The Subtle Art of Small Ball: The Small Ball Poker Strategy
Small ball poker has become a crazy popular style of tournament play. The curator, Dan Harrington is credited with coming up with the game of ball poker. It is one of the most intermediate style of poker. It gained it’s recognition over the decades that passed. It involves playing a greater range from the beginning and more hands aggressively. Here, you only use smaller bets and raises and save yourself from losing too much money. It is intended to primarily be used in cash games. It was made popular by the poker player, Daniel Negreanu.
Small ball poker has various characteristics:
Small ball strategy can sometimes leave an image of a maniacal plan of aggressive players, even if you are playing online poker. The aggression falls off dramatically on the latter half if they are losing. The advantage of small ball is that it focuses on lowering the risk of the maximum payout. It typically allows you to play a wide variety of starting hand.
What is the actual difference between small ball poker and long ball poker?
Small Ball Poker Long Ball Poker
Playing lots of hands on pre-flop Playing tight range on pre-flop
Smaller bet sizes Larger bet sizes
Giving up easily Giving up less
Meant for advanced players Meant for beginners
Easier style Unexploitable style
Steal a lot Avoid stealing
Long ball poker is a variant where you enter the game with a tight range and play aggressively. Whereas the opposite game plan focuses on playing small bets.
How does this variation really work?
It is considered as the most profitable type of poker variation. This is when you use the right circumstances and gain the right opening. It potentially requires more skills than long ball poker but also is more profitable than small ball poker when executed correctly. Small ball doesn’t really work well if you have a shorter stack. Small ball players are not absolutely crazy. However, they may give the appearance of being crazy due to their aggressive playing, oh wait, hyper aggressive playing.
Small ball poker has its own implied odds. After the first two betting rounds, it dramatically changes towards taking advantage of implied odds. After you make a strong hand, small ball players look out to bet aggressively for larger sizes and hoping to generate a payoff if they have lost. The initial investment is less, but the pot is bigger. Small ball players take advantage of these implied odds.
How do you play small ball poker anyway?
No no’s in small ball poker!
Problems that you theoretically face with small ball poker:
How is small ball poker effective?
There are a few tips I would like to share about small ball:
How to play small ball poker?
It is technically super exploitable, why exactly would it work well? Are there any tricks you should consider to make the most effective use of small ball strategy?
You are bound to think of such questions. Firstly, small ball tends to work in favor of players because it is based around the idea of risking a smaller amount of money in an attempt to win bigger returns. A lot of people enter the pot and inflate it. It works mostly as a result of implied odds like I already said.
Should you be worried about your opinion?
No – despite what you may feel, the average opponent is simply not going to pay you enough attention to start generating your counters. However, there are also rare cases where your opponent is actively trying to counter you with the best small ball capacity they have.
What are the pros of small ball?
Negatives of small ball poker!
Should you play small ball or not?
Now that you know a little more detail about the pros and the cons a small ball, the question is whether you would actively try to use small ball strategy in your own game?
Before you make a small ball mantra, make sure you know it is going to be useful to realize that players often mean different things when they talk about small ball poker strategy. It is an incredibly rare variant to work your poker strategies that are used by players. Rather than trying to accurately produce an approach from an official rule book, it would be better if you consider the topic and improve your mechanics of poker.
When NOT to use Small ball poker strategy?
Don’t bet big for no reason.
The elements of small ball poker:
Raising small amounts from any position on the table with marginal hands is an attempt to recreate a small ball style of poker strategy. Playing more aggressively helps you buy yourself a position. You use your position to your advantage. Not just by playing cards but by playing your position, you can win a pot. I believe that for amateur players time to play small ball will get themselves into tricky situations if they do not play wisely. You need a good hand to be able to play this game. As your game improves, you may be recognized as lose aggressive and will necessarily be a small ball star. Daniel maybe trained a little too hard to coin a super awesome new playing style that will take over the world of poker, but at the end of the day it’s just a weak variation for amateurs to try. Head to Spartan Poker to play online poker. Play more real money poker games and get access to our VIP Club.