Why You Shouldn’t Slow-Play

The object of poker is to win the most money. That’s it – that is your goal.

That’s why you’re playing poker and not pogs.

In other words, all the strategies you employ are just a means to one end: the money. In light of that, one of the mistakes I see the majority of newcomers make is slow-playing. Or slow-playing too much.

Slow-playing, for the most part, is counterproductive. If your goal is to get the most money in the pot, how are you going to do that by checking? You build pots by betting your big hands, not by lurking in the weeds with them.

Here’s an example of your average slow play:

Effective stacks $200; blinds $1/$2. You’re dealt 6 6 on the button. A player from early position raises $6 and you make the call.

The flop comes out 3 6 A. Your opponent bets $10. You call. The turn is the T.

Your opponent bets $18 and you just call. The river is the 7. Your opponent checks and you bet $35. Your opponent calls. You table your set of sixes and he mucks his A K. You scoop a $138 pot.

OK, so you won a $138 pot. You might be patting yourself on the back saying “Nice hand.” This is not a nice hand.

When you flop a big hand like a set, you want to play for stacks. This is what you’ve been waiting for, folding 6-2 and 5-9 all day. So now that you’ve finally hit your monster, you want to waste it by trying to slow-play? That kind of strategy is just wrong-headed.

Big Hands Want Big Pots

When you flop a monster you want to win your opponent’s stack. It’s very difficult to win someone’s stack by slow-playing.

Why? When you slow-play you often find yourself with a small pot. Your goal of getting your stack into the middle when the pot is small becomes very difficult. You can’t exactly bet $200 into a $4 pot, can you?

If you build the pot the entire way, it will be big enough on the end that you can comfortably bet your entire stack.

The hand in the example was played well by our villain. He played it like most villains would in this spot. He bet two streets into you and when you called multiple times he went for the conservative river approach. He checked and then called a river bet.

He did this to avoid getting raised (which is what you would have done). In this situation it’s very difficult to get paid off after having just called two streets. If you had raised the flop then he most likely would have had to call with his top pair, top kicker, thus building the pot further.

Let’s look at an example where there is no slow-playing:

Effective stacks $200; blinds $1/$2. You’re dealt 6 6 in the cut-off. The player from early position makes it $6 to go. Everyone folds to you; you make the call.

The button and blinds fold and you take a flop heads-up of 3 6 A. Your opponent bets $10. Opting against the slow play, you raise the flop to $45. Your opponent calls.

The turn brings the T. Your opponent checks. There is now $102 in the pot and just under $150 left in your stack. You bet $70.

Your opponent tanks and calls. The river comes down 7. Your opponent checks and you bet your remaining $80. Your opponent calls and tables A K. Your set of sixes takes the $400 pot.

By building the pot the entire way it made it easy to get your entire stack into play. When the pot is large it also gives your opponent incorrect odds. He may have felt on the river he was pot-committed since he had already put 60% of his stack into play and the pot is offering 4-1 on his call, making it extremely difficult to fold.

Still, There Must Be Times When Slow-Playing Is Correct

Yes, you’re right. In poker, one strategy is never always correct. You always need to take into consideration the table dynamics, your image, your opponents’ playing tendencies, etc. before you decide how to act.

I’m not advocating never slow-playing. I’m just encouraging you to use it sparingly.

One situation where slow-playing is correct is against an ultra-aggressive player whom you know to have a history of betting three streets strong with weak holdings and who will continue their aggression until they are played back at. In that case it is not terrible to slow-play.

As an example:

You’re playing an extremely aggressive opponent. You have seen him bet three streets with as little as ace-high.

Effective stacks $200; blinds $1/$2. You’re dealt T T in the small blind. The ultra-aggressor raises to $8 UTG and it’s folded to you. You elect to just call. The flop comes down T 2 5.

You check and your opponent bets $20. You just call. The turn comes 5. You check and your opponent bets $65. You call.

The river comes A. You bet $100 and your opponent calls with A 4. You pick up the pot with your full house.

In this situation you know your opponent is ultra-aggressive. You know he’s going to be betting with practically anything. He will build the pot for you. So there is no need to raise and make him fold his weak hand.

This situation isn’t a common one, so you have to be in tune with the table dynamics. You’ll need to be certain this opponent is willing to keep betting. Also notice in the example that the hero bet the river.

It’s very risky to go for a check-raise when our hand is this strong. If the river goes check-check we could lose a lot of value.

So there you have it. You don’t have to stop slow-playing all together. However, if you are making a habit out of slow-playing all your big hands than you are probably losing out on a ton of value!

This time Gus cleaned up $1.1M on the high stakes Omaha tables, and he done it all in less than 24 hours. The players who really suffered at the hands of Hansen’s wrath yesterday were Zigmund and Durrrr, who both accumulated pretty noticeable losses.

Gus Hansen now has close to a $4 Million profit this year, pretty hektik huh. Also Full Tilt Poker has added yet another HU PLO for Gus Hansen, “Hansen Suckout”, I guess it all happening for Gus Hansen so far this year.

Here are some of the hands he took down yesterday:

Gus Hansen hits a great flop and gets it in against durrrr´s two pair, $213k pot
A sick flop when Gus Hansen hits a set and durrrr flops two pair with the NFD, $190k pot

In the hand Peter Eastgate raised it up with Q,8 and was re-raised by Barry, who held J,9 Hearts, the action then comes around to Mr. Dwan, who is holding a pair of aces, and he now bumps it up to again to $31K. Barry who doesn’t wanna get pushed around by Tom Dwan makes an instant call and ends up flopping top pair, the pot is at $68K and Dwan fires around $48K into the pot acting first.

Barry now has a big decision on his hands, does he raise thinking Dwan missed with AK or AQ, or does he give him credit for the overpair and fold. I think Barry, like he says after the hand is finished, had a good feeling about it and therefore put all his money in the middle regardless of what Dwan was holding. I will have to agree with Barry here, sometimes you just get that feeling in poker, it doesn’t always happen but when it does, I tend listen and get my money in there, more often than not I will end up winning the pot, even I was miles behind when the money went in. It’s simply amazes me but it’s true, anyhow Check out the hand below, the action picks up on the flop and Dwan Has Fired $48K into the middle…

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Ivey ended up winning around $180K of Durrrr by the end of the night. However it was an epic battle between the two, and neither of them completely dominated. Durrr was up almost $500K at one stage, but as you already know, Phil Ivey is world class player and didn’t quit until he erased his deficit and added some nice profits. I must say the action is heating up again on Full Tilt, and for all you railbirds out there, Ivey VS Durrrr matches are probably the most exciting ones to watch.

Dwan did very well at the Mixed HA Tables last night though, winning nearly $700K, so I guess he didn’t feel the pinch from Ivey much. Durrrr is up around $1.3 for March so far, however overall, he is still down for the year.

Here are some of the hands that went down between Durrrr and Ivey:

The river gives durrrr the nut flush, where he C/R Phil Ivey all-in, $335k pot
Both players gets it in on the flop with top pair, $270k pot

By Arthur S. Reber — I know, I know. These are supposed to be articles on poker and the psychology thereof.

But a couple of installments back we had an extended discussion on the role of self-confidence and personal assuredness and their impact on our games. In that article, I snuck in a bit on exercise.

I did it for a good reason. Physical exercise turns out to be a remarkably important element in cognitive function, and let’s face it, folks – poker, if it is anything at all, is one hell of a cognitively demanding game.

I’ve said this before, and I grow ever more certain of its truth: The game of poker, when it is played at its highest levels with the strongest opponents, is the most complex and mentally demanding game that is played routinely by members of our species.

Sure, it can be played by any old bozo and, if you wish, you can fool around at the tables without so much as cranking up your brain past its basic, grade-two level.

But if you want to truly grasp the richness of the game, its wonderfully interwoven features, its wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels strategic ploys, you’d better get that three-pound hunk of what looks for all the world like a bowl of porridge between your ears rolling.

And physical exercise will help you do it.

I’m serious. We now know that physical exercise can have a significant impact on cognitive functions, particularly on memory.

This link has been suspected for a long time, particularly in the elderly, whose declines in memory can be stopped or even reversed by a program of physical exercise. But until recently we didn’t know exactly why this happened, and we weren’t sure if it also helped younger people.

It turns out the reason is simple. Physical exercise boosts the efficiency and effectiveness of brain metabolism, specifically of lactate, glucose and an insulin-like growth factor, and it does so across the board: in rats, monkeys and people of all ages.

Simplifying a bit, these compounds are to your brain as gasoline is to an internal combustion engine. They’re the fuel.

Each of them has slightly different roles, but a series of recent studies recording brain activity shows that uptake of all three of these compounds by brain cells increases with exercise.

And, fascinatingly, the brain areas that are most affected are those known to be critical for memory, decision making and deliberative thought – functions that lie pretty close to the core of the game of poker.

So, what do you need to do? It’s fairly simple. You need to put in at least one to two hours a week doing three classic kinds of exercise: cardiovascular, strength and flexibility. If you can do more hours, so much the better.

There are all kinds of ways to do this – running, fencing, skiing. But for most of us, it’s best done with trips to the gym or wellness center.

Poker players are among the most unhealthy people in the world. They sit around all freakin’ day in a chair doing dick-all, eating on the fly, usually fatty, unhealthy foods.

Fortunately, not as many of them smoke anymore, and we can all be thankful that very few public rooms allow tobacco now. But I find myself feeling more than a bit sad when I see how many of my friends are overweight and how many of them weren’t a couple of years ago.

Between the need for solid decision making, thinking and memory and the importance of physical stamina and bodily well-being, it’s a bloody shame to see how many of us have let ourselves go.

And, yeah, I understand how tough it is to get your butt down to the fitness center two or three times a week. Sometimes I have to drag my weary self out of my comfy chair too.

But I do it. And when I do, I am really happy with myself.

I keep my weight down and my muscle tone up, and I can almost feel those glucose molecules zipping around in my medial temporal lobes (important brain areas for memory), parietal regions (involved in processing many incoming channels of information) and, of course, my frontal lobes (critical structures for decision making and deliberative actions).

OK, I’m done preaching now, but you know what? I just gave you some of the best poker advice you’ve gotten in a long time. If you follow me here it’ll give you as much of a step up in your game as reading all 72 volumes of Dan Harrington’s writings on poker.

Author Bio:

Arthur Reber has been a poker player and serious handicapper of thoroughbred horses for four decades. He is the author of The New Gambler’s Bible and coauthor of Gambling for Dummies. Formerly a regular columnist for Poker Pro Magazine and Fun ‘N’ Games magazine, he has also contributed to Card Player (with Lou Krieger), Poker Digest, Casino Player, Strictly Slots and Titan Poker. He outlined a new framework for evaluating the ethical and moral issues that emerge in gambling for an invited address to the International Conference of Gaming and Risk Taking.

Until recently he was the Broeklundian Professor of Psychology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Among his various visiting professorships was a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Now semiretired, Reber is a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada

Tom Dwan, in the hand below, made Peter Eastgate fold trip deuces and Greenstien fold Aces to take down a $230K with the worst hand. This kid has balls, but more importantly he has a great ability to read exactly what his opponents are holding. In this hand he realized Barry had an over pair and knew Eastgate was holding the best hand with a low deuce. He chose to represent A2 on the flop and had the courage to go through with his read on the turn. The outcome, a brilliant play which led him to bluff two great players out of a huge pot, Great Poker!

Check Out the hand below!

Apparently Gus is accusing OMGClayAieken and Urindanger of colluding when they tried squeezing him out of a pot. The hand started out with Gus raising, dang calling and Galfond re-raising with a pair of aces, Gus makes the call but then something very unusual happens – Dang Pushes all-in ( Holding Q,Q,8,8) with a pretty marginal omaha hand.

As soon as the hand is over and Gus sees Urindanger’s hand and he immediately goes off, here is some of the table convo:

Gus Hansen: too suspicious for me
Gus Hansen: nice play guys
Gus Hansen: and somehow they both were quiet
Phil Ivey: definitely collusion lol
Urindanger: you’re an idiot
Gus Hansen: If you think the QQ88 is a good play
there you wouldnt have any money
Gus Hansen: thats why it is strange
Gus Hansen: but hey whatever I just have to quit
Phil Ivey: nooo
Phil Ivey: i will transfer u the 85k u jus lost
Phil Ivey: call it a gift

I believe the hand really upset Gus and he actually thinks the two players are colluding, however the thing to note is if he continues playing against these two players in the coming weeks. Also we will have to wait and see how Urindanger and OMGClayAiken, who are very good friends, respond to these accusations, and whether they can or will prove, justify that they weren’t colluding.
I don’t know if they were colluding, but I agree with Gus, the move jus seems to Suss in a game of such High Stakes.

Anyhow here is the Hand check it out and see what you think

Gus Hansen, Urindanger and OMGClayAiken get it in pre-flop, $251k pot

The hand came up again in a convo at another table, here is the table talk:

Gus Hansen: ups OMG behind me better fold
OMGClayAiken: ?
OMGClayAiken: am I picking on you today more than usual?
durrrr: did u miss table chat other table?
OMGClayAiken: i guess so
Gus Hansen: nope the other pot took the fun out of playing
durrrr: he thinks u and z squeezed him or something
OMGClayAiken: im on laptop
durrrr: and then he missed ivey’s offer to give him the 85k back
durrrr: if hed stay and play
OMGClayAiken: reading now…
OMGClayAiken: haha
OMGClayAiken: well, Z is a fish
Gus Hansen: yeap but the fact if your and mine position would have been reversed he would re-re-raise in 0% of the hands and I cant play against that
Gus Hansen: sad but true
OMGClayAiken: heh.. I’m pretty sure he’d be more likely to rr if we reversed spots
Gus Hansen: lol
Gus Hansen: how much you wanna bet on that
Gus Hansen: silly of you even to make that argument
OMGClayAiken: I mean… I’d bet a lot on it if we could prove it
Gus Hansen: id bet a lot on the lie detector too
Gus Hansen: you’d be drawing dead
Phil Ivey: lets jus all go all in blind nex hand
Phil Ivey: i promise it will make everyone feel better
Gus Hansen: I give this game about 7 minutes max

Check Out More Discussion about the Case at High Stakes DB Forum

The players who suffered this time due to Gus’s good fortunes were Phil Ivey, Tom “Durrrr” Dwan and Urindanger, all of them lost a significant amount of dough to the Great Dane and are probably a little frustrated at Hansen’s Good Form.  Overall Gus raked in well over Half a Million Dollars for the third straight day in a row and is up over $3Million for the year, it seems he just cannot make a wrong move.

He must be loving life right now! Anyhow these streaks don’t last forever and I think Gus should hit the road and take a little break while his still on top. However knowing Gus, I doubt he will walk away and I’m sure you will see him part of the action consistently over the next few days, we’ll just have to wait and see if his luck continues.

Meanwhile Phil Ivey dropped over $500 Grand yesterday and Durrrr’s ugly run continues as he adds another $500K plus loss to his overall $4Million dollar losses for the year.

Anyhow back to Mr. Hansen, here are some of the hands he took down yesterday to rake in some juicy profits, check em out!

Gus Hansen gets a piece of the flop, and gets it in against Phil Ivey´s overpair, 170k pot
Gus Hansen crackes Urindanger´s pocket AA with a nice river, $142k pot

Yes the most exciting Televised Cash Game is back and from what i have heard that season 5 continues just were the others left off, with a lot of crazy hands and bluffs going down. I haven’t got around to watching any of the first three episodes yet, but they are all posted on YouTube, and I should be watching them tonight while grinding the Cash Game tables over at Full Tilt.

From what I have read on the Net, sources indicate that internet phenomenon Tom Dwan has joined the action, and apparently completely dominated it for the first two weeks. Also Daniel Negreanu puts in a lot of hands as usual and is still suffering from continual bad beats as he gets crushed by quads yet again!

Anyhow I am very excited about the show being back on the air and cannot wait to watch the new episodes tonight. For all you other readers out there who haven’t seen the first 3 episodes yet I recommend you head over to YouTube and get cracking.

In the Meantime Here is the first half of Episode 3: