Slow Playing Could Be a HUGE MISTAKE | Upswing Poker Level-Up #50

This article is a transcription of the Level-Up Podcast, hosted by Upswing VP Mike Brady with poker pro Gary Blackwood. You can watch or listen to the entire episode via the links above or read on if you prefer a written version.

Mike Brady (00:01):

What’s up players? Let’s level up your poker game. You’re going to learn when to slow play your strong hands today. I’m Mike Brady here to interrogate Scottish poker pro Gary Blackwood on this critical topic.

Gary Blackwood (00:12):

That was right guys. Today we’re going to talk about slow playing, when you should be setting the trap with your monstrous hands for your opponents to fall into and win the maximum.

Mike Brady (00:22):

Before we get into slow playing, I want to let you know that right now the biggest sale of the year is happening over on upswingpoker.com. Every course, tool, and piece of merch on the website is 25% off. So if you’ve considered investing in your poker skills with a course made by a top pro, head over to upswingpoker.com. The discount applies automatically. Everything from the Poker Blueprint to Lucid Poker, the Upswing Lab and all of our advanced courses are 25% off. It’s the biggest sale we run all year. Now getting into it, when most players think about slow playing, their mind probably jumps to playing post flop, but slow playing can make sense preflop too. When should you lay the trap with a super premium like aces or kings?

Gary Blackwood (01:04):

This is something that we spoke about in our last episode, but for sure worth mentioning again because it’s so important when you have pocket aces and you face a four bet from your opponent. If your opponent is not a mega nit, you want to slow play your aces and just call versus a four bet really, really often, almost always when you’re in position. Let’s keep in their king queen suited their ace queen offsuit, all these types of hands, even their ace eight suited depending on the right positions. It’s a four bet pot. The pot is going to be huge. Let’s slow play those aces.

Mike Brady (01:36):

If your opponent is an aggressive player, they’re going to be four betting with some of those hands as sort of a bluff that Gary just listed. King queen suited, ace queen off are very common four bet “bluffs” when you’re out of position facing a three bet and you want to keep those hands in, if you five bet all in, they’re just going to fold you kind of let them off the hook. Keep them on that hook, give them a chance to c-bet on the flop. Maybe give them a chance to hit top pair that doubles you up or pays you off. It’s a much better scenario.

Gary Blackwood (02:03):

Absolutely it is and it doesn’t just stop there with four bet pots. Even in theory, if you raise the button for example, and the big blind uses a very large polarizing three bet size of 13 big blinds, which does happen from time to time. You are supposed to flat with your aces there sometimes for the exact same reason. It’s a very large three bet, which means the pot is going to be bloated when you go to the flop. Which means you want to flat your aces sometimes and keeping your opponents king queen offsuit, queen eight suited, all these types of hands which are going to flop a pair a reasonable amount of the time, and they’re more likely to stack off because the pot is already more bloated. Pocket aces is also not the only hand we’re slow playing preflop. There are actually some scenarios where we flat even more really strong hands preflop.

(02:48):

Again, depending on the positions. If the cutoff puts in a four bet and we’re on the button with pocket kings, we get to flat there with kings as well. If the small blind four bets us, and we’re in the big blind with ace king suited, pocket aces, pocket kings, we’re just always flatting these hands because of how much four bet bluffing the small blind should be doing here, and a lot of these hands we’ve got really heavily dominated. Getting to know the right scenarios where it’s correct to slow play preflop can really help you trap your opponents and stack them after the flop.

Mike Brady (03:20):

Remember that caveat though that Gary threw in there in the middle? If your opponent is a mega nit and they probably just have a very good hand when they four bet, you’re probably better off just going all-in. God forbid you slow play the aces, they end up having queens, and the flop comes king high. In that case, you’re going to cost yourself the chance at stacking them. So if your opponent is a mega nit, you can probably just put all the money in because they’re probably going to call. But if your opponent is an aggressive player who’s going to be four betting as a bluff, which is the correct strategy overall, then you’re going to want to implement these slow plays. Moving on from preflop, when should you slow play on the flop, Gary?

Gary Blackwood (03:59):

Well first of all, let’s talk about the difference between slow playing and pot controlling. Sometimes you’ll play a relatively strong hand passively because it is better than bloating the pot with a bet that’s pot controlling. That’s controlling the size of the pot with a hand which is reasonably strong because it might not want to play for three streets for example. Say we raise in the cutoff, the big blind calls, and the flop comes down six five three with two diamonds. We can see from our sim here that we’re actually checking quite often with our pocket tens and above. This is not slow playing because we’ve got a monster and we’re trapping our opponent. This is playing a hand slowly for pot control. The big blind does really well on this low connected board. Many turn cards that will really make your overpair shrivel up. And it’s a single raised pot probably with a lot of chips behind, so it’s tough to imagine betting tens or jacks on all three streets and getting called by worse.

(04:54):

Again, this is a slow play not to trap our opponent, but simply because this is not a great board at all for a one pair hand, especially in a single raised pot. Let’s change the board here to a more disconnected queen six deuce rainbow. If we were to check back a strong hand on this board, it would be slow playing and not pot control. But as we can see inside the Lucid Poker trainer, solvers do not slow play any strong hands here; sets, two pairs, overpairs. These monsters are almost never, virtually never slow playing when in position. A hand like queen six, pocket deuces, it’s just worth so much money and it wants to play a really big pot. Checking back will cause you to miss out on a whole street of value, and you’ll miss a chance to increase the pot exponentially by the river. People sometimes decide to slow play here so as to quote unquote not lose their customer, but the risk is well worth the reward when you’re able to build the pot. Just wait until you win a big pot by betting three streets here. If we’re out of position, we can check some of our really strong hands. In that case, your in position opponent can still bet and you’ll have the chance to put in a large check raise. In general though, slow playing really strong hands in position in small pots, particularly on dry boards is a humongous no-no. I cannot stress that to you enough. Go ahead, bet. Build the pot. Do not slow play.

Mike Brady (06:23):

So do you really never slow play in position with a hand like top set in a single raised pot?

Gary Blackwood (06:33):

There’s one common scenario where we do want to slow play a set and it’s a very specific scenario with a very specific set on ace king x and ace queen x boards in a single raised pot. We should c-bet very big and overbet in fact because the board is really, really good for us. We’re really polarized with our betting range. Our nutted hands, they want to play for all by the river. That’s the reason we use that very large c-bet on that board. When we do this, the big blind’s response is to fold a lot of low pairs, and even a reasonable amount of second pairs, and even a teeny tiny amount of top pairs as well in theory. This means that against a really large c-bet, around three quarters of their calling range is top pair. Therefore, when we have a set of aces, we block their top pairs so much that we actually want to check back top set here really often. It’s a rare occurrence, but if we really think about the ranges of what can call versus our big bet, it actually makes a lot of sense. Now, if we’re to have a 75% bet size here, our aces will still bet really often. It’s only when we’re overbetting on the flop and we’ve got top set and we block so many of our opponent’s continues that we throw in this check.

Mike Brady (07:49):

We’ve spoken a lot about slow playing in position so far. Let’s look at the other side of it.

Gary Blackwood (07:54):

When you’re out of position as the preflop caller, you should fast play much more often in general for a number of reasons. When we’re the player in the big blind facing a c-bet, we fast play much more often. Looking again at our queen six deuce rainbow for example. The big blind’s pocket deuces, pocket sixes, queen six, queen deuce, virtually always check raising. It’s a single raised pot. The pot is tiny and we’re out of position, which means that if we just call with pocket deuces, it is a disaster if the turn goes check check. That is another street where there’s just no money going in and the strength of our hand in relation to the size of the pot is just unacceptable. It might be tempting to just call here with your pocket sixes and let your opponent bluff or catch up, but here’s the problem. It is virtually impossible to stack your opponent if we just call here. Their medium strength hands like pocket jacks and queen eight, they’re going to c-bet on the flop and then just check back on the turn. So let’s fast out of position on the flop, bloat the pot, and get maximum value with your monsters.

Mike Brady (09:00):

If we look at this spot in the Lucid Poker trainer, we can verify what Gary is saying about that problem where they’re often going to check back the turn. If we just call the flop on a queen six two flop and the turn is let’s say the seven of hearts. We check to our opponent again, the in position player is supposed to check back the turn 62% of the time here. They’re only going to put in a bet about 38% of the time, and they’re checking back with hands as strong as queen ten for top pair with a medium kicker, they’re checking back pocket jacks, they’re checking back a ton of bluffs. Yeah, there are a handful of hands that are continuing to bluff that maybe picked up a draw, but for the most part we’re going to face a check on the turn after they’ve had their c-bet called on the flop, and that is a disaster when you have a set or two pair. So don’t make that mistake, don’t get yourself in this spot. Just fast play on the flop and you’re going to make a lot more money.

Gary Blackwood (09:50):

One last thing I want to talk about and this is really important is you’ve got to really appreciate the wideness of your opponent’s range and that’s something even really quite experienced players struggle with. If we check raise the flop here with pocket deuces, it’s not like we just get called by king queen and ace queen and pocket jacks and things like that. Our opponent is going to c-bet on the flop, and then float so wide with hands like king jack, king ten with a backdoor flush draw, eight seven with a backdoor flush draw, gut shots, ace highs, the list goes on. So it’s not like we’re just check raising and getting called by top pair. If we really appreciate the wideness of our opponent’s range here it becomes even more appealable to fast play your bottom set because you’re getting called by so many hands like ace high and king high, et cetera. We definitely want a fast play here

Mike Brady (10:37):

If you play low stakes live, you might be thinking, well, my opponents won’t float on the flop vs a check raise with ace high or king high. And that very well may be true, but all that means is your bluffs when you check raise are going to overperform. They’re going to over realize their equity. So as long as you still have that well-built check raising range that includes these strong hands balanced by bluffs, which includes gut shots and backdoor draws, you’re going to be printing money in this spot.You kind of can’t go wrong. They’re either going to defend the proper range and you’re going to get great value with your strong hands, or they’re going to play too tight and you’re going to print money with your bluffs. That’s the power of playing a balanced strategy. So that’s the rule, but let’s talk about the exception. When should you lean towards slow playing from the big blind with a flopped monster?

Gary Blackwood (11:24):

Such spots are not that common, but they do still exist, and it’s all to do with the bet size that our opponent chooses. If they bet smaller, one third or half pot. We basically always raise our sets and our really strong hands that we’ve spoken about. But if our opponent bets bigger, say 75% pots, we start to just call with some of those really strong hands. Let’s look at nine six three with two diamonds. Again, cutoff versus big blind, single raised pot. As the big blind, our pocket sixes and our pocket nines actually check call the flop here slow playing sometimes versus the bigger bet size. But our bottom set of three should raise every time, and that’s because they don’t block flopped pairs that will call versus our check raise. We can look at the example that we saw earlier on the ace king six rainbow flop.

(12:14):

This flop is very good for our opponent, so the solver prefers to overbet in their shoes. If our opponent is using that solver approved big bet size, we should react with a simple defensive strategy of rarely raising the flop. In theory, we see our pocket sixes, our ace six, our king six not raising that often and we can actually see our range only raising 2% of the time here, and that’s because our opponent has used that large bet. I personally actually simplify my strategy in this spot and just don’t play any check raises. It’s just difficult to find the bluffs along with that rare pocket sixes that elect to raise and it’s also a board that your opponent has overbet the flop on, so it’s likely they’re going to barrel off. So it’s nice for us to have a hand like a set of sixes, which can call down. It’s kind of cool to see the gradual effect in the solver, we always raise versus a 33% c-bet, and then raise a middling amount versus a larger c-bet, and then never raise versus that over bet size. It’s kind of cool to see the sliding scale.

Mike Brady (13:16):

It is worth noting if your opponents are not using the solver approved bigger bet sizes on these boards. If they’re still going for a small bet on nine six three, or if they’re going for a small bet on ace king six, then you should consider check raising with your strong hands because frankly those hands want the pot to be bigger as soon as possible and when they’ve used that big bet, the pot is already getting big so you can kind of slow play, but when they put in that small bet, you’re kind of thinking that’s not enough for this hand. I want to put more money in now and build this pot so you can do that. We’ve been focused on single raised pots, but things can change in three bet pots because the stack to pot ratio is smaller. IE: You have fewer chips behind compared to what’s in the pot. How should our listeners approach slow playing with monsters in three bet pots?

Gary Blackwood (14:06):

Because the pot is already so big you can slow play more often in three bet pots, especially when you’re in position. Let’s look at a couple of examples in the solver here. First one example where we’re in position and we rarely fast play. You raise from the button, the small blind three bets, and you defend. The flop is jack six five rainbow, and the small blind bets half pot on the flop. Our really strong hands, sets and two pairs, are just almost never raising here. They need no protection and since we’re in position if the small blind checks the turn we can ensure a bet goes in. Also, if the small blind has missed some high card hands like ace four or king queen, we’ve given them the chance to continue bluffing or catch up to a second best hand that can pay us off. Those high card hands are drawing so slim versus our strong hands, so let’s keep them on the hook by slow playing. The main crux of this argument here though is that the pot is already really quite big and we can still play for stacks by the river if we just decide to call.

Mike Brady (15:09):

If we just call versus that half pot bet, the pot’s going to be around 50 big blinds going into the turn and you’re only going to have 77 big blinds behind, so that’s like one and a half pots behind in your stack. You’ve got two streets to get that money in and you’re in position. It’s not going to be a tall task to get all-in with your monsters. So that’s when you’re in position. Should our listeners fast play more often when they’re out of position in three bet pots as the caller?

Gary Blackwood (15:36):

Yes, when we don’t have the advantage of being in position, we should slow play less often with our monsters on the flop. Suppose we raise in the cutoff, the button three bets, and we call. Same flop as we just saw jack six five rainbow, and we check to our opponent. When the button bets we should raise much more often than in the previous scenario. This is partly because we don’t want to let our opponent check back on the turn, but we can also expect our opponent to play looser against our raise because they’re in position. We saw this earlier in the single raised pot, the same thing applies in this three bet pot. They can bet the flop and then call our check raise with lots of backdoor hands and overcards that they would never be able to bet call when they’re out of position.

Mike Brady (16:20):

When we use Lucid to force the button to bet half pot on this jack six five flop, and then make the cutoff raise to a relatively small size. The button is getting a really, really good price. They have to call like 11 blinds to win the 43 blinds in the middle, so nearly four to one, and they are calling this check raise with hands as weak as queen ten suited with a backdoor flush draw. So that’s like one over card and some backdoor draws. They’re calling pretty much every time with ace queen suited two overcards, sometimes even without a backdoor flush draw. Ace king suited is calling every time, king queen suited is continuing every time. Again, maybe your real life opponents won’t find these calls and maybe you can make some adjustments if you know that that’s the case. But A that’s going to mean your bluffs overperform in this spot, and B, I would actually challenge that because I think when you go for a small check raise on this flop against a three bettor, they might be pretty tempted to call with ace queen suited or ace king suited two overcards and some backdoor draws.

(17:25):

I think even some of your tightest live opponents are going to find those calls, and how amazing is it to get this much money in on the flop with a set against a hand like ace high, which is essentially drawing dead against you? Let’s say you’re the player who three bet preflop rather than the one who called the three bet. Should you ever mix in some traps in those situations?

Gary Blackwood (17:46):

Very much so, particularly when your opponent has a lot of floats, which they may bluff. I mentioned this earlier, appreciating the wideness of your opponent’s range is extremely important in the game of poker. Say we three bet preflop from the small blind and flop a set on queen six deuce rainbow. If we think about our flop strategy, we wanna bet really often on this flop including with our sets. But on any turn the solver starts slow playing really often with both flopped sets and both turned sets as well. Remember, the button gets to float our c-bet really wide on the flop, so they’ll get to the turn with a bunch of hands that are drawing slim or are drawing dead. Plus, when we have a set we really heavily block our opponent’s pairs that can call and they’re more likely to have one of their ace highs or their king highs or even their nine high floats or their gut shots or something that has to fold versus our turn bet. So we see the solver start slow playing sets in this scenario in an attempt to induce bluffs, and to also just make sure our opponent doesn’t just fold the turn really, really often. It’s a really great spot to check your sets and understanding why we want to check our sets is extremely important.

Mike Brady (19:01):

I’ve been throwing in a lot of caveats for low stakes live games and just weaker competition games in general. This is one where I think slow playing on the turn is probably not going to be as good against those types of players. You can jump in and disagree with me if you do Gary, but I don’t see a lot of low stakes live opponents floating the flop with ace jack on this queen six deuce flop, and then betting when checked to on the turn. I think it’s more going to be that they’re weighted towards just top pair or a decent hand that’s going to continue calling if you bet. So this is one where if your opponent is one of those weaker players who put simply isn’t going to float the flop a lot and isn’t going to bluff a lot on the turn when checked to, maybe just keep betting with your pocket sixes to get value. Maybe just keep betting with your turned sets. Top set specifically, I’d probably still slow play that because you block so much of their continued range, but that’s one spot where I think in real life against lower level opponents, you’re going to want to play a little bit differently than the solver.

Gary Blackwood (20:04):

Yeah, Mike, I totally agree. When we’ve got a hand like pocket sixes and our opponent is really weighted towards top pair, it would then be a bit of a disaster to start checking. So we really need to take into consideration our opponent and the type of guy that we’re playing against. If it’s a very loose player who’s going to float you and then they’re going to have those king highs and ace highs, by all means go ahead and check. But when you’re playing against more ABC tighter players, you want to bet your pocket sixes, your turned sets, you can throw in a check with your pocket queens. That’s absolutely fine. One last thing that I want to add to what Mike said, and this is really important, is that when we do start to check on the turn with hands like pocket sixes and pocket nines, we will see the button bet really quite often with their top pairs. However, against these more passive players, they’re going to check back more often with their top pairs and we end up losing value. So it’s really important that versus those tighter players we’re aggressive and we’re continuing to bet and we’re not slow playing with those sixes and nines.

Mike Brady (21:02):

I was thinking the same thing. I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen a live player check back like king queen on a queen high board, or even like ace queen on a queen high board. Just no interest in going for what isn’t even thin value, but I guess in their mind it’s thin value. They’re just a little afraid and they check it back. That is just a disaster. Like imagine checking a set to slow play on this turn and they check back ace queen for top pair, top kicker. Oh, that would just be brutal. We don’t want to steer you in that direction, y’all. That’s all we’ve got for you today. As a friendly reminder, the once per year sitewide Black Friday sale is happening over on Upswing Poker right now through next week. Go over to upswingpoker.com, get 25% off anything you want on the site, and that includes the Upswing Lab and the Lucid Poker trainer that we used extensively throughout this episode. I’ve got a special episode about pot odds coming to you next week. I’ll see you then.