thanks to their min betting, or cause them to learn the hard way and start betting bigger, and be able to read them.
I agree, playing more hands (especially IP) that have good post-flop attributes seems like a good strategy against this player type
The more I think about this, the more I begin to develop the thesis that players acquire this 1bb range bet strategy as an unconscious way to compensate for not having bluffs
now they can “balance” their range (read: they almost always bet 1bb as the PFR, and whether they have a draw, middle pair, or the nuts, if they bet the size is 1bb) with sizing rather than with frequency/hand type as they’re “supposed” to do
Agree, they want to stay in the game with a chance for the win 
Another thing to remember is that hands miss the flop about 67% of time, over the long term on average. That means if min bettors are min betting 100% of time, either as preflop raiser, or caller, that 67% of time they have NOTHING over the long term on average.
That means that you can call or reraise their 67% of time nothing with draws, A high, bottom pairs, mid pairs, crap kickers, etc, and most of time they will either have their 67% of time NOTHING, or bottom pair, etc, and fold, as long as you have a semi good image, dont do that a lot, too much, all the time.
A couple, few, sometimes, you will lose, etc, but most of time you will win, exploit them.
Just so many ways to exploit min bettors, So while sometimes they can be hard to read and play against, etc, at times, over the long term you can exploit min bettors through the different ways of either reading them, or making monster hands against them thanks to their min betting, or reraise semi bluffing them, etc.
I love this idea. I’m sure different people that min bet at unusually high frequencies do so for different reasons, but among that pool of people I’d guess those that think about their game a little more might be a bit more prone to have a reason like this.
In an environment where many players radically over bluff, and where call stations also make up a good part of the player pool, many of us gradually discover the easy road: we tighten up our game and print chips with good hands.
Then, as our bank roll increases, we climb rank, and all of a sudden people aren’t calling our bets as often, and perhaps also we are now over valuing hands that used to count as value against opponents at lower stakes. Perhaps we notice the latter problem and tighten up our play even more, and what happens… our value bets get called even less.
Obviously, the solution is to bluff more, but how do we get the balance right so that we don’t lose more with our bluffs than we now win by getting called more with our raises? An overly simplistic solution is to make a huge number of small bets that will be mostly bluffs, and make a mix of both small and large value bets. In an environment were people over fold to our small bets, this will work, but against people that start to realize how weak your range is on a small bet, the poker weather is likely to turn worse.
Perhaps the thinking goes something like this… If I make a pot sized bet of say 10 chips, then when I win I get 20 chips (the pot plus the opponent’s call), while when I lose I lose 10 chips. So if I have the better hand 1 out of 3 times I will break even. So sounds like with a pot sized bet I can bluff twice as often as I make a value bet? (Poker Hazard Warning: this is not the ideal bluff ratio for a pot sized bet). If I bet 1 chip into the same pot, with the better hand I win 11 chips and when I’m behind I only lose 1 chip, so I could bluff 10 times and get away with value betting only once!
All of this actually works if our opponents don’t adjust their calling frequency based on the size of the bet they face. This is probably the wrong thread to get into minimum defense frequency, or how in a Nash Equilibrium you actually you need to couple more bluffs with large bets and cannot bluff as frequently with smaller bet sizes (especially true with an all in bet or a bet on the river). But stated way too simply: if we want thinking, observant people to call our large bets more frequently, we also need to make bluffs with large bets, and if you have too many bluffs, there will be a calling frequency that will result in your losing chips when you to this.
For most players that’s probably true, for the thinking players I think it’s a bit more complicated.
The 1bb raise is never going generate many folds, even the worst players are calling down fairly close with almost everything. I believe the exploit from the villains’ side is that people won’t raise enough, and won’t have any low equity raises at all. It’s a way of defining the opponents range for little cost, protected by also min betting very strong hands.
You can never have enough strong hands to make that work in theory, but if people aren’t raising enough, then it doesn’t matter.
i.e. It’s not necessarily because villain has too few bluffs, it’s because they expect you to have too few bluff raises. I actually think that’s a pretty fair assumption against most players.
You make some great points, that I can relate to. The problem I am having now, is that my bluffs are taking down smaller pots, and my value hands are either getting uncalled, or called, take down smaller pots, so that my stack grows slower, smaller, doesnt seem to grow big enough to where I am shoving 12.5 bb stacks, in right spots, even tho I am bluffing in good spots, at semi the semi right semi frequencies, even tho playing solid good semi tight to semi moderate to semi careful semi aggressive, later position is everything poker, semi balanced, semi hard to read, semi dangerous player, etc.
Its like good players recognize that in tournaments and avoid me, etc, and makes it harder to grow my stack, etc. At least in the Nordic Warriors, Dream Weaver Tournaments, and the 100k, 150k, 250k tournament buy ins.
“a way of defining opponents range for little cost”
yeah that part. i’ve experimented with 1bb leads myself, just to see what all the fuss is about—one benefit i’ve noticed and enjoyed is all the capped ranges that arrive at the river. if villain calls 1bb on flop and turn you can blast off all sorts of rivers and they mostly “can’t” call very often 
i am happy to report that so far most of my opponents who use 1bb as a default size don’t seem to use that particular exploit very much either 