In The Theory of Poker, David Sklansky outlines the ideal conditions for slowplaying:
“1. You must have a very strong hand.
2. The free card or cheap card you are allowing other players to get must have good possibilities of making them a second best hand.
3. That same free card must have little chance of making someone a better hand than yours or even giving that person a draw to a better hand than yours on the next round with sufficient odds to justify a call.
4. You must be sure you will drive other players out by showing aggression, but you have a good chance of winning a big pot if you don’t.
5. The pot must not yet be very large.”
It is a testament to the quality of this book that, though Sklansky was writing primarily in the context of games with a fixed betting structure, his advice here is largely applicable to the big bet games like No-Limit Hold ’em (NLHE) and Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) that are most popular these days. The only thing I’d add to Sklansky’s list to make it more applicable to big bet games is that you must weigh the advantages of slowplaying against what you would have won from second-best hands that would have paid you off on three streets but end up losing a smaller pot because of your slowplay. In a fixed limit game, this usually costs you just one small bet if you slowplay the flop.
In a big bet game, it costs you a lot more, because pot and bet sizes grows geometrically. In other words, a bigger pot on the flop means a bigger pot on the turn means a much bigger pot, and therefore a much bigger bet, on the river. Thus, slowplaying in big bet games carries a much larger cost than it does in fixed limit games. As we’ll see, it can still be correct, but the conditions must be even more ideal than those Sklansky allows in Theory of Poker.
Demonstration
Suppose that you flop the nuts and the pot is currently $100. When you value bet, you decide that you are going to bet about 80% of pot. First, though, you have a decision about whether to bet three streets or to check the flop and then bet the turn and river.
If your flop bet of $80 is called, there will be $260 in the pot on the turn. Eighty percent of $260 is about $210, which if called will mean a $670 pot on the river. Thus your river bet would be $536, and if your opponent called, you would win a total of $826 after flopping a monster.
If you instead check the flop, then you only win the first two bets of $80 and $210, for a total of $290. Slowplaying would have to triple your chances of getting those first two bets paid off to justify your failure to build the pot from the flop.
Example
You are playing $5/$10 NLHE with $1,000 stacks. You open to $45 UTG+1 with 77, a loose-passive player calls in the SB, and everyone else folds. The flop comes K 7 2.
If your opponent holds a pocket pair higher than your 7’s, he has a 4% chance of turning a hand better than yours. Otherwise, there is no way for the turn card to cost you the pot. Even if your opponent turns a draw, you can size your turn bet such that he will not have the correct odds to call you, which alleviates another of Sklansky’s concerns about slowplaying.
Despite the near-invulnerability of your hand, you should bet. There is an obvious second-best hand for your opponent to pay you off with: a pair of Kings. You want to start building the pot right away so that you can win a big one from a pair of Kings, even if this means you win a little bet less from a hand like QJ that might turn a pair if you slowplay.
To see why, suppose that this player will never bet himself but will also not fold a pair for bets of up to 80% of pot. As we saw above, fast-playing your set will win you $826 if your opponent paired the flop. Checking the flop and then betting the turn and river will win you $290 when your opponent has a pair on the turn.
Two unpaired hole cards will turn a pair about 12% of the time. Thus, if your opponent does not yet have a pair, there is a 12% chance that you will win $290 by checking the flop, which makes checking worth $34.80.
When your opponent has a pair, slowplaying the flop costs you $536. Thus, he needs to hold a pair on the flop just 16% of the time to make fast-playing superior to slowplaying.
Shallower Stacks
This assumes that stacks are deep enough for you to get three streets of value from your hand. Slowplaying is far safer if one or two bets will be enough to get all the money in anyway, as checking one street will not cost you a big bet on the river.
In this example, slowplaying would be correct if the effective stacks were $300-$400. In that case, you would not cost yourself much when your opponent flops a pair. Even if you do check the flop, you will get most of his stack, so you might as well give him a chance to turn a pair before you start building the pot.
Aggressive Opponents
There is more value in slowplaying against opponents who will make big bluffs and thin value bets. Suppose that in the above example, you were out of position and believed that your opponent would bet 80% of pot with top pair on all three streets if you kept checking and calling.
In that case, slowplaying would be correct. Not only would you give him a chance to turn a pair if he doesn’t already have one, but you could also potentially win even more money from his top pair by check-raising the river. Even if he doesn’t call, you haven’t lost anything relative to betting the flop.
Note that if you are in position, you would still need to bet the flop. This is because your aggressive opponent would not have the opportunity to bet his top pair even if he wanted to, as your check closes the action.
Crushing the Deck
Just because you flop a huge hand does not necessarily mean that you have all of the cards that connect well with the flop. In our example, your opponent could easily have top pair, a strong hand with which he will be willing to play a big pot, despite the fact that you have trips.
If you instead held KK on this same flop, however, checking would make a lot more sense. There is only one K left for your opponent to have, and if he has anything less, even a pair of 7’s, he isn’t likely to be too excited about it.
Importantly, there are no scary turn cards for you. Literally the only way in which the turn could give your opponent a better hand is if he has AA and turns an Ace, a rather unlikely prospect. Far more likely is that if an Ace turns, a hand like AJ that looked weak on the flop will suddenly be strong enough to pay off two bets.
Underbetting
A small bet of 1/4 to 1/2 of the pot is an underutilized alternative to checking when you want to slowplay a strong hand. Suppose that you are playing $5/$10 NLHE with $1,000 stacks. Your opponent opens to $30 UTG, you call UTG+1 with 77, the SB calls, and everyone else folds. The flop comes T 7 5, and both players check to you.
On the one hand, this is a dangerous flop to slowplay. There are quite a few turn cards that, even if they do not give your opponents a better hand, could at least kill your action and make it difficult for your opponents to put money into the pot with hands worse than yours. Plus, in the event that someone is playing for pot control with a hand like T9 or JJ, you’d like to start building the pot.
On the other hand, it seems unlikely that either player has anything particularly good. For the same reasons that you are reluctant to slowplay, your opponents should be, too. A big bet will very often result in two folds, which is a shame when you have such a strong hand.
A small bet of $33 offers enticing but incorrect odds for most draws to see one more card. A bare flush draw or open-ended straight draw has 8 outs, giving them a 16% chance to hit on the turn. They can probably count on some implied odds if they get there, but then again so can you. One of the reasons you’d like to keep a draw in the pot is that every once in a while, the draw will get there but you will improve to a full house and be in a position to stack your opponent.
A small bet may also be misinterpreted as weakness, enticing an opponent to raise you with a draw (or less). It also may entice an opponent to call or raise with overcards like AK that he was planning on folding to a larger bet. An underbet can therefore be a viable option when you believe your opponent to be weak but your hand is strong enough to start building a pot on the flop.
Moderately Strong Hands
Good but not great hands like top pair are often better candidates for slowplaying than are really huge hands like sets or straights. If you believe that your hand is not strong enough to value bet on three streets, then you do not cost yourself money by checking the flop or turn in the same way that you do with a stronger hand. To see why, let’s look at a slight variation on the example we’ve been considering:
You are playing $5/$10 NLHE with $1,000 stacks. The UTG player limps, you raise to $45 with KJo on the BTN, and everyone else folds. The flop comes K7 2.
You believe that UTG’s limp-calling range consists almost entirely of pocket pairs and suited connectors with which he is trying to see a cheap flop. He is really aiming to make two-pair or better, so while he’ll try to pick off bluffs when he has just one pair, he’s only going to play a big pot with a hand that beats yours.
You should plan to check either the flop or the turn. There is no way for your opponent to have a draw on the flop, so he can have at best five outs if he holds a suited connector like 76 or 87. With a pocket pair he has just two outs, and with an unpaired suited connector he cannot outdraw you on the turn at all.
Your opponent is not likely to turn a strong second-best hand, but he could easily turn a pair or draw that will be good enough for one or maybe two bets. Given that you weren’t going to try to get three streets of value out of your top pair anyway, you have little to lose by checking an early street.
Against straight-forward opponents who are mostly playing their own hand, I would check the flop and then either call bets on the turn and on most rivers or bet the turn and river if my opponent checked.
More sophisticated opponents might expect a continuation bet on the flop and therefore be suspicious of your check. They would correctly read your check to mean that you have a hand that does not need to bluff, and consequently they would not make a big mistake on future streets. Against such players, it is better to give them the bet that they expect on the flop and then plan on checking most turns and going for more value on the river.
Balance
So far, we have considered the merits of slowplaying “in a vacuum”, i.e. without consideration for how you would play others hands in your range. There exist circumstances you might choose to slowplay a very strong hand in order to give your checks or calls more credibility and make you less susceptible bluffs when you play weaker hands in the same way.
For instance, if KK is the only strong hand that you ever check on a K72 flop, then other players can exploit you by bluffing the turn and river. Even if they occasionally run into top set, you’ll fold far more often.
The lesson here is that you need to check hands good enough to call bets on the turn and river, but those don’t necessarily need to be the strongest hands in your range. The moderately strong hands discussed above are generally better candidates for a “balance check” than a set of 7’s. This is again because the price that you pay for putting AK in your flop checking range is much lower than the price that you pay for putting 77 in your flop checking range.
Conclusion
When your hand is strong enough to bet three times for value, you take a big risk by slowplaying in a big bet game. Such a play can still be justified, but it requires more specific circumstances than in fixed limit games.
Originally published in Two Plus Two Magazine, 2011