Say, for example, that you have 10,000 in chips with the blinds at 100-200. A pre-flop raise to 500 is the right size for small ball poker, representing a mere five percent of your stack and two and a half times the big blind. Sure you could raise more but I generally prefer to risk fewer chips on speculative hands before the flop.

In a deep-stack cash game, however, that type of bet just wouldn't be big enough to have any chance at stealing blinds and antes.

Let's take a look at GSN's High Stakes Poker where play starts with $300-$600 blinds plus a $100 ante. In this deep-stack cash game, where players routinely buy-in for at least $100,000 in real cash, no one would fold to a standard small ball $1,500 pre-flop bet (two and a half times the big blind) when there's already $1,800 in blinds and antes up for grabs.

Knowing that, you should make a few adjustments to your game when playing in deep-stack games like increasing both the size of pre-flop raises and the size of bets on the flop. Going back to the previous example, a raise to about $2,000 to $2,400 just might do the trick. You'll have a better chance to pick up the blinds and antes and will also force loose opponents to pay extra when they decide to play trash hands hoping to catch a big flop.

Let's go back to the standard small ball raise but this time in tournament play.

The standard two and a half times the big blind small ball raise, $1,500 when blinds are $300 to $600 is more likely to be successful in tournaments because players are forced to play with caution. Also, players won't typically have a robust stack of chips in front of them. To call a $1,500 bet would likely risk a significant percentage of a player's chipstack.

Calling any raise in a tournament is an important decision that demands careful consideration. That's not necessarily true in a deep-stack cash game where a typical small ball bet would probably account for an insignificant percentage of the average chipstack.