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Slow-playing
When and how to slow-play, and when and how not to - part 3/3
After we dealt with the advantages and disadvantages of slow-playing during the previous articles, let´s now turn our attention to the question of when slow-playing a strong hand might make sense and when you better shouldn´t even think about it.
The strategy of pretending to have a weak hand is something I really like to do, however you have to pick the right spots to be successful. When you´re playing no-limit Texas Hold´em, you can basically identify four different circumstances that should encourage you to play a monster hand slowly:
1) You´re playing against aggressive opponents
2) Your chip-stack is relatively small
3) You´re involved in a family pot while sitting in early position
4) The board doesn´t look dangerously
Now, let´s focus on each aspect.
1) You´re playing against aggressive opponents
If you´re going up against opponents that like to bluff once you´ve potentially shown weakness by checking or players that like to play their draws and middle-pairs aggressively, slow-playing a strong hand is a great way of getting paid out. The key to success is that you´re able to clearly identify a player being a bluffer/aggressor by observing him for a certain period of time. Your goal is not to keep those players in the pot by allowing them to see free cards, your goal is to make them trying to bluff you so that you´re able to squeeze even more money out of them.
If your opponent is in fact an aggressive player, it doesn´t matter whether or not you´re competing against one or more of them, however make sure that you´re not trying to slow-play a calling-station or other rather passive players since they probably aren´t going to bet once you´ve checked.
2) Your chip-stack is relatively small
That´s a problem, which most likely occurs when you´re involved in an SNG, however the same situation can happen to you when you´re playing in a ring-game and you´re not willing to re-buy additional chips. Especially when you´re playing sit´n´go tournaments, your possibilities are reduced by a small chip-stack. You´re not in the position to play regular Poker anymore, since every flop you´re about to see might leave you pot-committed. One of the most important tactics in such a situation is to double up as soon as possible. So even in case the board looks dangerous or you´re not holding the strongest of hands, slow-playing your hand (top-pair with a poor kicker, middle-pair) and hoping for your opponent to start a bluff might be the only chance you have left in order to double up quickly. When being involved in such a situation, your chances of winning with such a tactic increase when you´re only going up against one single rival. If you´re the small-stack and you have to fight more than just one opponent, forget about slow-playing and attack the other guys right away.
3) You´re involved in a family pot while sitting in early position
Consider the following situation: You´re playing in a full ring-game and nobody raised before the flop, leading to six players looking at the flop. You´re sitting “under the gun” with a pair of nines and the flop shows 9 4 2 rainbow. Right now you hold the nuts, the best possible hand. So what do you do now? Slow-playing your set is definitely an option here; since the flop doesn´t look that dangerous (only 53 would give another player an open-ended straight-draw). Your hope is that someone else also hit something (maybe a pair of fours or another pocket-pair) or that an aggressive player sitting in position tries to steal the pot. The more people involved in a specific pot, the higher your chances that someone likes what he sees, regardless whether this relates to the cards on the board or the passiveness of his opponents.
4) The board doesn´t look dangerously
One thing you definitely don´t want to do when slow-playing your hand is to give away free cards when the board starts lo look dangerously. Let´s assume you raised pre-flop with AcAd, two players called and the flop shows Qh Jh 8s. Of course, you still have a strong hand with your over-pair; however this is not a flop to play your hand slowly since it looks way too dangerous to allow your opponents to look at free cards. You not only have to consider that someone might have a flush- or straight-draw, you also have to take into account that another player might have called your raise with a hand like KQ or KJ, giving him outs to still beat your hand on turn and river.
When facing such a scenario, slow-playing is the wrong decision! By betting right away you not only protect your hand, you also make your opponents pay in case they decide to chase certain cards with a draw of any kind.
On the other hand, if you don´t think that the board is risky in regard to your hand and in case you´re going up against an aggressive player, slow-playing is a great way of catching your opposition off guard and get chips from them you otherwise wouldn´t have seen.
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After tackling the question of when to start your actions of slow-playing, let´s now focus on the two different ways of doing so: Check-calling and check-raising.
Click here to read the final part of this article.
