Other than this tournament, I have had a rollercoaster of a week. Starting off playing cash games, I decided to analyze my winnings graph and realized my redline (non-showdown winnings) was insanely low and needed to work on this. I've since started bluffing more and am not used to doing this against the uber-weak fields at .01/.02 NL. I'm slowly finding good spots and such, but I can't say it is totally +EV at the moment. I was running $30 below EV this week for NLHE c games and I speewed out another $4. Finally today the ice thawed and I ran my roll back up to ~$85 after a pretty hot run and some good reads. I'm playing some Pot-Limit Omaha 8-or-better and razz while typing this and looking for some interesting hands to post.
This week, I want to discuss slowplaying. I had a few discussions/arguments about this on the 2+2 forum with most people bashing slowplaying but I think it can be an immensely profitable play. The majority of poker players, however, do not know what kind of boards are good for slowplaying and which are not. So, off to our first poker analysis!
Slowplaying
Definition: Checking or not betting a strong hand strongly to disguise the hand's strength in the hopes of extracting more value from an opponent who misreads the actual strength of the hand.
When: Slowplaying is most effective with a hand that cannot be easily outdrawn or not at all. In Pot Limit Omaha, slowplaying is almost always a disaster as so many cards can come that would totally crush you. In NLHE, it's somewhat of a different story. Say you have quads on a flushed board by the turn and you think your opponent has an ace-high flush draw. If you know he likes to call with bad odds, you would bet a substantial amount into the pot. But let's assume he's a competent player. Now you need to check and represent a weak hand. If the river comes of the same suit as his ace, you will most likely be counting his chips in no time.
In English, you slowplay to get value from an opponent when betting would extract less. The risk can be great and if you often slowplay, you will undoubtedly encounter some of the toughest situations in poker when your straight sees a flushed board on the river or your flush a paired one. The key to SP'ing is to calculate how much you will make if you SP and your opponent's cards will come. For example, if you have a flush by the turn and your opponent a set, you are roughly a 75% favorite here, so 75% of the time, you will lose the money in the pot and then some. But 25% of the time, you may win just the pot or extract even more money. Now, this is the type of slowplaying where if your opponent hits his card, it cripples you or pretty much counterfeits your hand. There is a second type of slowplay, a generally more effective one:
The Impervious Slowplay: Although there isn't really an accepted name for it, this is what I call it. It's when you give a free card to an opponent when you doubt any or most cards can damge you. A good example is having the ace-high flush by fourth and your opponent has the K of hearts. You want to extract value here so you could either charge him or slowplay. For slowplaying to earn more money than betting, you have to extract 5x more money from him when he hits than when he doesn't. Easier said than done for sure.
Good Board to Slowplay:
You hold Ks Jd. You're on the button after UTG +1 (a donk) limps and button (TAG) limps as well.
The board reads:
Kd Jh 6h
You check, donkey checks, a TAG fires 1/4 pot, donkey calls, you call.
Kh
This is a great time to slowplay! There is a flush out there, you have the nut house, the only thing the TAG could have is 66, JJ, or a K the way he's played. You're ahead of all. How many cards scare you out of the deck? Four out of 44! (4 Jacks + 4 sixes - 2 since he most likely has one of these because u hold a K) So 1/11 times you will be faced with a tough choice and 10/11 times you will be grabbing his chip stack.
Bad board to Slowplay:
PokerStars Game #25649563300: Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02) - 2009/03/05 21:51:15 ET
Table 'Tavastia III' 9-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Rob Roll ($4.63 in chips)
Seat 2: nanostar ($1.10 in chips)
Seat 3: ku12 ($2.83 in chips)
Seat 4: laura_abley ($0.92 in chips)
Seat 5: Bu1L ($1.11 in chips)
Seat 6: urbansprawle ($4.14 in chips)
Seat 7: BlueGuy52 ($2.89 in chips)
Seat 9: rafin19 ($5.45 in chips)
ku12: posts small blind $0.01
laura_abley: posts big blind $0.02
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to urbansprawle [Ks Qc]
Bu1L: calls $0.02
urbansprawle: raises $0.10 to $0.12
BlueGuy52: folds
rafin19: folds
Rob Roll: calls $0.12
nanostar: folds
ku12: folds
laura_abley: folds
Bu1L: calls $0.10
*** FLOP *** [4d Qs Kc]
I had both villains as very TAGgy and thought they would only continue if they hit an ace or two pair. Now, if an ace comes, I will be scared of the AQ or JT that checks here. I made the mistake of not protecting my hand here and ended up losing a big pot when a ten hit the river and my opponent pushed me all-in and flashed AJ. This is one of those boards where you will rarely win a big pot because of your opponents' tendencies, but slowplaying is still a mistake.
Well, that's it for today (or at least for now) until I get some more interesting stuff to post here. Hope you enjoyed it!