I have a friend who plays in our regular home games who is a rock.  I mean he is tight…super tight.  Think of a joke involving tight, and the virgin mother’s nether regions, and we’re at least starting to get close to just how rigid this bloke is with his hand selection.  Now, I sometimes get called a rock, but that’s just fine with me.  I always enjoy making a point of bluffing the name caller out of a key pot during the game, and I try not to be too smug about the fact that they walk away believing they made a brilliant laydown.  The thing is though, whilst playing tight aggressive poker might be a good starting frame of reference, not having the ability to change gears when the situation demands it can be a loosing proposition.

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The decision to start playing small ball poker and integrating it into an overall adaptive poker strategy is a change players on all levels are making.  The style of play now known as ‘small ball’ has probably been in circulation as long as poker has.  However, its recognition and emergence as a profitable form of play has been assisted through it’s adoption by poker pro Daniel Negreanu, the man also responsible for the styles current moniker.  For those of us who have suffered one too many bad beats at the business end of a massive pot, it seems there might be some pretty tempting reasons to implement small ball poker into our playing repertoire.  Read the rest of this entry