Small Ball Poker

Small ball poker is a strategy for tournaments where you play lots of hands but don't commit many chips in each. You try to pick up pots cheaply where possible, chipping away slowly at your opponent's stack, and at the same time build a fairly loose/active/agressive image that can pay off big when you hit something decent. As a general goal what you are looking for is to slowly and methodically increase your stack, but without ever risking your tournament life in doing so.

The fundamental pre-requisites for playing smallball are generally a deep stack, making it most likely to be beneficial in the early stages of tournaments. Also a relatively tight table helps. If the players at your table are playing scared and there is lots of dead money around then every bet or raise is feeling out whether your opponents have a genuine hand, but without committing too many chips. These sort of players tend to back off at the first sign of resistance making the process of picking up chips via smallball poker very effective. For example: An opponent raises pre-flop, and c-bets the flop. Frequently with this tighter type of opponent a raise here will quickly find out whether your opponent has a genuine hand or not.

Pot Control

Another benefit of small ball poker is pot control. You might actually hit your hand, but rather than going at it heavy for 3 streets of value (and potentially getting into a point where you are stacking off to a set for example) you choose to check and under-represent your hand, and then to pick up some smaller value on later streets. Obviously you tend to win less from this line, but when deepstacked your tournament life is worth one hell of a lot. Therefore if your hand is good you are continuing your gradual chip up, but if you're unfortunate enough to have run a decent hand into a monster you can generally get to a showdown with at least some of your stack still intact.

An example line for this sort of pot control is: You raise holding AQ, Villain calls from the BB. Flop comes QT4 rainbow. Villian checks. You check. Villian now may end up bluffing the turn, or try to start betting their monster. So if a bet comes you can call. Now on the river, you can call a 2nd bet, or bet for value if it is checked to you. From this line you have kept the pot small, possible induced a bluff (or two), and also kept your tounament life alive in cooler type situations.

Become the Captain

Small ball in the right set of hands (at the right table) can quickly establish you as the table captain who the other players find it difficult to play against and want to avoid. As your stack gradually increases, so does this feeling amongst opponents. They want to try to slow up your relentless involvement in hands and all your bets and raises, but the more it niggles away at them frequently the more the players will wait for hands even more (somewhat ironically). They start to really want to bust you out, and they are so keen on being the victor in a meaningful confrontation that this situation of them playing extra tight can arrive. If you manage to establish one of these tables for a good period, then you can end up setting very strong foundations for a good run at the tournament.