no limit texas holdem poker tournament strategy

Opponents must be aware of your style of play for small ball poker to work. So essentially, the small bets and raises that you may win or lose pots with in earlier hands are just setting you up for bigger hands later on in the session. As already mentioned, the reason why this style of play is so effective is because your opponents will be more willing to call you down with marginal hands because of the way you have played in previous hands. The image you project onto the other players at the table is key to the success of the small ball concept. Small ball poker benefits from players who call you down with mediocre hands because they do not give you credit for holding a strong hand. This is a reason why it is important to make small raises and bets instead of large, stronger bets. If you play small ball poker correctly, in the long run the amount you win from opponents when they call you down with sub standard hands should outweigh the amount you lose from making consistent raises and bets without a strong hand. Therefore you should receive more action from opponents when you do have a big hand because they will perceive you as a loose aggressive player, and may feel that you are more likely to try and bluff them out of the pot. This style of play can be very effective because you create a very loose table image for yourself.

You can exploit this when you hold a strong hand.

Opponents will call more often with weaker hands.

It's impressively cheesy with some comically bad acting thrown in to the mix, but all the essential information for basic small ball strategy is there.Īpparently, 57 suited is a hand good for flopping full houses. This video gives a basic overview of the small ball playing style.

Small ball poker is intended to primarily be used in MTTs as opposed to SNGs and cash games. What is small ball poker?Įssentially, small ball poker involves playing a wider range of starting hands more aggressively, but only using small bets and raises to save you from losing too much money when certain plays do not work out. It's likely that this style had been employed by many professional poker players before them, but they just hadn't named it. In fairness though, it's hard to give either Harrington (or Negreanu) full credit for this style of play. However, this term and style of play later gained more recognition through strategy articles and videos by Daniel Negreanu. 'Small Ball' is an advanced style of play that was initially coined by Dan Harrington in his Harrington on Hold'em series of tournament strategy books.

No limit texas holdem poker tournament strategy