Actually, I should probably be saying don’t start making your brain sweat over the small pots, especially against the experienced poker players. Taking a page from professional Daniel Negreanu, “Small ball poker…it’s not meant for players of all levels of skill. [This] approach is too advanced for beginning players.”
While Negreanu does concede that the optimal strategy is to pay as much attention and play with as much skill as one an in small and big pots, he reiterates several times that it’s just too much to process for a novice.
So for the beginner he suggests something a little different, which I have to totally agree with. See, when you’re playing in small pots with good, experienced players, one of two things will happen. You’ll either get lucky an win by default because the cards dictated that you would, but much more commonly what will happen is that you’ll get outplayed in post-flop play.
So what are Negreanu’s tips here? He has two: 1.) If you’re going to bet on a hand, make it a big bet. This necessarily dictates 2.) you’ll be playing far fewer hands because you don’t make big bets on marginal hands especially when you’re in a bad position to do so. These two tenets make you’re play tighter and more sound just by following them at the most basic level.
Now the benefits of the two things. First the big bets. You accomplish myriad things. You induce skilled players to lay down their hands. You force the ones who like to play crazy and off the wall hands to make a harder decision. And you make it more expensive for marginal hands to get in, which in turns makes it harder for the suck-out to happen. Let’s face it, if the hands aren’t in to suck out, the suck out can’t happen, right?
The next is that you’re going to be risking far less on hands that you shouldn’t have been risking money on anyway. This is positive value for your hands.
So if nothing else, take this away with you. Don’t get all worked into the small hands with the experienced poker players. It’s not worth the loss you’ll suffer when you get outplayed. But hey, don’t worry about it. Learn from it, and before you know it you’ll be the one who the beginners don’t want to be getting into small pots with, and you’ll be taking their money when they don’t know any better.
