Poker: Smallball

The ‘smallball'...you must have heard speak of it numerous times whilst sitting at a poker table, without necessarily knowing its significance. So, in this article we are going to decode this strategy and teach you its advantages, as well as its disadvantages.

If you have only just begun to play poker, you will often have adopted a strategy of playing marginal hands very aggressively. This increases the size of the pot and often ends in an All-In with only a pair in hand. Compare this to baseball; your strategy would be to get as many homeruns as possible. Propel the ball beyond the boundaries and you can walk yourself comfortably around the bases. You do not even need to trot, let alone run, because you already know you have the points.

Controlling the size of the pot:
The smallball is the exact opposite. Place the ball between two opponents and this will give you enough time to get to first base in an easy enough fashion. But to do this, you need to master the technique that allows you to lose the least number of chips possible. When you practice the smallball you need to raise with a number of hands, but only making small raises, something akin to 2.5 x the big blind. The following are types of hand that allow you to use the smallball strategy:

5 of Clubs and 6 of Clubs.

Jack of Hearts and 9 of Hearts.

Ace of Diamonds and 5 of Spades.

King of Spades and 10 of Hearts.

Use your position:
You are hoping that your opponent folds, but when this does not happen and one of the players in the blind positions sees your raise, you still have a chance of winning the pot. In fact, you have two different methods that you may employ to make the win: either get your desired cards at the flop, or exploit your position.

Imagine that you are placed in the big blind position and that you are facing an opponent who is adept at the smallball who raises almost all the hands in the late positions. You know that he can not always have an Ace of Diamonds and a King of Diamonds, for example, but that your Queen of Hearts and Jack of Clubs is worth entering the action. You decide to follow, and see the flop of Ace of Spades, 4 of Spades and 7 of Hearts. You have missed the flop completely, none of your desired cards have come up, so you decide to check. The smallball player takes the initiative to make a small continuation bet and you fold. It could be that he had nothing in hand at all, but why take the risk?

Here is how a smallball player wins his chips. He is not often interested in seeing a showdown. For him, a hand should be stopped pre-flop or after the flop, but rarely at the turn or the river. These small pots ensure him an ever growing stack, but the climb is virtually risk free. To fold after the flop is simply not a part of his poker armoury. If you come down hard on him, it is easy for him to fold his hand and wait for a more appropriate situation in which to win (or a better opponent).

Strategy to be exploited at the beginning of a tournament:
When you are playing in a simple cash game, then you can exploit this strategy until the cows come home, but if you are in a tournament situation you need to be more careful. In fact, the smallball can only be used in the beginning stages of a tournament, at the moment when the blinds are still relatively low. The time will come when you can re-use the technique, but only of the size of your stack permits it.

The smallball strategy cannot be used by all players. Because you are going to be playing a large volume of hands, you need to know all the rules of poker post-flop in order to avoid gashing your chips needlessly. In the same note, your decisions will be a lot harder to take in comparison to a situation where you manage to get a top pair with Ace of Spades and King of Hearts in hand. Often, you need to ask if your 7 of Hearts and 9 of Hearts is strong enough with a flop of Queen of Spades, 9 of Diamonds and 3 of Clubs. This is the reason why the smallball is principally played when you are in position.

Of course, the smallball player should go All-In from time-to-time, but if you do this then you should tell yourself that the majority of the time if you do take this route, then you should have decided upon it before the round has even been played. Also, in the majority of cases, a smallball player will show you the nuts if a hand ever manages to get to the showdown!

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