Basic Poker Moves

Slow Playing
While this isn’t necessarily the most complex or secret poker move, it is one that can be highly effective against the right opponents. Slow playing is where you make a monster hand and you decide to take the cagey approach and play your hand passively.

Used in the right circumstances this move can help you make money from situations which wouldn’t have been possible had you chosen to start value betting your hand. There are two important caveats to remember when opting to slow play a hand: make sure the opponent is willing to bet for you and always know when to say enough is enough and bring the hammer down.

Taking the passive route will only ever be profitable if your opponent is aggressive enough to capitalise on your façade of weakness and bet at you. Slow playing against a passive fish will not only gain you the least value from your hand it also has a canny knack of biting you where it hurts from time to time.

The phrase “slow played to death” is something many players encounter when they fail to consider the mitigating factors surrounding their slow play attempt.

Indeed, by slow playing against someone who rarely bets it makes the chances of you getting outdrawn much higher, because it is likely the hand will reach showdown and your opponent will have five cards to improve their hand.

The second important point to remember is that you always need to know when you’ve sat on the back foot for too long and the texture of the board dictates you should spring into action with a bet. Consider this hand:

You hold top set on a board of 3d, 8s, Tc.
You check and your opponent makes a bet.
You call and the turn comes the 7s.

Should you check again and if your opponent bets do you just flat call again?

In this scenario we knew our opponent was likely to bet if we checked the flop and given the texture of the board this is a fine play. The turn, however, has brought a second spade making a flush draw possible; it also makes a straight draw possible.

This is the time when it is important to consider the board texture and contemplate bring the hammer down and taking the betting lead. Checking again is fine if we feel the villain will bet but flat calling again, in this situation, is a mistake.

This is because there is a chance that the river card will complete one of the draws and we could end up losing our stack. It is a much better choice to either lead the turn and look to get our money in as a favourite or check raise all-in.

Either way the change in board texture makes it necessary to stop slow playing an become more active in the hand. In addition to these two points you need to ask yourself this very important question: how strong is my hand in reality?

Slow playing should be reserved for premium hands only; flopping top pair top kicker is not place where you would consider slow playing your hand.

3-Betting
3-betting is essentially a pre-flop move whereby you re-raise an opponent’s raise. To illustrate this, let’s look at the following example:

$0.5/$1 6-max, cash game
Player 1 – Folds
Player 2 – Raises to $3.5
Player 3 – Folds
Player 4 (btn) – Raises to 12
Player 5 (SB) – Folds
Player 6 (BB) – Folds

In this example player 4 on the button has made a re-raise of the initial opening bet by player 2 and this is what is known as a 3-bet. Now we know what a 3-bet is, why do we do them and when should we do them?

First things first, let’s deal with the why part of the equation. Basically, a 3-bet is re-raise made mainly for value but in some instances it can be made as a bluff.

By 3-betting pre-flop you are essentially saying to the table that:
1) You believe you have a strong hand and that it is stronger than the original raiser
And
2) You are prepared to play a large pot post flop (essentially you are saying you’re ready to go all the way with your hand).

3-betting makes a strong statement to the rest of the table and that is why it is also possible to use it sparingly as a bluffing move. In my opinion though, you should only ever consider 3-betting if you have a strong hand and are willing to commit a large portion of your stack with it.

So in which situations should we be looking to 3-bet people? The most profitable times are either when we have a premium hand (AA, KK, QQ or AK) or when we feel the original raiser has been far too active.

It goes without saying that, as with most situations in poker, it is much more profitable to 3-bet in position than out of position and for this reason we should really only consider three betting monster hands from out of position.

If we have AA and see a raise in front of us it is very tempting just to flat call and disguise our hand but the advantage of 3-betting is that if our opponent calls there will be more money in the pot. Thus, if we can build the pot early with our premium hands we can get the maximum amount of value from them.

Indeed, many low stakes fish find it hard to fold so when they raise from seat 2 with AT suited or pocket sevens they are unlikely to fold to a 3-bet much of the time. This means that we can go to the flop with much more money in the middle, therefore, making our job of getting their entire stack much easier.

The other time in which we can 3-bet profitably is if we feel our opponent has been raising too many hands pre-flop and their range is likely to be relatively weak.

In this situation we might consider 3-betting hands such as KJ suited or KQ offsuit. When we do this we have two chances to win the pot, either the villain realises they are weak and they fold or they call and when the flop comes they check to us and we make a continuation bet.

Being brave enough to continuation bet into a large pot is crucial if our opponent checks to us because 9 times out of 10 we will win the pot. Indeed, our bet can generally be around half the pot in order to bluff our opponent out of the hand.