Watching the new episodes of the 2009 World Series of Poker on ESPN made me a little confused. I know Negreanu and E-dog had a bad year, but it looked like they were playing pretty weak poker in the main event. Negreanu has been known for playing his “small ball” style. This style executes pot control by betting smaller than typically considered normal in hopes of reducing your losses if a hand goes sour.

The problem with this, as we see in the early stages of the main event, is that they are effectively playing full-board poker online. They are not bluffing their opponents ever, instead they are trying to have the best hand at showdown and get some value for it. The main event is laden with amateurs. Which means bluffing is generally a bad idea. They won’t fold. This should lend to the small ball technique, with the exception that many of the hands Negreanu and Lindgren are playing are multiway pots. It’s hard to win with AA multiway, especially if you’re trying to keep the pot small and are going to let 5 board cards come out. While ESPN decided to air a lot of pocket aces hands in the episode, it was interesting to see how each of them was played back to back.

In the introductory period, the blinds are so small that it’s hard to play real online poker. 300 BB’s is really deep, but if everyone is that deep, then there is less regard for the value of the chips. Both Lindgren and Negreanu took to min-raising with their hands. I guess they didn’t want to waste money preflop where a min bet and a 3x bet are essentially the same thing relative to the stack sizes. Over time, these saved bets should add up. But unfortunately, this style is forcing them to check call nervously with overpairs instead of confidently. They are spending entirely too much in situations where they are unsure if they are paying people off on the river, instead of using their chips to try and make their opponents fold before the turn and river. If you look at the impressive aggression of Veldhuis in these early stages, he blows these small balers out of the water. Maybe they ran bad, or maybe they played too weak. Either way, Lindgren and Negreanu have to fine-tune their methods before playing in big weak fields like the WSOP again.