To Slowplay or Not? (Two Hands give me a line)

[droolie]

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Slowplay criteria

You need all 3 to be true:

1) Pot has to be small. Once the pot gets big it becomes right to win it or make them pay to get cards. This rules out hand 1.
2) You have to have a reasonable chance of your opponent getting a second best hand with the free card that you give. But the free card you give isn't likely to beat you. This rules out 1 and 2 since they could already have an A. It especially rules out 2 since there's a four flush out there. YES, even heads up.
3) Betting now will likely make them fold. Heh, this rules out 1 and 2 since they could have an Ace in each and a flush draw in 2.

Conclusion: Bet hand 1 and Bet hand 2

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I think all three of these apply to hand 2.

1) Small pot. Check.

2) You have to have a reasonable chance of your opponent getting a second best hand with the free card that you give.

There are basically no scare cards for me. With this small pot I'm willing to take the chance that some runner runner will sink me. I would love another A to hit as I boat up and get a ton of action. The few times I lose to a bigger boat I can live with. As far as the flush potential, HU I'll take my chances he's not suited in diamonds. My only concern about diamonds was that it would kill the slowplay.

3) Betting now will likely make them fold.

I think if he doesn't have an A he folds when I bet into him on the flop or at best he folds UI on the turn and I win .5BB. If this street gets checked I really don't mind because he would have folded to a bet. This gives him a chance to make a second best hand on the turn. When he bets I know he'll bet the turn and I can check raise. If I'm lucky enough he'll play back at me.

[chris_a]

Ok, the pot is kinda small, I'll give you that.

To reiterate point 2:
2) You have to have a reasonable chance of your opponent getting a second best hand with the free card that you give.

But the fact is that he could already have a very good second best hand (pair of Aces, especially since he raised preflop) or a flush draw. While you shouldn't live in fear of the flush, it's possible that the third diamond could beat you. Make him pay for it.. If you flopped a full house it would be a different story.

The slowplay on the second hand isn't as bad as the first, but I still would lean towards betting because of the 4 flush and the A being out there.

[droolie]

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Ok, the pot is kinda small, I'll give you that.

To reiterate point 2:
2) You have to have a reasonable chance of your opponent getting a second best hand with the free card that you give.

But the fact is that he could already have a very good second best hand (pair of Aces, especially since he raised preflop) or a flush draw. While you shouldn't live in fear of the flush, it's possible that the third diamond could beat you. Make him pay for it.. If you flopped a full house it would be a different story.


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Since it's HU I want him to figure out he has a second best hand on an expensive street. I think it increases the net by a full BB.

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The slowplay on the second hand isn't as bad as the first, but I still would lean towards betting because of the 4 flush and the A being out there.

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As far as the flush concerns I don't mind playing with fire HU. Put another player in the mix and I don't attempt this even when drunk at a 2+2 table!

As far as the A is concerned part of the reason I tried the slowplay was because the A was there. Against a passive opponent the A kills my action if villain doesn't have one and promises me a decent amount of action on the turn when I come alive if he does. It certainly does not scare me that villain might have AA. If that's the case I'll take my lumps.

[chris_a]

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Since it's HU I want him to figure out he has a second best hand on an expensive street. I think it increases the net by a full BB.

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I would be amazed if anyone agreed that it increases your net by a full BB. Maybe you could explain why you think so. In fact, I think that if there is an increase, that it's extremely small.

The fact that it's heads up means that he might call the flop anyway with a KQ or another hand that doesn't feel best to him on the flop, but might if he spikes a pair. If he had absolute junk, he's probably not going to call anyway.

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As far as the flush concerns I don't mind playing with fire HU. Put another player in the mix and I don't attempt this even when drunk at a 2+2 table!

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Funny!

Anyway, I'll grant you that heads up is different and I'm not an expert at it. However, especially heads up, I tend to lean towards betting when I have it, and when I'm semibluffing. This tends to mask my play and gives my opponent the chance to fold. Sometimes your opponent is going to fold when you have trips. It's just the way it is. Does that mean you shouldn't value bet your trips? I don't think so. Do people fold that much heads up in a pot like this? Especially at 0.5/1.0? Especially guys like you described? Don't you want to lean towards just betting against an opponent like this for value? Why get fancy?

Keep in mind, that when you check with the best of it, you're letting your opponent have a free card. You have to have a really good reason to give your opponent a free card when you have the best of it. Not only are you giving him a free card, you're making it possibly cheaper for him to show down. You have to be able to more than make up for the value missed by checking, by increased action on later streets. This is the entire point of Sklansky's three criteria for slowplaying. I can't see why this hand qualifies as a hand where you can make up for it on later streets. Am I being that dense?

[jskills]

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Hand 2 - you MUST bet since there's a 2 flush on the board.

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Are you saying this because you fear I will lose to a flush or because the potential of a flush card ruining my slowplay potential? Keep in mind this hand is now HU.

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I know that the potential a flush will beat you in a HU situation is lower than it is with many opponents, but I still think you need to bet here regardless. The mistake of not betting when you're ahead to force a person to either fold or mistakenly call with incorrect odds is clearly worse than that of managing to squeeze an extra bet out of the situation.

[droolie]

Let me start this by saying I almost NEVER slowplay. The conditions in which I will are almost always like this. HU, small pot, I have a monster and am 90% sure I'm way ahead and practically uncatchable and very concerned villian will fold or calldown if we show strength too soon.

You're right that playing str8forward is practically never a mistake and even in this example my fancy play might not have altered my final pot. I just think that a little creativity in these spots isn't necessarily a bad thing and in fact can be quite worthwhile. Micros is so anti-FPS that there needs to be some balance to the discussion, hence this thread....

In this example him catching up isn't really necessary for our slowplay to be more profitable than str8forward play. (Hopefully I can demonstrate it well enough to be convincing...)

I estimate that around 50% of the time he doesn't have an A.

When he has no A he's very likely to fold the flop or turn when we bet into him. I will say he is equally likely to fold the flop (0BB), turn(0.5BB) and calldown(2.5BB). That's a 1BB average earn.

When we check the flop and he doesn't have the A...
I estimate 75% of the time he bets 25% of the time he checks. (If he checks we continue the slowplay and check the turn to give him another chance to bet. If he checks the turn we bet the river. I say on average conservatively we extract 1BB out of him the 25% of the time he checks the flop through. Most of these flop check throughs would be folds if we had bet into him.) Him representing the A 75% of the time is debateable I'm sure but I think I'm close to correct here. If he has no A he's very likely to have a pocket pair and bet that for value, preparing to dump it to a check raise.

If he bets and we just call this bet he's very likley to bet the turn as well. This allows us to take the line I took which is the check raise. 50% of the time he'll calldown(3.5BB) the other 50% he'll fold(1.5BB). This is a 2.5BB average extraction. 75% of the time we get 2.5BB, 25% of the time we get 1BB when he has no A. That's an average of 2.125BB overall.

By my conservative estimate 50% of the time we suck an extra BB out of him when he has no A.


The other 50% of the time he has the A.

In those situations he is equally likely to calldown (usually a weak A 2.5BB) when we bet into him and raise the flop and calldown to the reraise (usually a big A 3.5BB). If he caps the flop we have to worry about AA (5% of the time maybe). That's an average of 3BB.

When we check the flop he will bet his A 100% of the time (.5BB). He will bet the turn 100% of the time (1BB). When we check/raise he will calldown 50% of the time (2BB) he will reraise before calling down 50% of the time(4BB) (I know this is a guess and possibly too high a % but we are going on the premise that he will assume we are stealing from him and will push back until he realizes too late he is beaten. I do not think he will fold very often here.) Therefore 50% of the time he will give us 3.5BB, 50% of the time he will give us 5.5BB. That's a 4.5 BB average. Therefore we make more on average when he has the A than we did when he didn't!

Obviously in both examples I haven't factored in the times when he hits a miracle to beat us. I think the potential gain is worth the 5% likelihood of him catching us from behind. Let's say losing the entire post to a slowplay cuts our expectation down .5BB on avarage. I think this is a very conservative estimate but I admit it's a wild guess.(If we are dead to a flopped set of A's we're screwed either way)

[rabman]

Hand one you are the agressor, there is no reason to believe that someone else will bet except the Button. If you check raise you will face the guys between you with calling two cold. In this situation I prefer to bet out to get as many callers as possible. If raised by the button I'd smooth call and hope for overcalls.

Hand two - just bet it out. You prefer a call from him to having it checked through.

[chris_a]

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The conditions in which I will are almost always like this. HU, small pot, I have a monster and am 90% sure I'm way ahead and practically uncatchable and very concerned villian will fold or calldown if we show strength too soon.

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"HU" isn't a consideration when thinking about slowplaying. "Small pot" is. In fact, I think HU you want to slowplay less since you will get called more often by someone with KQ or 77 thinking they may be catching your bluff. Betting doesn't necessarily mean you have a set here.

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I just think that a little creativity in these spots isn't necessarily a bad thing and in fact can be quite worthwhile. Micros is so anti-FPS that there needs to be some balance to the discussion, hence this thread....

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Yes, there needs to be balance, but for the right reasons. Not just for the sake of balance. Like I said earlier, when you slowplay you have to be sure that the value you are missing by playing passively now will be made up for on later streets. There's a concrete reason.

Which brings us to your analysis....
It's always easy to change probabilities and assume actions when you're trying to show a point, but the fact is that some of these just aren't necessarily true.

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In those situations he is equally likely to calldown (usually a weak A 2.5BB) when we bet into him and raise the flop and calldown to the reraise (usually a big A 3.5BB). If he caps the flop we have to worry about AA (5% of the time maybe). That's an average of 3BB.

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This might be a low estimate.

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When we check the flop he will bet his A 100% of the time (.5BB). He will bet the turn 100% of the time (1BB). When we check/raise he will calldown 50% of the time (2BB) he will reraise before calling down 50% of the time(4BB) (I know this is a guess and possibly too high a % but we are going on the premise that he will assume we are stealing from him and will push back until he realizes too late he is beaten. I do not think he will fold very often here.) Therefore 50% of the time he will give us 3.5BB, 50% of the time he will give us 5.5BB. That's a 4.5 BB average. Therefore we make more on average when he has the A than we did when he didn't!

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The probability of him reraising here is what makes or breaks your argument. You said he's not as aggressive post flop so it may be lower.

That being said, your analysis has convinced me that it's closer than I thought. It might be right. I still don't think it's 1BB extra though.

This isn't a classical slowplay as much as just HU deception given that you don't want to kill your action when he does have his A. Nice job. I've officially learned something.

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I estimate 75% of the time he bets 25% of the time he checks. (If he checks we continue the slowplay and check the turn to give him another chance to bet. If he checks the turn we bet the river. I say on average conservatively we extract 1BB out of him the 25% of the time he checks the flop through. Most of these flop check throughs would be folds if we had bet into him.)

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There's no way checking again on the turn is even close to right here if he checks behind you on the flop.