Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 23 October 2008 / Leave a comment

This is the polar opposite to the small ball strategy in poker. Instead of constantly trying to pick up lots of small pots, a player is attempting to stick to solid hand values, and play large pots with these few hands.

The main key advantage of this style is it is much simpler than playing small ball poker. By only playing strong hands, a player immediately makes their life easier by drastically reducing the number of decisions that they have to make. This advantage goes hand in hand with the other major advantage that long ball poker brings - having the maths on your side.

Although playing deep stacked poker with big hands is often tricky, most of the time in tournaments you are not playing particularly deep stacked and sticking to strong hands can be hugely advantageous.

The are two key problems with this style though. The first is that unless you are playing at a particularly weak table, players will notice you tightening up and adjust accordingly - leaving you unable to play those vital big pots that you need. Although this can be reduced with a bit of advertising every now and then, any good players at the table will relatively quickly work out what you are doing and adjust.

The second problem is that playing this style leaves you giving quite good implied odds to those around you - and easy flaw to exploit in no limit hold'em if playing at all deep stacked. It is critical that you closely monitor your stack size and those of the other players and adjust your raise sizes accordingly. You do not want people coming along for the ride with small pairs and suited connectors for the right price - due to the fact that you will be looking to invest a lot of money with any hand strong enough to play.

Overall this is a great style to start out playing - especially at the lower limits - and its combination of mathematical soundness and ease of play makes it by far the best starting style to adopt. But as you rise higher in the stakes this style starts to become dangerous to play - particularly playing very deep stacked.

Every good poker player has to be able to play long ball well - even for just those times when the table has lost all respect for your raises and you need to tighten up accordingly. Pick up big hands, get as much money in with them as possible, and let the dollars roll in.

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