4 ms·
It is definitely not negligible. Slow playing is a valid strategy even against great players. If all but the top 5 hands or so fold every time you slow play, yo
by mattmaroon 16y ago
It is definitely not negligible. Slow playing is a valid strategy even against great players. If all but the top 5 hands or so fold every time you slow play, you're not playing against good players (experienced != good when it comes to poker) and you should just start slow playing and stealing every pot. Then when they figure it out, don't do it again until you get a monster. Most of abusing amateurs is simply doing this, exploiting a weakness until they realize it, then doing the opposite. By the time it stops working you're ready to go.
Regardless, presumably you'd have to memorize this order of the deck in order to stack it that way, thus you could look at your hand and determine the opponent's hand and what the board would be. You could play accordingly. It's easy to make a lot of money at poker when you know what all the cards are.
On the other hand, I've never seen a game for significant stakes where the players were dealt, and I've sure never known anyone good enough to take a deck and sort it into a specific 52 card pattern without being noticed.
- bmelton 16y agoIt would be much easier for them to have a stacked deck at the ready, and just swap it out for the deck in play.
- stanleydrew 16y agoWe can debate this all day probably, but slow-playing is not a valid strategy if you actually want to make money. By not betting in early rounds you are giving up a lot of value in the hand. And more importantly you are not setting the appropriate price for other players to continue in the hand. Very few hands that are best on the flop are unbeatable on the river. Unless you can put your opponent on a very tight range of hands, it's not a good idea to slow-play, and I rarely do it. I've had much better success just betting for value.
- mattmaroon 16y agoYou're simply wrong. It's a valid strategy in the right context. Almost all strategies are. Don't get me wrong, you're generally correct, it's generally better not to slowplay, but it's still a valuable tool in your arsenal.
- stanleydrew 16y agoYes you are correct that strategy depends on context. My contention is that even when you think the context is appropriate for slow-playing, you are probably wrong.
- Prisen 16y agoIf anyone wants to know more about actual poker theory they should read "The Mathematics of Poker" (a warning - it's not a light read).