Optimizing Strategy for Bigger Pots
In the realm of poker, one of the most critical decisions revolves around exactly how to play a strong-made hand, such as middle or bottom set. The two primary strategies at your disposal are fast playing and slow playing. Each approach has distinct advantages and is suited to different game dynamics and opponent types. This article delves deep into the comparison between fast playing and slow playing, particularly focusing on scenarios where each approach is optimal. We will explore which method leads to bigger pots and more value, providing justifications and practical insights to enhance your poker strategy.
Understanding Fast Playing and Slow Playing
What is Fast Playing?
Fast playing involves continuing to bet, assuming you were the pre-flop raiser (which you should be), with a strong hand to build a pot. The objective is to extract maximum value by leveraging recreational player’s fear of being bluffed. This allows you to start building a pot early and to continue building the pot on subsequent streets.
This strategy leverages the strength of your hand in a way that is counterintuitive to most recreational players. Most rec players instinctively want to slow play big hands not wanting to scare players off.
This is why fast playing against recreational players can be so profitable. Betting a strong hand is generally interpreted as a marginal hand since, in the rec player’s mind, you would want to slow play a strong hand. This will lead to large pots built over three streets.
What is Slow Playing?
Conversely, slow playing is a deceptive strategy where you play your strong hand passively. This involves checking and calling bets by other players instead of taking the betting lead.
The goal is to disguise the strength of your hand, encouraging opponents to bet or bluff, thereby increasing the pot size without revealing your hand’s true value prematurely. Then, typically on the turn or river, you raise in an attempt to build a big pot fast.
Fast Playing in Position and Against Passive Players
The Advantage of Being in Position
Fast playing in position can be particularly effective since it gives you the ability to manipulate pot sizes. When checked to by the players ahead of you an initial bet of 25-33% of the pot allows you to determine if any of your opponents has a hand they want to try and get to showdown with.
When a villain checks and then calls your bet it gives you the opportunity to build the pot gradually. This smaller initial bet size is designed to disguise the strength of your hand, the goal is to get called by weaker holdings or drawing hands.
Playing Against Passive Recreational Players
Passive recreational players tend to bet their hands less but call more bets with a wide range. They are not always confident enough to bet their hands value, they prefer letting other players do the betting in a very passive manner.
Fast playing with smaller initial bet sizing takes advantage of this behavior. By starting with a bet of 25-33% the pot, you can build the pot incrementally, allowing you to increase your bet sizes on subsequent streets.
This strategy ensures that you maximize value from players who are likely to call with weaker hands but are unlikely to bet or raise. By increasing your bets slowly, over several streets, you are able to build a sizeable pot without your opponent realizing exactly how many chips they have committed until it is too late.
Counterintuitive Nature of Fast Playing
Many recreational players find fast playing counterintuitive, they are accustomed to slow playing strong hands to avoid intimidating others. They generally do not expect a strong hand to initiate betting and are far more likely to assume you have a marginal hand or a bluff. By fast playing, you exploit this misconception, encouraging passive players to invest more chips into the pot than they would if you were slow playing.
Building Bigger Pots with Smaller Bets
Starting with smaller bet sizes allows you to build the pot gradually. As the hand progresses and you gain more information about your opponents’ range, you can increase your bet sizes.
This approach maximizes the pot size while ensuring that you are not overcommitting early in the hand. For example, on the flop, a 25% pot bet can entice calls from weaker hands, and on the turn and river, you can escalate your bets to extract more value as the board develops.
This doesn’t mean going from a 25% pot bet to a full pot bet on the turn, but you can size up gradually, maybe 35% pot on the turn. The big difference is that the turn bet of 35% of the pot is now of a bigger pot than if you had checked, leading to a bigger final pot throughout the hand.
Mitigating the Risk of Folding
One concern most new players have with fast playing is “What if everyone folds? If everyone folds don’t I miss out on potential future value?”
In scenarios where passive recreational players are likely to check back when you slow play, betting ensures you are not missing out on value. If you bet and everyone folds, it indicates that those players would have probably checked meaning you weren’t missing out on future value by betting.
Slow Playing Against Aggressive Opponents
Understanding Aggressive Opponent Behavior
While fast playing is almost always the best option for building bigger pots there are some specific situations where slow playing will lead to better outcomes.
Aggressive opponents who frequently bet and raise are the perfect candidates to choose to slow play against. By checking you allow an aggressive opponent to take the initiative. This will often induce them to bet into you, thereby increasing the pot size without revealing your hand’s strength prematurely.
If the player is an overly aggressive maniac there is a strong likelihood that they will see your check as weakness and blast away with any two cards to put the pressure on you. This tactic generally serves them well against weak recreational players but it is their Achilles Heel against good, thinking players looking to exploit their aggression.
Leveraging Aggression to Build the Pot
When facing aggressive opponents, slow playing allows you to leverage their propensity to bet. By checking, you encourage them to bet with a wider range of hands, including bluffs and semi-bluffs. This increases the pot size, as aggressive players are more likely to commit chips when they are in control of the betting action.
Avoiding Value Loss with Passive Players
Conversely, if you slow play against passive recreational players who are likely to check when checked to, even when the have a hand worthy of a bet, you risk losing value. Passive players are less inclined to make aggressive moves without the nuts, so checking to them may result in minimal investment from them. This makes it difficult to recover the lost value on subsequent streets. Therefore, slow playing is less effective in these scenarios compared to fast playing.
Strategic Bet Sizing for Maximum Value
Initial Bet Sizing
Fast playing with smaller initial bet sizing (25-33% of the pot) is a strategic approach to build a bigger pot without tipping opponents off to the strength of your hand. This bet sizing is enough to extract value from worse hands that are calling or even inducing bluffs, while not being so large that it scares away potential callers who might otherwise fold to a larger bet.
Increasing Bet Sizes on Subsequent Streets
As the hand progresses, you can adjust your bet sizes based on the actions of your opponents. On the turn and river, you can increase your bets to extract additional value from hands that have improved and are still worse than yours or from opponents who are likely to call with weaker holdings. This staged approach ensures that you maximize the total pot size over the course of the hand.
Balancing Bet Sizes to Avoid Predictability
It’s essential to balance your bet sizes to avoid becoming predictable. If you always fast play with a specific bet sizing, observant opponents may catch on and adjust their strategies accordingly. By varying your bet sizes slightly while maintaining the overall strategy, you can keep your opponents guessing and continue to extract maximum value from your strong hands.
Practical Examples
Fast Playing Example
Imagine you hold red pocket 7s, you are in the cutoff and raised to $15 after two limps. You get calls from the button, big blind, and the two limpers and the pot has $76.
The flop comes K♦-7♠-2♣, you flop middle set. This is a strong hand and the king on the board means there is a good chance one of your opponents has a king in their hand. When action checks to you, you c-bet for $20.
This is not much more than your pre-flop raise as to not reveal how strong your hand actually is. You get calls from the button and one of the limpers, the other two players fold.
The pot is $136 and you see the 4♣ on the turn. When the limper checks to you again you size up your bet to $40. Both players call again bringing the pot to $256.
The river J♦ completes the board, the limper checks to you yet again and now you size up again, this time to $125. You can size up larger here since the flop had no realistic draws and the runout did not change the nature of the board. This makes it highly likely that one or both of your opponents has a pair of kings. When both players call yet again you end up winning a pot of $631 when your opponents table A♠K♥ and K♠10♠ respectively.
Since the button did not 3-bet your pre-flop raise you can immediately tag him as a weak-passive player. There is a good chance he may not have bet three streets and if you waited until the river to try and check raise you may have been foiled by a check back when you tried to spring your trap. Fast playing here likely increased the pot by $200-400 compared to what it may have been had you tried slow playing.
Slow Playing Example
Now, consider the same scenario but you have a maniac on the button who had $650 in his stack and you cover him. This player likes to see almost every flop and tends to get aggressive post-flop with or without a made hand.
The pre-flop action is the same but instead of betting the K♦-7♠-2♣ flop, you check when it checks to you. The maniac on the button now bet $125 into a pot of $76, a sizeable overbet. The small blind and first limper quickly fold but the second limper calls and you call as well closing the action.
Now the pot has $451 and the turn is the 4♣. Again both you and the limper check, now the maniac confidently goes all-in for $510. The early position limper thinks for a little while and then folds, you quickly call and the maniac confidently turns over his A♠K♥ thinking he is good. The shocked look on his face when he realizes he is drawing dead to your set of 7’s is priceless. The J♦ on the river is meaningless and you rake in a pot of $1471.
Since you were observant of the maniac’s tendencies you were able to switch gears and slow play your strong hand for maximum value here. This is why paying attention to player tendencies is so critical in low-stakes poker.
Balancing Fast Playing and Slow Playing
Adapting to Opponent Types
The key to maximizing pot size and value extraction lies in balancing fast playing and slow playing based on the game’s dynamics. Against passive recreational players, fast playing with smaller bet sizes is generally more effective. Conversely, against aggressive opponents, slow playing can leverage their tendency to bet and raise, increasing the pot size through their own aggressive actions.
Board Awareness and Game Stage Considerations
Be mindful of how the board texture evolves. On dry boards that are not top pair dynamic, meaning that the top possible pair is unlikely to change such as the one in the example above, slow playing either out of position or against aggressive opponents can boost value when you will likely still have the best hand by the river.
However, on wet boards with many draw possibilities, fast playing can offer protection and will build larger pots against players who call too wide or love to chase draws. On Draw heavy boards it is important to get value early since players with missed draws will likely fold to a river bet unless they have a strong pair to go with their draw.
Transitioning Between Strategies
A skilled player will often blend both strategies, fast playing when the situation calls for immediate aggression and slow playing when a more deceptive approach can yield greater long-term value.
Conclusion
Both fast playing and slow playing have their merits when you have a strong-made hand like middle or bottom set. Fast playing is particularly effective when you are in position or at a table with passive recreational players who tend not to bet. Using smaller initial bet sizes entices more calls and builds a bigger pot. It also allows for increased bet sizes on subsequent streets to extract maximum value.
On the other hand, slow playing is best leveraged against aggressive opponents who are likely to bet when checked to. This approach allows you to induce more significant bets from these players, thus increasing the pot size through their own aggressive actions. However, slow playing against passive players who are likely to check back can result in lost value that is difficult to recover in later streets.
Ultimately, the most successful poker players master both strategies and know when to deploy each based on the specific context of the game. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of fast playing and slow playing, and adapting to your opponents’ behaviors, you can make informed decisions that maximize your pot size and overall value, enhancing your profitability at the poker table.