How to slow play

Slow playing should be a vital part of your poker arsenal and you should learn to use it effectively in order to maximize your wins. According to Phil Helmuth, this is also a critical tournament skill to master  and he should know after winning 11 WSOP bracelets.

Act weak where you are strong

The essential part of slow playing is when you make a monster hand and conceal your strength from your opponent. Lets say you are holding a pair of nines and the flop comes 9-6-6. Congratulations! You just flopped a full house.

The problem is that if your opponent so much as gets a whiff of your hand, he will fold faster than Lehman Brothers.

So what do you do? You must conceal your strength in feigned weakness to lure your opponent into putting more money into the pot.

How?

You must give off signs of weakness. Look troubled, glance at your cards, hesitate with your chips, scratch your head, check instead of betting or simply sigh and shrug your shoulders. Note that this ham acting will only work with players who are unfamiliar with you, and once again professionals usually have finely tuned senses that detect your fake signals  so be careful and dont overdo it.

Know your opponent

If your opponent likes to bet, then let him. Dont raise, just call and let him push his money towards you. Re-raise him on the river and see if you can milk some extra money out of him.

When your opponent is timid, then it is still going to be hard to get any money out of them  whether you slow play or not. They are simply not the betting kind so you may have to encourage them with some small bets. Hopefully, they will have made something on the flop, because if not they are simply going to fold and you are going to get precious little value out of your full house.

Beware the board

When you are slow playing a hand, you are passing the initiative to your opponent. He can take free cards by checking, because you are also going to check to act weak. Be careful the board doesnt give him a bigger full house and you end up caught in your own trap. Watch the cards and get ready to pounce. In poker, it is all too easy for predator to become the prey.