Common Poker Mistakes: Slow Play

Most beginners go though a phase of slow playing a little too much. To slow play a hand is to feign weakness on a hand, call instead of raise, check instead of bet. The idea being that by slow playing you keep a number of players in the game as long as possible and home that maybe one of them will start betting heavily believing your hand is weak.

The idea seems great and you can certainly see professionals use this technique on TV. The only problem is that too many players over use this concept.

Let’s say you’re playing Holdem, you hold pocket Aces and the flop comes A 4 5. So you have just flopped a nice set of Aces, a great position to be in. Instead of playing with the confidence of having the best hand you check on the flop. Everyone around the table checks. The turn is a King, someone makes a minimum bet and everyone folds except you, you call. The river is a Deuce, and your opponent bets again and you call. When you and your opponent show your cards you show your trip Aces. Your opponent turns over a King Three. Turns out he had a pair of Kings on the turn, so bet it, and then caught a miracle card on the river and made a straight (A 2 3 4 5). So you lose. If you had bet on the flop you may have taken the pot down right then instead of giving money away to your opponent.

There are several problems with slow playing. One is that your opponent might also be slow playing. Two is that you are giving free or cheap cards to an opponent who is on a draw. In the above example it was cheap enough for your opponent to play his relatively weak second pair hand just to see what happened on the river. So the opponent won all the blinds, the bets and the additional bets that you gave him when you called the turn and river.

In one of the great facts about Holdem is it is possible to know that your hand is unbeatable based on looking at the board cards. If there are no pairs on the board you can rule out four of a kind and even a full house as just one example. You might hold the best hand (the nuts) and be slow playing a player who thinks they too hold the best hand. If he starts to slow play you while you are slow playing him it’s going to be a very weak pot that you win.

This Slow Play mistake is part of the problem phase that many beginners go though when they play all their strong hands weakly and all their weak hands strongly. Most decent poker players can see right through this strategy. It is simply not sophisticated enough to fool good players. As with most tricks in poker, use the slow play very sparingly and it may give you some good results. Over use it at your peril.