Small ball poker

There is no right or wrong way to play Texas Holdem but an increasingly popular style, thanks to the likes of Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth, is small ball poker. The idea behind the style is to play lots of pots and attempt to play your opponent post-flop and accumulate chips with little or no risk of going bust.

Whilst Hellmuth has many haters within poker, mainly due to the persona he has created for himself, you cannot doubt his ability in Texas Holdem tournaments as he has won 11 World Series of Poker bracelets in his career so far so the style obviously works and works well.

Many players, wrongly, think that the best way to play during the early stages of a tournament is to play very tightly and try not to lose many chips until you are forced to take risks later in the tournament when the blinds have increased substantially. However, the early stages of a tournament are a great time to play small ball and enter plenty of pots against the weak players that are prevalent at the beginning of a tournament.

Weak tight players and calling stations are in abundance in the early stages of an MTT and you should be looking to play as many pots against them as possible, without becoming reckless and playing every hand. Small pairs, suited and unsuited connectors and one-gapped connectors are great for taking on these players who will only ever raise or make large bets when they have the goods. Be warned though, never bluff a calling station, that is a player who will call any sized bet as long as he has a draw or even a hand as weak as third pair, though you should value bet to the maximum when you have a made hand yourself.

During the mid to late stages of a tournament it becomes more difficult to play small ball as your stack will be much smaller in comparison to the blinds. Also, many tournaments, particularly those played online, have fast structures that mean the late stages of a tournament are all-in or fold, definitely not an attribute of small ball poker. However, you can still play small ball effectively around the bubble by targeting layers who are simply looking to make the money and will be looking for reasons to fold their hands.