Small-ball Poker

Basically small ball poker is where you make small preflop raises in an attempt to control the pot size when you have 20-25M or higher. This sounds simple enough but there is really a lot more to it than that. Small ball in combination with LAG(loose aggressive) is very well suited for MTTs. Lets look at an example situation.

Say the blinds are 100/200 and 25 ante and you have about 30M or 15k chips. I will cover two situations - small ball and a more traditional approach.

Small-ball:

Say you are in a later position and raise 2.5x bb or 500. You are more likely to see a lot more callers and possible more reraises than say 4-5x bb would. In this situation there are 525(9 seats) in the pot before your raise. You raise to 500 and, to make it easier, say you have one caller(bb) and now have a pot of about 1325. Say again that the BB checks to you. I would then make a standard continuation bet of about 40% - 75% of the pot or about 700. You have now risked 1200 for a 1325 pot. Most of the time that cbet would take the pot and if not you have risked about 8% of your stack.

Traditional:

I will use the same situation as above except you raise 5xbb this time or 1k and have one caller. Now the pot is 2350 and you make another standard cbet of about 1300 or so. You have now risked 2300 for a 2350 pot(before your cbet) or about 15% of your stack. It should also be worth noting that for someone to call your 5xbb bet they should have a pretty good hand but for them to call 2.5x bb they could have just about anything.


That was a simple example but it should have shown that with a small-ball approach you can afford to raise twice as often and risk about the same amount of your chips as one traditional raise would.

There is a lot more to small ball than just making small preflop raises. Small ball should be used in combination with a LAG type playing style. Meaning you should raise 2.5x to 3xbb often from later positions almost regardless of the cards you have and then make continuation bets on the flop. Do this with monster hands and with your less than good hands. Don't really vary the bet sizes or the way you play. The majority of the time you will take these pots down without much trouble. You will also build a table image of a loose and reckless player. This table image is very important because it will allow you to get paid off when you do have a good hand or hit a monster flop.

A TAG player that only plays 15% or so of the hands they are dealt doesn't see half of the action that a LAG/small ball player does. There are several reasons for this. The biggest reason is that they are only playing *good* cards and are making large preflop raises with them. Whereas you should be making many smallish raises almost regardless of the cards you have.

Doing this against a TAG player can be very powerful. If they shell out a large raise and you don't have the best hand dump it without much thought. When you do this they will get the impression that they can do this all the time and will eventually push too hard with a marginal hand when you have a monster. You are only risking a small percentage of your stack and therefore can afford to get away from a hand when you have less than the nuts. However, if the TAG player makes a big raise when you do have a monster they will most likely be pot committed and unable to fold when you reraise. So, they are risking their tournament life when you are not.

This is a short explaination but I think I covered it pretty well. Here are some addition resources that you guys may find interesting:

http://www.sitandgoplanet.com/multitable/mtt_strategy/Small-Ball_Poker_Tournament_Strategy_Small_Ball_Benefit.html
http://www.thepokerbank.com/small-ball-poker.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeeozbb2_FQ -> part 1 of three by Daniel Negreanu. Very nice!