Fundamentals of Slowplaying

By Tony Guerrera

When you get a monster hand in a no limit hold’em game, you’d like to take down a gigantic pot. Slowplaying, also known as sandbagging, is playing a huge hand passively, in the hopes that your opponents will catch hands that they’ll pay you off with. Some players slowplay every time they hit a big hand, thinking that they are maximizing their winnings. After all, doing so seems intuitively correct. However, by automatically slowplaying, these players are actually costing themselves money in the long run. Deciding when to slowplay a big hand is really a function of what your opponents hold and how they play. To see this concept in action, let’s consider an example hand.

The Hand

You are playing in a $200 buy-in game with $1-$2 blinds. Action folds to you, and you raise to $8 with AA in middle position. A conservative player in late position calls, and everyone else folds. There is $19 in the pot. You have $250 left, and your opponent has $200 left. The flop is AA5. How should you play this hand?

The first step in deciding how to play this hand is figuring out your opponent’s hand distribution. The best way to do this is to trace through all the betting action, starting with the preflop action. Your opponent is conservative, so he must have called your preflop raise with a good hand. Conservative players usually like to guarantee heads-up action with big pocket pairs, meaning that your opponent would have reraised with AA, KK, or QQ. He may have also reraised with JJ, TT, or AK-remember that there’s always some uncertainty involved when reading opponents. A reasonable calling distribution to assign is probably something like JJ, TT, 99, 88, AK, AQ, and AJ.

After the flop, it’s impossible for your opponent to have any hand containing an ace. Therefore, you can narrow your opponent’s distribution down to JJ, TT, 99, and 88. Now that you know your opponent’s hand distribution, the next step in your analysis is to predict how your opponent will play given his possible holdings. We’ll consider two different opponent profiles.

Opponent Profile #1

On the flop, he will fold if you bet and check if you check. On the turn, your opponent will fold if you bet (unless he hits a boat) and check if you check. On the river, he will fold if you bet (unless he hits a boat or quads) and check if you check (unless he hit a boat or quads). The only way to increase your EV from the $19 in the pot that you are guaranteed to win is to allow your opponent to catch a full house or quads.

For a specific pocket pair (JJ for example), the probability that your opponent does not get a full house or quads is . The probability that he catches a full house or quads with a specific pocket pair is therefore . There are four pocket pairs in your opponent’s distribution, meaning that the probability of him improving to a full house or quads is (.25)(.088) + (.25)(.088) + (.025)(.088) + (.025)(.088) = .088. Assuming that you stack your opponent when he hits a full house or quads, your EV for slowplaying is (.912)(+$19) + (.088)(+$219) = $36.6.

Opponent Profile #2

If he doesn’t improve his hand, he will check behind if you check. If he doesn’t improve to a full house or quads, he’s willing to call one pot-sized bet, whether it be on the flop, the turn, or the river (provided that an overcard to his pocket pair doesn’t fall). Against this opponent, the most profitable way to play the hand is to make a pot-sized bet the flop, to check the turn, and to then bet the river, hoping that your opponent hit. Your EV for this line of play is (.912)(+$38) + (.088)($219) = $53.93.

The Moral of The Story

If you go on autopilot and reflexively slowplay to the river against opponent #2, you are costing yourself $17.33 worth of EV. The optimal actions to take against each opponent in this hand are somewhat obvious, but this hand is a perfect example of why slowplaying a monster hand isn’t always automatic. In actual play, your optimal decisions may not be as obvious as they were in this hand, but the lesson to be learned is clear.

If your opponents’ hand distributions contain virtually no hands that they’ll immediately pay you off with, then slowplaying will usually optimize your EV. However, if your opponents’ distributions contain a large percentage of hands that they’ll immediately pay you off with, then slowplaying is usually not the best line of play; by not slowplaying in these situations, you might not win as many monster pots, but all the smaller pots you win will usually add up to significantly more profits in the long run.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker by the Numbers

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