Slowplaying hands

With the explosion of online poker and the booming popularity of poker there are fewer and fewer secrets and techniques that poker players employ which are of any surprise. Televised events such as the World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker illustrate for the world to see all of the different strategies and techniques employed by world-class players at the table. One of the most common, best known and yet still effective poker strategies and techniques is the “slowplay.”

The “slowplay” in poker is actually a bluff in a way as a “slowplay” is when a player feigns weakness when he really has strong poker hands.

Let’s say a Texas Hold’Em player draws pocket poker hands such as a jack-five, which really isn’t all that special or powerful as far as poker hands go. This player was able to limp in with this jack-five before flopping a monster of jack-five-five giving him a full house. Now the player with the full house has a decision to make which is whether or not he should flex his muscles and raise which carries the possibility of scaring off the other players into mucking their hands or he can slowplay the full house with a check, implying that the flop didn’t help him and potentially suck in many more chips from the players at the poker table.

One of the arts of Texas Hold’Em poker, particularly the no limit variety and regardless if you are playing at an online poker website or in person casino poker room is to maximize powerful hands for the most amount of chips possible.

The player that slow plays the above example and similar poker hands, exercises one of the most important poker rules of thumb and that is to maximize one’s profit potential. Part of a Texas Hold’Em poker player’s ability to pull off a slowplay, regardless if of where he is paying, is his ability to change gears and keep his opponents guessing.