How To Play Small Ball Poker

Avoid Complicated Spots. When playing for nickels and dimes online at the micro stakes, it’s not the. We then see her change out of the robe, first giving us a small blurry reflection of her butt in a smaller mirror on the wall, and then offering a clear view of her right breast from the side as she pulls a shirt on over her head.

A common discussion amongst poker players today is about what approach to take or style to adapt while playing. Should you take a small ball or long ball approach? Most often, these discussions are in regards to tournaments.

However, many of the same concepts, pros and cons will apply to heads up poker as well. That's what the focus of this article will be about. Before I get to that, let's quickly cover exactly what each style entails:

What is Small Ball Poker?

The name 'small ball' primarily stems from the concept of avoiding confrontations where your whole stack or tournament life is at risk. Rather, players look to play many hands by either limping or min raising preflop and picking up the pots on the flop with small bets. Small ball players grind out their stacks slowly and steadily, but do so without having to be constantly at risk. This whole strategy relies on a player's ability to play postflop.

What is Long Ball Poker?

The long ball approach to poker is quite the opposite. Instead of seeing a ton of flops for cheap, long ball players wait for big hands and make big bets. Long ball poker players build their stacks one opponent's stack at a time, often putting their whole stack or tournament at risk. The long ball approach relies on a player's lack of ability to play postflop while at the same time attempting to counter the small ball player's strategy.

Small Ball Poker: Pros & Cons

Here are some pros and cons to adapting to a small ball style.

Pros of Small Ball Poker:

• When you risk less, you lose less. If you limp or min-raise on the button in a heads up match, you'll lose less money when you're 3betted and have to fold as opposed to fully 3x'ing it. You also keep the pot much smaller which allows you to make smaller c-bets and become less pot committed.
• Put constant pressure on your opponents. Since your post flop skills need to be solid in order to play a small ball style of poker, you'll be able to put constant pressure on your opponents. Their ranges will be a little bit easier to read whereas yours will be much more difficult to pinpoint since you're so active. This in turn makes you difficult to play against.
• You see less variance. When you're not putting your stack or tournament at risk as often, you cut out a lot of variance that someone doing that might. Less variance means a more stable bankroll and/or income. It'll also keep you sane.

Cons of Small Ball Poker:

• Lots of post flop play. If you're new to poker or just haven't developed your post flop play, you're going to have a difficult time utilizing the small ball style. You're going to be involved in many flops which means facing many decisions that aren't clear cut with marginal hands.
• You will have an active image. This is both a pro and a con. The good aspect to having an active image means that you'll be called down lighter by players who don't think you have a decent hands. This means they'll try to value bet you thinly.

Long Ball Poker: Pros & Cons

Ok, let's look at some pros and cons for utilizing the long ball approach.

Pros of Long Ball Poker:

• You're more difficult to exploit. If you're making big raises or all-in shoves, it's much harder for other players to exploit you. They either have to call off a big portion of their stack or all of it. And most times a player's hand isn't good enough for them to risk their tournament life or stack over.
• It's not as much of a grind. Using a big bet or all-in approach isn't nearly as much of a grind as the small ball style is. The pots you're picking up are much bigger and build your stack up much faster.
• Your decisions are easier. I'm not saying every decision you make using the long ball style is easier, but am saying that since you play fewer hands, the hands you do play are stronger therefore being easier to play than maybe suited connectors or hands that are easily dominated (which you very likely will play using the small ball style).

Cons of Long Ball Poker:

• You'll experience more variance. By playing for stacks or by playing hands using bigger bet sizing, you're going to subject yourself to more variance. After all, the more you risk the more you stand to lose. Keep in mind though that the variance will work both ways - you'll lose a lot when you're losing and when a lot when you're winning. But it's definitely swingy.
• Playing a long ball style caps your growth. The more you play a long ball style of poker, the longer you're going to go without learning how to play post flop. All this does for you is stunt your growth as a player. The sooner you step out of your comfort zone and start to play some small ball poker, the quicker you'll grow to be comfortable with it. Your skills as a player will quickly increase as well.

Which Style to Use in Heads Up Play?

I really don't think there is a right or wrong answer as to which style is best for heads up play. In terms of sit and go's or MTTs, I use the small ball approach myself. I do a lot of min-raising, stealing and tend to play a lot of hands. As a result, I have earned more, lessened my variance, and have learned a ton from forcing myself to play post flop.

With heads up play though, it's hard to say what approach exactly I take. I don't do any min-raising or limping, I do fully 3x it (in HU cash games at least). And I do play quite a few hands. So, it's almost like I play a mixed style, although with my bet sizing it probably leans towards a more long ball style.

If I had to suggest something, I would say to try both styles out and see which suits you best. From the little experience I have, I have a difficult time seeing how adapting one style over another is going to make such an impact on your overall heads up game. Aside from the variance due to the bet sizing, both styles seem to be very similar. I think you need to try each one, see if there is a difference and then decide which one you like best.

Daniel Negreanu is widely considered to be one of the best poker players in the world, and his winnings in tournaments easily justify this image.

While poker has changed greatly during his career, back in the early 2000s, Daniel coined the phrase small ball poker.

Daniel won millions of dollars in No-Limit Hold’em tournaments in Vegas and beyond using the small ball poker strategy.

But what exactly is the small ball poker strategy?

I decided to delve deep into the topic and bring you a short guide to playing just like Daniel Negreanu.

Of course, you will need some practice to get there, but you should beat the low stakes using it pretty fast.

Let us start by defining the small ball poker strategy as such and learning the basic principles behind it.

How To Play Small Ball Poker

Poker is an extremely complex game with many variables. As such, there are many different approaches a player can take, and the optimal approach can depend on numerous factors.

Some of the factors to consider when deciding on a tournament strategy include the stack depth, field quality, blind levels duration, and more.

All of these factors will determine what the best way to play could be.

Of course, you could always just try to play close to GTO and make a profit regardless of all other things, but I will leave that to the math wizards.

Instead, the small ball poker strategy offers a relatively simple and profitable way to play Texas Holdem.

This strategy works well in almost any field but will do miracles in a weak lineup of amateur and novice poker players.

Unlike a nitty poker strategy that includes only playing premium hands, a small ball strategy involves playing various holdings.

However, unlike the ultra-aggressive players, a small baller tends to play more passively and looks to play in position as much as possible.

By playing many speculative hands, such as small pairs and suited connectors in position, you try to win massive pots while risking very little in the early betting rounds.

The idea of low risk and high profit is essential in the small ball approach to the game.

With a solid understanding of small ball poker, you can crush weak tournament fields, which basically means most poker tournaments in the world.

Hand Selection in Small Ball Poker

Small ball poker involves playing many different hands but with very specific selection criteria. The hands that dominate a player playing this strategy involve suited cards and pocket pairs.

A small ball specialist will always rather get in the mix with a hand like 75 suited than a hand like AT offsuit.

The reason being that 75 suited will often hit straights and flushes while AT will usually only hit one pair.

A small ball’s premise is to try and make big poker hands like a flush, straight or full house while risking only a small portion of your stack.

Once you make your hand, you start making the big bets.

A hand like a pocket pair is ideal for a small baller, as it allows him to make a set and potentially a full house or quads as well. If he can see a flop for only a couple of big blinds, this is ideal.

Of course, this does not mean a small ball player will not still want to see premium hands like AA, KK, or AK suited. However, he will still play some premium hands in a more conservative way than an aggressive player.

Bet Sizing in Small Ball Poker

Bet sizing is the foundation of success in poker. Whether you are bluffing or betting for value, you should understand that your bets always need to have a specific goal or multiple goals in mind.

In the small ball poker strategy, you are trying to make big hands while paying as little as possible.

This is why you will often just call before the flop first in or make a very small raise. If a raise is made, you will just call the raise with your speculative hand.

In addition to that, a small ball player will often fold his cards if a player decides to make a large raise in front of him. Remember, we are trying to make our hands cheaply, not pay through the nose to get there.

In poker tournaments where stacks are deep, there is a lot of value in paying a small 2 or 3 big blind raise to try and win 100 big blinds or more after the flop.

Even a small baller will still want to re-raise with some hands, namely premiums such as pocket aces or kings.

With these hands, you will be looking to make relatively big raises and try to commit your opponents to the pot.

This may seem like a poor approach to some of the more advanced players, but the reality is that most players in tournaments aren’t really paying too much attention.

Having bluffs in your 3-betting range may be necessary at the highest level, but playing a balanced poker strategy actually loses money in many lower to mid-stakes tournaments.

The position is King with Small Ball Approach

The position is generally a very important concept in poker, regardless of the strategy you are taking.

Whether you are a passive, aggressive, or GTO kind of player, you will always prefer to play on the button then on the small blind. This is one of the best poker tips that you should always follow.

Being “in position” means being last to act in post-flop rounds.

Being seated on the button ensures that you will always act last, but positions to the right of the button are also very good.

In small ball poker, you want to try and play as many hands on the button, cutoff, and hijack as possible.

If you are dealt 63 suited on the button, you may want to play it, but the same hand in the blinds should be a fold.

Playing in position as opposed to out of position is your ultimate goal in small ball poker. In fact, barring the really strong hands, you should not get involved when out of position at all.

A hand like AJ offsuit may as well be folded in the small blind to an early position raise, considering the negative implied odds of flopping an Ace against a hand with a better kicker such as AQ or AK.

Daniel Negreanu: The Small Ball Poker King

As such, small ball poker would probably not have become a big thing it had not been for Daniel Negreanu, one of the best tournament players of all time.

Over the years, Daniel won WSOP bracelets, EPT titles, and countless other tournaments, cementing his place in poker history.

Back in the day, he used to swear by small ball poker, which he tried to teach to many aspiring pros. You can see more about Daniel’s approach to small ball in this short video series:

Since then, poker has changed in many ways, and students of the game have used poker trackers and solvers to turn it into proper science.

How To Play Small Ball Poker Tournament

Today, small ball poker is mostly considered to be an outdated strategy, and this video explains just the ways in which small ball poker differs from the modern GTO approach to the game:

All that said, let us keep exploring the strategy and what it actually brings to the table, even in this day and age.

Advantages of Small Ball Poker: When to Use It

Now that I have explained what small ball poker is, you should have a pretty good idea of how it works and the main ideas.

The question that must be asked now is when do I actually use a small ball poker strategy? Is this an approach that will work against any type of opponent?

The truth is that the only poker strategy that works in a bubble, regardless of who you are playing, is GTO.

However, learning to play GTO is extremely difficult.

What’s even more, a GTO approach can actually be missing out on money in some situations by not exploiting the players’ weaknesses and tendencies enough.

In a tough lineup where players are balancing their ranges, it would be difficult to gain an edge by playing a small ball approach. It would simply be too weak, and players would also catch on to what you are doing.

That said, most tournament poker fields are far from being tough.

In fact, only a small percentage of players in any poker tournament, especially in online poker rooms, will be serious players.

Playing small ball poker against a random opponent who is playing fairly straight up can be amazing.

If you think about it, most players will almost never fold AA, so if you can make a big hand against it cheap, you will be winning a huge pot.

It may sound like I am oversimplifying things a bit, and maybe I am, but the fact is that most poker players at lower stakes don’t play very good poker.

This is why risking your entire stack with a draw, or top pair can be silly at times since much better spots will arise if you wait patiently.

Small ball poker works as long as the stacks are reasonably deep, so no one is pot committed, and the players you are playing against are not world-class players or online tournament regulars.

Small Ball Weaknesses: When It Fails

A small ball strategy is a great approach to tournament poker, especially in the early phases. The stacks are 100 or more big blinds deep, and there are many weak players left in the field.

As the field shrinks and fewer players remain in contention, better players tend to survive, while the worst fall off.

What’s even more, the blinds go up, and the stacks get progressively shorter. By the time the endgame starts, most tournaments’ average stack gets closer to 30 big blinds.

Today’s understanding of poker tells us that you can’t play small ball profitably with short stacks.

For this reason, successful tournament players must also learn when to step up the aggression and take some risks.

We played passively and patiently with some hands during the early levels, but now that the tournament is getting close to the end, there is more value in re-raising and pushing people off their hands.

Most people will start getting timid about getting their stacks in, and they are used to us playing small ball. It is now time to use our image and their unwillingness to bust against them.

Best Poker Games To Play

Of course, there are some tournaments in which small ball will not work at all.

If many great players are at the table and there is a lot of three and four betting going on, you will have to adapt.

You will need to play close to GTO or find new ways to exploit your opponents through aggression in fields like this. Playing small ball in high stakes tournaments will probably not work too often.

Top Class Players and Small Ball Poker Today

Small ball poker was invented and perfected by Daniel Negreanu and even displayed in poker movies. Many top tournament players applied a similar approach throughout the years and had great success.

Poker has since evolved, and most professionals have turned towards the GTO approach, trying to solve the game at a mathematical level.

Learning how to balance hand ranges and betting frequencies has become all the rage, but a good small ball poker strategy will still make you a winner in most poker tournaments, guaranteed.

The truth is that not too many professional players use the small ball as their main approach to the game. Poker today is more aggressive, and this may be another reason to revisit small ball approach.

In a sea of players trying to win pots without showdowns and making big overbets, playing small ball can prove to be quite useful.

After all, now you get to stack not only players with big hands but also those who are trying to bluff you off your hand.

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Unless they are playing their approach to poker almost perfectly, your small ball poker strategy may just prove to be a great way to counter players’ aggression and high VPIP stats. In the end, you might end up winning big.