Small Ball Poker Rules

Playing small ball poker gives you several advantages, the chance to gauge your opponent's play, minimizing your losses and winning more when you are ahead.

Using small ball poker as a playing style is a way to accumulate chips with the minimum risk. Even professionals like Daniel Negeanu like to use this style of playing during a poker tournament. Although small ball poker is more suited to smaller cash games where the stacks are deep, there are some points during tournament poker when this strategy can pay off. Small ball is best played right at the start of a tournament because as play progresses, the blinds will have increased substantially to a point where players have to fold or raise and so completely ignore your table image. Small ball poker gives you an opportunity to gaining information about your opponent over several betting rounds. Limiting your risk also reduces the risk of going out of the tournament because of a bad-beat or having misread your opponent.

A sure fire rule for success in small ball poker is to start your small ball strategy in the pre-flop betting round, remember that on the flop, turn and river, bet sizes increase proportionally. If you keep the pre-flop raise small, chances are that you will have sufficient chips left over if you should fall behind in the hand. These small raises in several hands will also let your opponents assume that you are a loose player. Keep the pot in control by calculating your raises to approximately 2.5 x the big blind when you are in an early position or 3 x when you are in a later position.

The ideal time to raise is when you are close to the button and preferably when you are first in the pot or there are not too many players in the pot yet. Only raise if you have either a premium hand or a hand with at least some potential. Hands with potential are either connecting cards or suited cards and considering that post flop play is important, these cards play an important role in the success of your strategy.

Small ball is used as a strategy by professional or advanced players and requires some skilful playing and a thorough knowledge of poker. The correct usage of this strategy can turn a tidy profit and is definitely a skill that poker players should acquire.