Small Ball Poker
January 27th, 2010Poker commentators sometimes refer to a style of playing called “small ball” online poker - a reference to the American game of baseball. What is small-ball online poker and how can you incorporate it into your game strategies?
Small-ball tactics are best pursued by seasoned players with good hand reading skills. With small-ball poker, a player attempts to stay in contention for the pot with a speculative hand by keeping the pot small and minimizing the risk of losing lots of chips on one hand. This type of play also decreases the variance in chip swings that typically happen in No Limit formats.
Playing the small-ball strategy works best from late position. The first tactic in small-ball poker is obvious - try to see the flop as cheaply as possible. However, if you are playing a speculative hand that might warrant a raise from late position, like two suited faces, make the raise somewhat smaller than the standard 3x the big blind. In small-ball poker, you want to keep the pot smaller, so that if any raise comes out later, it will be proportional to a small pot.
Managing pot size is also dependent on the board texture. If it is shaping up with lots of drawing potential, then your opponents will probably want to keep the betting minimal too. In this case, your raise should be big enough to scare some off without putting a big percent of your chip stack at risk.
Playing small-ball means you’ll occasionally lose some hands on the river. By keeping the betting action low, there is always the risk of giving an opponent the opportunity to suck-out. With small-ball poker, you goal is to deliberately manage the pot size and wait to see if you make a monster hand while minimizing chip loss if you don’t.