Slowplaying Big Hands Pre-Flop
Generally, experienced players like to recommend that newer/novice level poker players play their big starting hands very aggressively, and I have to agree. Pocket aces do not guarantee a victory, even when raised with pre-flop, and limping with such a hand only allows other players to get involved with weak hands that may flop big. Does that mean it’s impossible to slowplay a big hand? Of course not, but the circumstances for making a decision to do so have to be right.
Let’s take a look at playing pocket aces aggressively and then passively, both from early position. In the aggressive scenario, you raise about three times the big blind in early position. Anyone with weak starting hands, small pocket pairs, suited connectors and the like will probably end up folding. If you do get any callers it will likely be from players will hands like A-K, K-Q, medium pocket pairs, and big suited connectors. Now when the flop comes, you should have a fairly good idea of where you stand considering that the players still in the hand had to call a raise in order to stick around. If the flop comes K-K-10 and there are two players in the hand, you’ll know that it is very possible one of them stuck around to see the flop with a hand like K-Q in late position. You may not win the hand now, but at least you can hopefully lose the minimum. Getting this extra information came from playing pocket aces the way most experienced players would in early position.
Now let’s do the reverse. You limp in early position with pocket aces and five other players also limp. The flop comes Q-J-8 with two hearts. How strong are you right now in the hand? The problem is, you really have no idea. It’s unlikely that another player would limp with a hand like Q-Q, so you can usually rule out trip queens in this situation. But what about Q-J, or pocket eights, or K-10? By letting players limp in to see a cheap flop when you hold a huge pocket pair, you’re opening up the possibilities for them to get lucky on the flop, turn or river, and the whole time you’ll be hard pressed to know exactly where you stand.
When you slowplay a huge hand pre-flop, you want to try and make sure that doing so is going to not put you in very uncomfortable situation. If the table you’re playing at is very tight and you’re worried that raising with your aces pre-flop is going to drive away all of your opponents, you may want to try and limp in with aces in middle to late position and hopefully get no more than 2-3 other limpers. From there you will probably want to play your aces aggressively on the flop, if for no other reason than to try and get some information as to just how strong your hand now is.
Slowplaying a hand like AA or KK in a tournament could make a little more sense, but again it depends on the scenario. If someone else at my table is short stacked and I have to act before them pre-flop, I may check with my big pocket pair with hopes that they’ll push all-in. In both a cash game and tournament I would also probably limp in with a big hand if I were in the small blind or big blind and only had one or two callers following me to the flop.
So in the end, yes there are definitely circumstances where you can try and slowplay your big hands pre-flop, but always try to make sure that you are doing so in situations that will put you at the least amount of risk as possible.
By: Chris Iaquinta
