Top Free Poker Online Player Reveals His Slow Play Chip Winning Strategy

It's a rarer occurrence in poker, it might occur when you play poker online free games or equally in big money games, when you've got, for example, J-9 and the flop shows J-J-9.

Your action is to check, your opponent follows with a bet and you call. Turn comes a 6, you check again, and your opponent bets. You call.

River comes a 2. You check for the last time, your opponent bets a big amount which could be even an all-in, then you call. You finally reveal your monster J-9 against your opponents, say, 9-7.

Typically with good made hands (such as AK in a flop of A,10,3) we will bet aggressive in the hope that the opposition will think it's a bluff and play back. Or we hope they will put us on a draw and call us, or that they have a showdown-quality hand which is not strong enough for our hand and then call us. Or that they will be not willing to call with their draw (say, K-Q) and fold.

But with very strong made hands, especially on the Flop, like the J-9 example above, we can slow play. That is to say, we play passively on the hope that our opponent will bet strongly so we can take away most of their chips.

Note that with a J-9 in the J-J-9 Flop, our checks may mean, that we may not have anything, or we may have just a draw (say, Q-10) so that they will bet on the hope that they will drive out our draw. They can't. Our hand is like an erect statue already that is nearly impossible to demolish. The 9-7 our opponent has is decent enough to take to showdown.

But with the above, what we really want our opponent to have is the Q-10. Our check may mean that we may have nothing so that they may check along with us or semi-bluff with the open-end Straight draw. We just call.

Why wouldn't we do the same with, say, A-J? Because with A-J, we have only Trips, and we do not want to give our opponent free cards to complete a Straight that can kill off our Trips. So we bet big, or raise big, and hope that the opponent folds, or at least put your opponent in the awkward situation of calling without sufficient pot odds.

But with J-9, we can just play it slowly. Because if your opponent hits his Straight, then he will bet big, so you can raise him. Then it will escalate to moving all in and calls and in short order all their chips come to your side of the table!

If your opponent didn't hit his Straight, however, your slow play might mean to him that you're the one on a draw, and you are playing passively because you are waiting for the right cards to fall. Nope! The right cards have already fallen! He will bluff, and you can take away all you can. Or he may just be in the proper mood to bluff with any hand (say, K-9 or eve A-K) and you can take his chips.

Therefore with near impossible to beat big hands you should slow play as you want opponents hands to improve into near matched hands. If he hits his Straight, for example. Should you raise them he might get scared off and not complete the Straight, and you'll get less chips than if you'd played slow.

Or with 9-7, he may hit an additional Nine, thus giving him a smaller Full House. Another reason is that if your opponent is in such a mood to bluff that he is willing to bluff all the way, even with nothing, then you can strip off his chips, so give him that chance to bluff.

And what better place to practice your slow play trickery than at fab free poker games NoPayPOKER.com where you get to play free poker games with 0 degree kelvin absolute zero risk of loss but can still win real money and get your bankroll paid for entry into cash sites when you're ready to step up to cash games. Nice.