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Texas Hold'em No Limit Intermediate

Slowplaying in Poker

12,621 Views on 14/10/13

Slowplaying can be a strong play - But use it sparingly and carefully

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Slowplaying is a move that players use in an attempt to 'trap' our opponents when we have a very strong hand. Many people slowplay postflop when they flop a set or a nut flush. When we have such a strong hand, we can be comfortable sitting back and calling, letting our opponent do all the hard work.

slowplaying

Slowplaying can also be used when we feel we can inducebluffs from our opponents. If we bet then we force the villain to fold, but the villain is super aggressive and bets big when we check the hand to him. This has the desired effect of making him bluff money to us.

Be careful slow playing yourself into a hole - Often times scare cards will come and cause us to lose any additional action.

Example of the slowplay backfiring:

We flop the nut flush with a10 on a 268 Flop. We get plenty of action and decide to slow play as we have the nuts and want to pick off some bluffs. The turn now comes the j and all of the action stops. We check as does the villain, and the river bricks a nothing card - The 9. Again we check and the villain checks back to show 8s for a flopped top set. This is the perfect example of when slowplaying has backfired.

Slow playing out of position here has cost us and hurt our win rate. In position we have more reason to slowplay since we are last to bet on each street and we can control the betting to ensure that at the hand is not checked down.

Have a reason to slowplay

  • Make sure when slow playing that you have solid reason to do so - E.G. - If you're playing against an aggressive opponent who will bet any hand.
  • As a default, we strongly recommend betting your monster hands unless you have a strong reason to do otherwise.

 

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Jon PokerVIP

10 years and over 10 million hands of cash game poker Jon-PokerVIP brings a wealth of experience to team VIP. If he isn't winning 150k a month prop hands challenges  then he will be probably posting in our forum, streaming on ... Read More

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