Gambling, The benefits and dangers of slow-playing


by STEVE LARSON - Date: 2008-10-10 - Word Count: 763 Share This!

Slow playing is the strategic decision on the part of a player who holds a monster hand to play it passively, thus showcasing weakness in order to fool the opposition. While in certain situations slow-playing can be an efficient weapon indeed, unfortunately most of the time it is abused by beginners and reasonably experienced poker players alike, who slow-play hands they should've attacked much more aggressively and thus lose a lot of value on the pots that they do win. Let's take a look at a few examples in which slow-playing backfires and ends up working against the player who adopts the strategy. Let's say you're holding A,A in the cut-off which makes you pretty certain no other player at the table has a better hand than yours (they may at most have a same-value hand). Knowing that they have the best hand at the table, some players still opt to slow-play the hand, in order not to scare too many opponents out of the pot, and to secure "full value". This is one of the worst mistakes one can make on a hand like this. Allowing several drawing hands to see a flop and maybe the turn too is just like shooting yourself in the foot. Think about the whole setup like this: most of those who have weak drawing hands would fold to a raise of yours, thus they wouldn't be able to see the flop which may hit them, cracking your rockets. If these guys do not get hit, you will not be able to make a lot of money on them anyway past the flop, because they'll most probably fold to any sort of action on your part.

Those players who have reasonable starting hands and call your preflop raise will be much more likely to call you on later streets too. Therefore, what you need to do is isolate these players who will potentially pay you out on later streets by a raise and get rid of the no-goodnicks who are hungry for a free card to crack your monster, and do not carry much value anyway. Having your monster hand cracked on account of slow playing is the worst case scenario. Slow playing can cause you harm in other ways too. Let's see another example. You're holding a pair of 5s in late position and you limp along to see the flop fall: J,K,5. You're in an excellent situation as it'll be extremely difficult for your opponents to put you on a hand, plus anyone with a K or a J may think they're in better shape than you are. If one guy happens to hold a J,K you've struck gold. That fellow won't back down and will call you if you decide to get aggressive. Let's say the blinds are $1/$2 and your opponents (the guy with the K,J ) bets $10 looking to milk his hand as much as possible. You call. The turn falls a harmless blank and he bets $20 into you. You call again. The river is another blank which he checks (looking to trap you or just getting cautious). You bet $40, which he calls and you win the pot. You may feel extremely pleased with how you played your hand, but the truth of the matter is, you lost value on it. This is just like playing poker without rakeback. You may seem to be doing everything right, but you are losing value on every hand.

Instead, you should have bet both on the flop and the turn to build up a nice pot. Whenever you run into a monster which you're fairly certain is the best hand at the table, your goal should be one: build a pot as big as you can with the stack at your disposal, which means you should preferably get all your money in there and get it called. Over the long-run, when you add up the hands that you won and those that you lost, it'll matter a whole lot just how much money you've taken down on those winning hands of yours. Never settle for less when you know you're in control. Always aim to get your opponent pot committed, and to take away his entire stack if possible. Sure, the course of action presented above is not always the right way to handle the situation, and sometimes you're better off indeed slow-playing a monster, especially when you're looking to trap that hyper aggressive player at your table, the guy who you know will commit his entire stack without pressure from you.


Related Tags: online poker, rakeback, slow playing

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