Do’s and Don’ts of Slow Playing Texas Hold em Poker

If you are an experienced casino player, be it offline or online casino, then you must be familiar with texas hold’em poker. Have you heard of slow playing texas hold’em poker? If yes then we bet the first you heard it, you thought slow playing is taking time to make your decision or moving your hands slowly. It is one big misconception.

The term slow playing is used to mention a player playing strong hand weakly so that he or she could encourage other players or better-called opponents so that they can be encouraged to stay in the hand and also may be contributing more chips to a pot that a player is expecting to win.

This idea is similar to the word “sandbagging.” In this, a player who loses the nuts watches the other opponent lead with a bet, he doesn’t rise, instead of that he just calls or sandbags to disguise the strength of his hand.

If you want to compare then slow playing is a bit like other complex games such as check-raising or raise. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that slow playing is a deceptive play and if it is handled smartly then it can result in winning a bigger pot as compared to what you have had while playing a strong and fast bet. Today we will tell you some of the dos and the don’ts.

Let’s first talk about

Do’s

Let’s consider a situation where you have flopped very strong and slow playing would be one of the options, you got eight hearts and eight aces that are appearing on the flop to provide you with a set. In this case, you have the strongest hand. Below are some of the factors that can affect the game.

Do slow play versus aggressive player

This technique works best when you are playing with an opponent who is playing a high percentage of hands (also called loose). Also can be played with the opponent showing a tendency to bet and raise a lot of post-flop which are termed as aggressive. These opponent players are not likely to bet the hand for you.

While playing against such players it can be beneficial to simply call on the flop, then raise the turn with your set. It is obvious that against a few loose players you will want to continue betting your strong hand and let them successfully raise you. This could also be seen as a better way to achieve even more chips in the middle.

Some Don’ts

Resume the same situation that we created- you have flopped that set of eights. Now let’s look at a factor that should be kept away from the game while slow playing.

Don’t play versus tight opponent

If the opponent tends to fold too much and play a few hands which are called tight, slow playing is usually a bad idea. Also, when they do play they are doing a lot of checking and calling. We cannot count on these players to bet themselves and that’s why you need to work on building a pot after you have flopped that monster.