There are a few situations where I've been liking a mini-raise to a pot-sized bet. So, I thought I'd enumerate:

First, on paired boards. Here a hand I remember was a KJJ board where I had JJ, and I was positive my opponent had KK. But I think the mini-raise might work on a lot of hands on paired boards. The basic idea here is to give your opponent another chance to act, hence it allows you to get away cheap on some hands that are no good and stack them when you're ahead.

I guess, really, if you're going to make this play, you almost need to do it on any hand with which you want to continue on paired boards--underfulls, trips with an A, etc.

Thoughts? I'm not sure about the pros and cons on this one.

Boards with multiple straights where you have better than bottom straight (which I think is a laydown to a bet). On this, you do need to watch the overall situation because you don't want the mini-raise to allow flush draws or sets to continue.

Flushes. I can't recall having tried this play at all on a flush, but I don't see why it shouldn't work there with a medium-strength to nut flush if the pot is such that your opponent might have a smaller flush--for example, checked around on the flop, and you hit a J-high with someone betting into you. The pot is often too large for the mini-bet to be worth trying if the pot has been contested and you hit later in the hand. There's certainly little point in it if the mini-raise amounts to an all-in.