Slow Playing
I don’t recommend slow playing unless you have the stone cold nuts. I feel you should play your hands aggressive to keep from getting out drawn, but on that note he is a article about what slow playing is and how you can use it. Slow playing can be a great tool, but can also make you feel like a tool, so use it with cation.
Ever heard of bluffing; slow playing or sandbagging or trapping is just the opposite. It is a type of deceptive play making where in you bet weakly or passively even when having a strong hold rather than playing aggressively having a weak hold.
How does playing slow actually help you? What it does is that, it makes your opponents think that they have a great probability to strike you. The ultimate objective of making such a play is to make sure that your opponents are lured into playing which is definitely better than the other person folding in case of you raising the bet. It might even cause the other person to play aggressively or more sturdily than they would if the other player would have played aggressively. It has its set of pros and cons. The other players might also check and this might sacrifice and risk losing the pot building value.
A profitable slow play is characterized by: a player having a very strong hand, him believing that he could win big amounts by ensuring the opponents stay in the game. It is also associated with the fact that the free card also referred to as the cheap card that the player allows to his opponent could be the second best card. The pot should not be very large at the moment of slow play.
Slow playing as a approach is used when you are facing either superior or antagonistic opponents. These opponents sense weakness and therefore try to steal pots and to buy as many pots as possible. However when you face relatively weak or weaker opponents it is in your best interests to bet them out, or else what they will do is try to check more often than not to stay in the game when they don’t have anything.
Slow play and bluffing have an intricate relationship. If a player has a consistent habit of bluffing, in other words is an aggressive bluffer, slow playing might not lead to desired results. Opponents would then be more than willing to call his usual raises and bets. Also if the player uses frequent slow plays then his bluffs are again likely to be not given any respect. This shows how bluffing affects slow play and vice versa.
Check-raising as the name explains, is often used as a means of slow play. But it is not necessarily a slow play style. A number of times check-raise helps you drive opponents out the game, which is contrary to the goal of slow play. As far as a single betting round is concerned it could be used as a slow play strategy.
There are dangers too associated with slow play. The biggest of them is that it gives your opponent an opportunity to see a cheap card. Now with that card he/she might catch a stronger or a par hand. This might lead to a pretty large bet from you and in the end they might be the ones smiling. You might lose the whole pot and the idea of playing slow to win big might take a nose dive. Bet your opponents out whenever you can if you don’t wish to face this risk.
Obviously nothing is sure in life, so the same with this strategy. It is definitely not 100% reliable and has its own probability associated with it. But one thing is for sure, for people who can’t take many bad beats, if you will never slow play, you definitely will not suffer many beats. But as they say for return you need to take risk, so if you are not willing to take risk don’t expect to get really paid off.
