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Slowplaying on the Flop

When you are last to act and you are against an extremely aggressive poker player you should slowplay some hands that don’t seem to merit this strategy.

For example, suppose you start with and the flop is two people check, you are last to act, and one of your opponents is an extremely aggressive player, because no matter what comes off, the extremely aggressive player will bet it on fourth street.

Furthermore, with a pair of aces there is no overcard that can come to give an opponent a higher pair. (*We want to emphasize that for this play to be correct against two players the extremely player must be just that – extremely aggressive.)

What if the top card was not an ace ? Should you still make this play ? The answer is that it depends on how aggressive you.

However, against one poker player the requirement of “extremely” aggressive is not totally necessary.

Opponent is. If he is super aggressive, it might even be right to check your hand if the flop was and you have

Of course the lower the hand, the less likely this tricky play is worth it.

That is because there are more ways to be outdrawn by a hand you could have knocked out on the flop.

Still, against super aggressive players you should often check any top pair on the flop.

The less aggressive your opponent is, the higher the card needs to be.

Judgment coupled with poker experience will help you perceive when the time is right to check a questionable pair.

In holdem, hands come up relatively often where you don’t know whether you have the best hand or not, but you do know that if you have the worst hand you will probably finish with the best hand, and if you have the best hand you will probably finish with the best hand.

These are the clearest cases to slowplay. Everyone thinks that you should slowplay the great hands.

But in holdem it’s not how good your hand is that’s important, but how likely slow playing can cost you the pot.

Therefore the hands that you slowplay are those hands that are most likely to retain their relative value in relation to the other possible hands.

You don’t have to have a great hand to be in that situation. A simple example would be when you hold two kings, and an ace with nothing else flops.

You might be beat already, but not betting will only rarely make a difference. On the other hand, if you held two tens in the same situation, slow playing can be expensive.

A king, queen, or a jack can come on the turn. However, (and this is very important) no matter how unlikely it is that slow playing will cost you the pot, it isn’t something you do when the pot is big.

So in multiway pots you should bet or raise, and do as instructed earlier in the text.

You should also be more inclined to bet in a full ring game even if the pot is small.

The reason for this is that they are more likely to have legitimate hands to pay you off.

But when it is poker short-handed, and especially if you are against a very aggressive a player, it makes sense to slowplay more hands than you normally would.