How To Play Small Ball Poker

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How To Play Small Ball Poker Tournaments
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How To Play Small Ball Poker

The world’s most successful tournament competitors, like me, Phil Ivey, Erick Lindgren, Phil Hellmuth and countless others, like to play small ball poker.

Small Ball Poker Strategy – When Not To Use Small-Ball Betting Key to the advantage of keeping the betting smaller is that you can let your skill and experience count over several betting rounds. You can build your assessment of your opponents most likely holding – and decide whether you are ahead. Some poker game types will use the common hand ranking in different ways, such as making the lowest value hand the most desirable (low-ball poker). Learn the order of strength of poker hands on.

It’s a style that we use to steadily increase our stacks in no limit hold’em tournaments without having to assume significant risk.

The first thing you’ll notice when you watch a player who uses the small ball approach is that he appears to be in total control of the table, yet at the same time, seems to be playing with reckless abandon. It also might appear as if he’s giving little thought to the strength of his own starting hand.

Indeed, that is the case.

That’s because the theory of small ball poker dictates that you need to focus more on what your opponent doesn’t have rather than the strength of your own hand.

That being said, let’s take a look at some basic starting hand guidelines that should be considered before entering a pot.

Obviously, you’ll want to play big pairs like aces, kings, queens or jacks from any position. Also note that pocket aces and kings are good enough to play for all of your chips.

That’s not necessarily the case with pocket queens or jacks, though. Play these hands a bit more cautiously before the flop. Don’t feel compelled to reraise with these hands, either, especially against a player who already raised from early position.

How to play small ball poker tournaments

Playing middle pairs like 10-10, 9-9, 8-8, and 7-7 can be difficult but only if you overvalue them and mistakenly play them as you would premium hands.

If you are the first to enter the pot with any of these hands, make a standard small ball raise – that is, bet slightly less in hopes of winning a lot more. Your goal with middle pairs is to win a big pot by flopping a set. Use caution, though, if you miss on the flop. In that case, be prepared to muck your middle pair if the action gets too hot and heavy.

Treat small pairs much the same way as middle pairs. Some players like to reraise with these hands before the flop because it suits their style. That, however, is not what small ball players do.

Now, A-K and A-Q might be sights for sore eyes in low buy-in, fast-paced tournaments but not in big money, deep-stack events.

While Big Slick is clearly more powerful than A-Q, trust me, you still don’t want to get all your money in pre-flop with this hand. More often than not, you’ll be on the wrong end of a coin toss. You can certainly raise pre-flop with A-K but it’s just not the type of hand that plays very well after the flop.

Suppose the flop comes A-9-6 and you bet your A-K. Frankly, you don’t want even one caller! Any player who tosses in chips could easily have A-9, A-6, 9-9 or 6-6, and you’d be dead on arrival. Unsuited A-K is simply a hand that will win small pots but is generally a dog if there is any significant action.

A-Q is much worse in every way possible. Not only are you almost certainly beat if you decide to play a big pot before the flop, there’s even more to worry about if you do get to see the flop. You’ll have the same worries you’d have with A-K except, in this case, you’ll have to worry about an opponent’s A-K too!

Stay tuned as I’ll cover additional small ball starting hands in upcoming columns including aces and paint, ace-rag suited, king-rag and queen-rag suited, suited connectors and trash hands.

Visit shop.cardsharkmedia.com for more information about Daniel Negreanu’s newest book, Power Hold’em Strategy, from Cardoza Publishing.

If you’re playing small ball poker, you’ll be entering a lot of pots, and in most of them, you’ll be coming in for a 2 ½ times the big blind raise.

Now, there will be situations where you’ll get reraised, either by a premium hand or by another player who just gets fed up with the fact that you won’t stop raising his blind.

As a general rule, when you get reraised, it’s best to dump your hand right there. But there are times when it is entirely appropriate to stick around to see the flop.

You must consider the strength of your own hand. Obviously, if you have a premium hand like pocket aces or kings, not only would you want to play against a reraise, you’ll usually want to reraise before the flop.

It also makes sense to stick around in the face of a minimum reraise.

Suppose the blinds are 100/200, you make it 500 to go, and an opponent reraises to 800. There is simply no circumstance where it would be correct to fold in this situation – even if you were certain that your opponent had pocket aces! Call the minimum reraise and try to outflop him.

Some players refer to the minimum raise as the nuisance raise. The truth is it accomplishes very little except to add a little more money to the pot. It’s extremely rare to see the initial raiser fold for the minimum reraise before the flop.

You can also stick around to see the flop if you have position.

Position is power. So, if the reraiser has position on you, use discretion when deciding to call his reraise unless you have a very strong hand. However, if the player who reraised is out of position, your marginal hand can suddenly become worthy of a call.

Let’s say you are on a semi-steal with 8h-10h. With the blinds at 100/200, you raise to 500. If the big blind raises another 1,000, there’s a decent opportunity to see the flop because you have position. Reverse the positions, however, and it’s difficult to justify calling his raise.

Aside from hand strength, stack size is the most important factor to consider when deciding to play against a reraise. Remember that a bust’em hand like 7h-8h plays much better against a reraise in deep-stack poker than it does when stacks are smaller.

Okay, say it’s early in a tournament. You raise to 150 on the button with 7h-8h, leaving you with 9,850 in chips. The small blind then reraises to a total of 500.

Not only do you have position, you also have the type of hand that could hit a home run if you get lucky on the flop. Go ahead and call with this hand, hoping to win the pot by hitting the flop or bluffing your opponent by using board cards that may scare him away.