Poker News

Lou Krieger

Slowplaying is the act of trapping players by checking or by making only token bets with very big hands so that you can build a big pot. The idea is to lure opponents into the hand so they become committed to it, and then spring your trap on a later betting round.

If you’re playing hold’em and flop a full house, you certainly don’t want to come out betting the flop in a fixedlimit game. You have the best hand and you’d like to give your opponents a chance to make a little something, or deceive them into thinking they can bluff you off the pot because you played your hand as though it were weak.

Let them bet, then call the flop. When they bet on the turn, that’s the time to check-raise them. In a nolimit game you’ll probably do this whenever you have a hand that’s good enough to take an opponent’s entire stack. Whenever you stand a chance of doing this, poker becomes a game of implied odds.

When you make one of those very rare but very big hands, you don’t want to frighten your customers away. The same concept holds true in fixed-limit poker too. But the amount you can win on future betting rounds is limited because of the wagering structure, and it’s not nearly what you can win playing big bet poker.

Slowplaying is an art. Whenever you risk giving your opponent a free card in exchange for the chance to win more money on a subsequent betting round, that free card might come back and bite you, unless your own hand is a mortal lock.

When that happens, you’re leftsitting there saying to yourself, “If I’d only bet, he wouldn’t have called and I would have won that pot. But I was greedy, and it serves me right.”

Just how greedy should you be? It depends on how much of an underdog your opponent is and how big your own hand is in relation to his. In an ideal world, you want to give him sufficient latitude to make the second best hand, though never the best one.

If you flop two pair and there are two suited cards on the board, it’s a tough decision. In a limit game, your opponent will usually call your bet if he has a flush draw. If you decide to try for a check-raise, your opponent may not bet and all you’ll have succeeded in accomplishing is giving him a free card.

But in no-limit hold’em, if you knew your adversary was on a flush draw, you could bet enough to price him out of the pot simply by making sure that the cost of his call would be too expensive to support a flush draw.

Here’s how that works. We’ll assume you have a flush draw and there’s $20 in the pot. I bet $100, so you have to call $100 to win $120. These odds do not offset the 1.86-to-1 odds against completing your hand, so drawing for your flush in these circumstances is not a good idea, especially if you sense that I will fire another salvo -a bigger one too - if the turn card is a blank.

Slowplaying is one of those two-edged swords that have risk as well as reward associated with it. Unless you have an unbeatable hand, giving a free card comes with an element of danger. That’s why pot-limit and no-limit hold’em players routinely price their opponents out of drawing hands.

In fixed-limit it’s a dicey decision as to whether you ought to come out betting or try for a check-raise. That’s never an easy choice, and the best course of action is usually rooted in an understanding of your opponent’s playing style and tendencies.

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