To Slowplay or Not to Slowplay

[davelin]

Hello my fellow ML'ers,

There has been a disturbing number of "slowplay monster hands" posts going around here. I'm seeing flopped flushes, sets and even quads getting checked on the flop (and sometimes even on the turn!). It seems like newer players greatly look forward for these opportunities to slowplay hands (probably from watching too much poker on TV) but I honestly believe that the burden of proof is on why to slowplay, not on why to fastplay. In other words, my default line is to fastplay and look for slowplaying opportunities as a minority of cases.

To show this, let’s say that there are two ways to play these hands – fastplay or slowplay and one of them is the correct play for each of these situations. Let’s say that slowplaying is the right move 15% of the time. The exact number isn’t important here, but I think looking at a lot of these sample hands should show that slowplaying is the minority, not the majority of cases.

Let’s say you fastplay every single hand. What is your error rate then? It’s 15% because that represents the percentage of cases you incorrectly fastplayed instead of slowplayed.

Let’s say you attempt to slowplay exactly 15% of the time. What’s your error rate here? Anywhere from 0% to 30%. If you identify the exact right times to slowplay, your error rate will be 0%. But if you mis-identify each situation, not only are you wrong when you do choose to slowplay, but you also miss the times you’re supposed to do it. So your error rate then is 30%. So on average you error rate is the same as if you fastplayed every hand.

Now comes the case where you try to slowplay too many times (the majority of cases for the newer player I believe), say around 25% of the time. What’s your error rate then? Between 10% and 40% for an average of 25%.

This I believe shows how your errors compound when you look for too many cases to slowplay which is I firmly believe a minority proposition. Instead lean toward fastplaying the high majority of the time, and then get your percentage of times you slowplay slowly up.

[dr. klopek]

Agreed.

The loose/aggressiveness of the ML players, as well as their willingness to call down aimlessly, is why the game is profitable. The flop is the best time to get action from weak hands. Plus, I'm tired of looking through all these "bet my aces full???" posts.

[GrunchCan]

Good post.

[Ianco15]

Fast playing has become the new slowplaying.

[scotty34]

I kind of like this little excerpt from Gary Carson's The Complete Book of Hold'em Poker regarding FPS and slowplaying:

Straightforward Play

Especially when you are just beginning the game, you will want to play your hand very straightforwardly. Bet or raise when you have the best hand, check when you don't have the best hand, and fold or call based on whether you are getting sufficient pot odds to draw. It's very easy for a beginner to develop what's called Fancy Play Syndrome (FPS). That means you slowplay too much, check-raise too much, semi-bluff too much, and generally spend too much time trying to be deceptive. It doesn't work.

Listed below are the symptoms of Fancy Play Syndrome

-Slowplay
Slowplay means you are playing a very strong hand weakly. You're checking and calling rather than betting and raising. There are times to slowplay, but not many of them. You should consider slow play if you have an almost unbeatable hand like a straight flush, four of a kind, or the best possible full house. You should consider it, but not always do it. With weaker hands you should seldom even consider it.

pp. 59-61

[A_C_Slater]

Exactly. An unbeatable hand like my quad aces example. I don't like Davelin's condescending attitude. Like I slowplayed cause I saw it on TV and thought it was the cool thing to do. I slowplayed the quads to get more money because I was certain they all would have folded to a flop bet and most ML players on the button can't stand letting a flop or turn get checked thru when last to act.

I am only advocating it when the deck is totally crippled and you can't possibly lose the hand. That is all.

[Shillx]

[ QUOTE ]
Exactly. An unbeatable hand like my quad aces example. I don't like Davelin's condescending attitude. Like I slowplayed cause I saw it on TV and thought it was the cool thing to do. I slowplayed the quads to get more money because I was certain they all would have folded to a flop bet and most ML players on the button can't stand letting a flop or turn get checked thru when last to act.

I am only advocating it when the deck is totally crippled and you can't possibly lose the hand. That is all.

[/ QUOTE ]

He was mainly referring to people who check behind on the flop with the top set. However, slowplaying quad aces is probably not the best strategy (like slowplaying quad 3's for example). It is hard to give someone a hand to go crazy with when two aces are on board and no one has any (besides yourself). Even if someone makes an underfull, they still might play it safe because anyone with an ace beats them. At least with a small ranking quads, people can catch an overcard to throw in a raise with. And if they make an overfull, you are going to win a huge pot.

Brad

[GrunchCan]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't like Davelin's condescending attitude.

[/ QUOTE ]

He wasn't talking specifically to you. In fact, I can tell you that your quad-aces example is not why davelin posted in the first place.

Don't take it personal.