Small Ball Poker Starting Hands
A lot of people are not familiar with the term small ball poker, but it’s getting more and more attention.Small ball poker is a style of play used in Texas Hold’em where you don’t limit yourself to premium starting hands and play a wider range of starting hands without investing too much in the pot to begin with. Review of Daniel Negreanu's Small Ball Strategy: Starting Hands. Posted on March 18, 2009. Filed under: Daniel Negreanu, small ball poker, small ball strategy Small Ball: For Deep Stack Events. A few poker players on Twitter asked me to help them better understand Small Ball Strategy for no limit tournaments.
NL Hold’em Starting Hand Charts
One aspect of the game of No-Limit Hold’em that causes beginning players much grief is deciding which hands to play and which hands to dump. NL Hold’em is much more difficult than Limit Hold’em because the value of a hand depends on so many factors other than just the cards in your hand. Despite this difficulty, our coaches believe that following some general guidelines and adjusting from these is a better solution than having no guidelines at all. Given that well over half of your profitability in NL Hold’em is based on hand selection alone, we have developed these charts to help you better determine whether to play or fold.
Cerca in POKER MARKS Argomenti starting hands (7) small ball (6) coppie (4) percentuali (3) AK (2) A10 (1) AA (1) AJ (1) AQ (1) J10 (1) JJ (1) K10 (1) KJ (1) KK (1) KQ (1) Q10 (1) QJ (1) QQ (1) heads-up (1) posizione (1). In small ball poker, you’ll need to widen your starting hand requirements beyond pocket pairs and A-K. Here’s how to do it. This may surprise you: In deep-stack tournaments, ace and paint hands like A-J, A-10, K-Q, K-J, K-10, Q-J, Q-10 and J-10 are significantly stronger when they are suited. 'Starting hand selection' is simply choosing the good hands over the bad, and thus folding the bad hands when you get them. It is true that any hand can win in Texas Holdem (or poker in general for that matter), but the fact of the matter is that some hands will win more than others.
There are no perfect No-Limit starting hand charts. That is because there are many factors that affect your decision, and charts cannot account for all of them. Some of these include:
- The size of your opponent's stacks.
- How loose or tight, passive or aggressive, your opponents are.
- Where these opponents are located at the table – for example, does an aggressive player still have to act after you?
- Your image at the table – for example, how tight or tricky you are perceived.
That being said, these charts will serve you well in most typical low-stakes No-Limit cash games, such as games with blinds of $1/$2, and home games. These games typically have several loose players at the table, and good opportunities for winning big pots with suited connectors and pocket pairs. With practice, you will be able to be a consistently winning player with these charts as a starting point. As you improve, you'll find yourself making adjustments to these charts based on the factors listed above, and more.
AGAIN: These charts are a good starting point for beginners. Specifically, Chart #1 recommends a significant amount of limping. This is great in loose, passive games but less often seen in tougher games. You’ll find other training material on Advanced Poker Training that may recommend a more aggressive approach for more experienced players.
Note: It would be a serious mistake to apply these hand charts before reading the Frequent Asked Questions first.
CHART #1 ‐ LOOSE, PASSIVE GAME (OFTEN 4-5 LIMPERS PER HAND)
NO ONE HAS RAISED YET
- Raise Always
- Call from Early Position, otherwise raise
- Call always
- Call from Middle or Late Position if the conditions are right (see Frequently Asked Questions)
CHART #2 ‐ TIGHTER GAME (FEWER LIMPERS) OR MORE AGGRESSIVE GAME
NO ONE HAS RAISED YET
- Raise Always
- Call from Early Position, otherwise raise
- Call (or Raise) from Middle or Late Position if the conditions are right (see Frequently Asked Questions)
CHART #3 ‐ THERE HAS BEEN A SINGLE RAISE
(3‐5 TIMES THE BIG BLIND) BEFORE YOU
- Re‐Raise Always
- Call from Early Position, otherwise re‐raise
- Call always
- Call from Middle or Late Position if the conditions are right (see Frequently Asked Questions)
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
For the hands in yellow, what do you mean when you say to play these hands if the conditions are right? The hands in yellow are speculative hands. They should always be folded from Early Position. From other positions, they can be profitable given the right conditions. Some of the questions to ask yourself:
- Are there other players who have called so far (the more, the better)?
- Are the players who have called playing poorly after the flop? Will they pay me off if I hit something?
- Is there an aggressive player still to act behind me (you might get raised and have to fold)?
- If there has been a raise and no other callers, what chance do I have of using my position after the flop to win the hand even if I don't improve (Chart #3 only)?
Why does Chart #2 say to sometimes raise with the hands in yellow, but Chart #1 does not? We have different goals in mind. Using Chart #1, we want to call to encourage additional players to enter the pot. These hands will be immensely profitable when our loose, passive opponents enter the hand, and get trapped when we flop a set, or make a well-disguised straight. When using Chart #2, however, we want to size up the opponents still to act. If they are tight, we can raise. Sometimes, we'll pick up the blinds. Other times, our pre-flop aggression will allow us to take down the pot on the flop.
What's the difference between AKs and AKo? AKs means an Ace and King of the same suit. AKo means an Ace and King of different suits.
What are early, middle, and late position? Early Position is generally the first 2 (in a nine player game) or 3 (in a ten player game) positions after the blinds. Late Position is the “cutoff” position (to the right of the dealer), and dealer button positions. Middle Position is everything in between.
How much should I raise? As a general rule, raise 3 to 4 times the big blind, plus 1 extra big blind for every player who has called before you. So if there are 2 callers already, raise between 5 and 6 times the big blind.
What if someone raises after I call? Whether you call the raise depends on how much money the raiser has for you to win, how many other players are involved, and what type of hand you have. As a general rule, if you have a pocket pair, lean towards calling. If there are a lot of other players (and therefore a big pot), lean towards calling. In general, fold suited connectors from early position. Fold hands like KQ that don't play well against a raiser.
How do I play from the blinds? From the small blind, play the same hands you would play from late position, plus a few more. But don't call with junk hands like T5o, just because it is “cheap”. From the big blind, if there is a raise to you, play like you would if you had already called from early position.
The chart says to fold KQo to a raise. Really? Yes, this hand performs very poorly against typical raising hands. Against AK, AQ, AA, KK, QQ, you are a big underdog. Other typical raising hands like JJ, TT, 99, AJs, are slightly ahead of you as well. The only time you might call or re-raise is from late position, if the opener was in middle or late position, indicating they might have a wider range of hands.
I was told to fold AJo from Early Position, why do you say to call with it? Folding AJo is not a bad idea in many games. We included it because, at low stakes tables (even tight or aggressive ones), the players are often playing badly enough after the flop that it can be profitable. We used data from millions of hands of low-limit poker to analyze this. The same could be said for KQo, ATs, and KJs – you can make a small profit in the long run at most low-stakes games, but folding would be perfectly acceptable from early position.
Can I use these charts in a NL Hold'em tournament? The charts would be best applicable to the early stages of a NL tournament, when everyone has a deep stack. In the middle and later stages, they should not be used.
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A lot of people are not familiar with the term small ball poker, but it’s getting more and more attention. Small ball poker is a style of play used in Texas Hold’em where you don’t limit yourself to premium starting hands and play a wider range of starting hands without investing too much in the pot to begin with. The idea is that you’re trying to generate monster hands out of average hands at a low cost. The low cost factor is critical because you will not generate monster hands most of the time.
Many people give credit to Daniel Negreanu for having invented this style of play, but that’s not exactly accurate. He certainly perfected and promoted it, but many other unnamed players have used this style prior to Daniel’s popularity. They just didn’t bother “branding” their style. So yes, Daniel deserves a lot of credit for making small ball poker known by labeling it, but it is doubtful that he actually created it.
Perhaps you’re thinking “I play all kinds of hands pre-flop regularly, what’s so special about this small ball poker thing?” First, its’ not just about playing loosely with the starting hand. It includes other components like table image for example. For this style of play to work well, you must emulate a loose player image. Obviously, you can’t really be a tight player when you’re playing so many starting hands, but the key to the loose image is to make people think you bluff a lot. That means when you do get your monster hand, you can actually raise and get others to call you or re-raise you simply because they don’t believe you. That’s when the style can really pay off.
Essentially what happens with this style of play is that you invest in small doses on hands that most poker books would tell you to stay away from. Obviously, you’ll end up folding many of these hands after the flop, but the point is that people will notice you’re playing a lot of starting hands. They will brand you as a loose aggressive player and that will become an advantage later when you hit your hands. Typically what you see with players that use the small ball poker style is that their chip stack slowly but steadily decreases, then BOOM! It increases by a lot, and they end up with a net gain. Then the cycle repeats itself. Think of it as a mutual fund investment on the stock market. The day to day pattern is erratic where the value goes up and down, up and down, up and down. But then when you look at a quarterly report, and a yearly report, you start to see a trend where the average growth is positive. Well… perhaps not in today’s market conditions but you get the idea. That’s how a good investment would evolve, and that’s how a good small ball poker player’s chip stack will also evolve.
Let’s look at how Daniel Negreanu actually plays. If you read poker strategy books, you’ll find that there is a general consensus that a standard raise in Texas Hold’em is equivalent to 3 times the big blind. Typically, when you raise pre-flop, these books will suggest that you do a standard raise. But if you watch Daniel play, he’ll take the books and throw them out the window. Daniel tends to raise by 2.5 x the big blind instead. He does this because he feels that it’s a sufficient amount to make the tight players fold, and someone who would have simply called a 3xBB raise will likely just call a 2.5 x BB raise also. It enables him to see the flop for less. And remember the goal: He’s trying to hit the flop so he can then build the pot and get a huge gain by winning the hand. And once in a while, he’ll be in a great position to setup a bluff also.
I said that small ball poker involves playing starting hands loosely, but that doesn’t mean you’re playing any hand just for the sake of being lucky. The style still involves a hand selection process. The rule is simple: Pick hands that have the potential to make big hands. That means connectors (suited or not) and suited cards that have the potential of making a flush. If you get dealt a three and a four, play them. If you get dealt 6-10 suited, play them. But play them if it’s cheap do to so. That’s the key to this style.
Small Ball Poker Starting Hands
Small ball poker works best when the blinds are small and is much harder to play when the blinds get expensive because suddenly you can’t get “cheap” flops anymore. That means that if you will be using this style, two things will happen: First you are going to create a table image that you can exploit, but at some point in the game (if you’re playing a tournament), you’ll have to change your strategy in a way that still allows you to exploit your table image. This style is better suited for cash games, where the blinds remain fixed.
Small Ball Poker Starting Hands Play
The small ball poker style can only work when used by experienced poker player against experienced poker player. If you’re playing with relatively inexperienced players, they’re not going to pay attention to how you play or study your betting patterns. They’re not going to pay attention to you period and since your table image is an integral part of the small ball poker style, it simply can’t work in this scenario. For this style to work, it is critical that your opponents study you and react accordingly.