in Daniel Negreanu's book it says "In these situations, it's often better to check the flop and see what develops on the turn before committing any more chips to the pot. You can even do this with strong hands. For example, if you have 99 on a flop of 9h 10h Js, checking wouldn't be a bad play at all. If the turn card is a 7,8, queen, king, or heart, you could limit a loss that may have been inevitable."

What do you guys think of this? on that flop with 99, wouldn't you want to get it all in?

Maybe if I had 20 BB. Maybe not if I had 200 bb.

It depends....

like seriously...

there are lots of factors!

I really like the smallball advice--just finished reading that book (well, his chapter--I haven't read most of the rest). I think he makes great points about how playing hands in ways others (including most other poker authors) would see as "weak" is actually very powerful.

yeah loads of different factors,also very read dependant aswell lol

ok so say it's the first hand, blinds are 5/10 you all have 1500 chips, you have no reads on your opponent...everyone folds to him, he limps for 10, then you pick up 99 from the CO, you raise to 40, everyone folds, and he calls...then you see the Th 9h Js flop...
what do you do if you have no reads on him and he bets 1/2 pot?
what do you do if he checks, you bet 60 , and he raises to 180 ?

Who says you have to bet 60? I take DN's advice to be that you might think about just checking behind there. If one of those bad cards comes on the turn, you might still call, but you'll lose less because the pot is smaller, and also because you have shown less interest in the pot and a villain with a monster hand will bet smaller to try to milk a little value when s/he thinks you don't have much.

In the first case, where villain bets half the pot, I think you have to call.

BTW, Negreanu wouldn't necessarily agree (as I read him) that you have to raise preflop either. He'd rather not swell the pot until you have the nuts or close to it.

thanks for the analysis...very helpful

You're welcome!

If you are talking about an online tournament where the blinds go up every 5 or 10 minutes than i really don't think you can play the hand this slow. Small ball is going to work in deepstack tournaments where you have the luxery of waiting and the ability to see a lot of hands cheap. The small ball approach sacrifices value in exchange for a lower variance game where you can outplay your opponents but in a fast online structure you have to gamble a lot more and make sure to get as much as you can off of your monsters. I'm only saying this because the situation you described is exactly what the beginning of online tournaments are like.

Are you sure it sacrifices value? I don't have any mathematical model to work with here (not sure if there is one for something this complex, especially since it depends on hand-reading abilities which can't be quantified), but that doesn't sound right to me. First of all, you lose less when you're beat, which surely counts as value. But I'm not sure you win less when you're ahead, or at least not enough less to more than counterbalance the "lose less" hands. The reason I say this is because a lot of the value you get in the smallball style comes from inducing bluffs and then calling them. For instance, let's say you have position on your opponent and flop top pair. Villain has nothing and checks. A non-smallball player would probably bet here, villain would fold, and that would be the end of the hand. But the smallball player checks behind, and villain starts to think they can steal the pot on the turn or river, or perhaps catches second pair and thinks it is good (or even thinks their K high is good). So the smallball player gets that extra bet out of villain. Sure, smallballer also gets outdrawn at times from letting opponents have free cards, but I'm inclined to agree with DN that this is not frequent enough to worry about in the grand scheme of things.

Another aspect of smallball is stealing a lot of small pots, dead money pots, etc., where you aren't perhaps actually ahead but where your opponents' hands are not strong enough to contest the pot. Basically pots where you sense that no one has a great interest in them so you throw out a small bet and scoop them up (or dump your hand if you get played back at).

I would agree that in a faster structure you won't be able to play as much smallball because when you and your opponents are no longer deepstacked, it just doesn't apply (in every example in DN's chapter, the stacks were at least fairly deep). But I don't see why you can't play smallball until the blinds go up.

You can break it down to this. If you have 99 on a board of 8910 with a flush draw and your opponent checks the board texture is such that he will call or raise you with a wide range, the majority of which you are beating. For example lets say he has something like 10J. Any bet you make is +ev no matter what happens on subsequent streets. It doesn't matter if you end up losing the hand because you made the bet in a spot where over the long run you will make money. Obviously in order to maximize your ev you should be betting the largest amount that he will call or raise you. Any time you bet under that amount you are losing value. The reasoning the small ball approach advocates checking is because you can't rebuy, you have a limited number of chips. A great player like negreanu can get into situations where he can make his opponents make big mistakes and play without making mistakes himself. He doesn't want to give his opponents 2-1 on their money when he gets it in so he sits back and waits till he's a huge favorite before he sticks any money in the pot, trusting that he will know the spots better than his opponents. In a cash game its right to get all of your money in here because you just have to worry about maximizing value, you can rebuy if you lose all of your chips. In a tournament situation value isn't as important as survival.

The point is that mathematically you are losing value, but for the specific purpose of remaining in the tournament to find a better spot to put your chips in. You are letting a card come off so that your chance of going bust is less. You can argue that checking is deceptive and gets you more money on later streets but most of the time you are going to make less by checking behind with a set on this draw heavy of a board.

I don't want to sound preachy, this is my interpretation of the small ball approach

great post....

Penis

No, really.

On a serious note, I would say that this is a dangerous flop to be aggressive with, so I tend to agree with the small ball approach. The turn and river are solid betting rounds and you'll have a much better feel for where you are with only one card to come, for example. Just sayin', you don't have to get all your chips in every time you have a big hand, esp on a problematic board like that.

Oh, one more thing: penis

And if the later streets are blanks, or (even better) if you make a boat that gives villain trips or a flush, your hand is disguised and you can probably make more from villain.