At what point do you consider slowplaying (even minraising!) AA/KK?

Say in a SnG, when would you start considering slowplaying monsters preflop?

HU?

3 left?

4 left?


I just did with 4 left as chip leader, min raising from the button. Let the other guy double up when his 66 hit a set on the flop and he let me bet into him.



Too early for this play?

I seem to get screwed with it every single time I try to play it fancy, so I 99% of the time do not slow play AA no matter what. When its down to so few people, i raise a lot with position anyways, so I dont want to do something different with AA

Only if you hit your set and its a safe board? Unless you can isolte one player who trys bluffing pots alot - let him bet in to you until the board starts turning towards him!

Although on many occasions I have seen players slow play Aces and loose their stack!

When you get down to 3 or 4 left, you should have some decent reads on players. If you have someone to your left that is constantly raising limpers, or loves to be aggressive on rag flops... then that is probably a good time to slowplay.

Likewise, in HU some people will religiously raise you if you limp from the SB- again a good time to limp a big hand. And sometimes they will always reraise a minraiser... good time to slowplay.

Without reads like I stated above, I play my big pockets straight up when the table gets shorthanded.

I should have been more clear; I was referring to preflop limp/minraise.


Yeah, I did this without reads; poor attitude towards the competition.

Or greed on my part. Thinking that with a short table, I want to get money from someone.


I think it's not a bad play sometimes if you're really short stacked; essentially a stop'n go.

Yikes, I just played AA standard in a freeroll, 5X raise preflop, standard bets at flop and river.


Lost to 84o who paired the 8 on the flop, hit a 4 on the river.



But, that's freerolls for ya.

I agree^^... and yeah, I know you were talking about preflop... just hard to give a standard answer, it really is situation dependent.

Well, short table, you want all your chips in but feel if you shove all will fold, thats a good time.

The preflop clarification was more for tony, and 'cause maybe I wasn't very clear on that.


One thing that I realize from this is that I really don't pay too much attention to player reads at CDP, which is where I was playing this, but I do at Stars. I don't know whether that's because I don't respect the players there enough, or because the HHs at CDP don't show mucked hands unless you request the info from the site.


I think I base a lot of my player reads on pulling up the HH and looking at what people are playing, from what position, and what they bet/called with. Without the mucked hands you get less than half the information.

It really depends. If Im playing a sit and go shorthanded, and im raising most buttons, and stealing from the sb if folded to, then ill wont change my play at all, and raise it up, hoping that this is the hand that they will get fed up with me.

If have a solid read on the bb that he raises to most limps then i will limp from the sb. If if the button likes raise if there is a limper then i will limp. But generally if im playing a solid aggressive game against alert opponents then i wont change my play.

Against total donks that populate the $5-$20 sit and gos, I wouldnt get overly fancy with it and put in a standard raise, even with very passive opponents.

IF effective M on the table is 5 or less then limping in postion in an unopened pot, while risky can be a good play as well. You usually wont find this that often unless your playing turbos.

Thanks guys.

It sounds like a very read dependent tool, rather than something to just throw in just because I want action when the table gets short.


I should ask Rex too; he's the one who did this with AA when there were 3 or 4 of us left in a CDP tourney.

Following this thread with interest, but have to admit to a hellishly noobish question...

What's CDP?

i was playing in a free roll at full tilt today at the same table i lost kk 4 times, and aa once. Every time they would catch running cards for a straight,full house, and 2 pair. everytime. so in hence i rarely slow play these cards, but even with a huge raise some idiot with 10 8os calls and beats me.

?? You had KK 4 times in one tourney?


CDP is CostaDelPoker, a European based site. The owner sometimes pokes his head in here. There was a league running on that site earlier this year.

So, it's not a noobish question. In any other forum no-one would know what I was referring to.

I never limp with monster pockets if someone has already put money in the pot. The only time I try it is if I'm under the gun, or sometimes late in a tourney when evry1 folds to me. It's a great sneaky play and usually works. Just be prepared for the occasional surprise if the flop goes their way instead of yours.

Thanks for the CDP clarification

Here's my most recent sob story about the perils of slow-playing AA.

Early stages of a freeroll with 6 of 9 people away from the table (autofold). I am under the gun and double the big blind to 60. Two players flat call ( i was hoping for a reraise as one in particular seemed quite loose). Flop comes rainbow 458 and i bet the pot (225). One folds, another calls. Turn is Q. I check, he bets the pot. Really worried at this point but hoping he has an overpair to the board or just made top pair so i raise, putting me all-in. Cards on their backs and I'm staring at trip 5s. River is no help and i bust out after 5 minutes. Should I have raised more preflop? Or folded after his bet on the turn? In such early position, I didn't want to scare the two players who were at the table away.

That's min-raising, and that's the danger.

If you're at a table of good players, an early position minraise is an indication of a monster hand that wants action, and people will be cautious. In a freeroll, no one will have heard of that concept and will play all kinds of trash because you let them in cheaply. Pretty much the same thing that happened to me that I indicated at the top. I took the risk, wanting action, but the action hit his hand.


If you want action, there's a risk. I don't know if I'd bother in a freeroll; you could even just push and someone might call with A9 off suit.

All depends on position and players to me. Late position, AA, lots of callers? Big raise - there's a pot to be won. Early position, I'll always slow play generally with a 2x BB raise (player reads permitting, of course). I know lots will disagree, but I've had too many cases over the years of not getting value from AA because I raised too much.

When you are playing low limits or a freeroll never slowplay the rockets. Most times, no matter what you bet you will get someone to call.
I don't slowplay them no matter what.

AA,KK I always put in large raise to limit the field and then re-raise if needed I don''t want a to be beat by a garbage hand on the draw. AK I try to see the flop as cheaply as possible. QQ has been a terrible pocket for me and have no problem folding faced with a hugh raise

The original post shows a lot of inexperience. Slowplaying AA or not has NOTHING to do with how many left in a tourney. It depends on your position, opponent's style, how much they have behind, etc. And remember this -- big bets make big pots. You wanna win a big pot on your AA? Then 9 times out of 10 you just have to bet strong hoping someone calls then get them pot-committed. You slowplay all the way to river and judging by your obvious lack of experience, you are just asking to be outdrawn or have everyone fold to your river bet. I bet that's what you've been experiencing too, right?

On the other hand, an obvious time to slowplay is if you've been playing hyper-aggressive last few hands and irritated an opponent who might've called you a donkey or whatever. Then now you're in a hand with him on a non-scary board and you feel he's trying to "show you who's boss" in this hand. Then you let him make the moves.

I play a lot of MTT.

I like to limp from early position with AA and possible KK if we have a few maniacs that I think will raise. When they do raise I then reraise them with the aim being to isolate them with my reraise - so it has to be strong.

If I`m in late position and we have a 4/5 limpers, I will normally raise the size of the pot preflop - u normally get one or two takers.

I would say, however, I will only slow play AA/ KK about 10% of the time. Most of the time I put in my standard raise. Like TB said, in the hope that someone will reraise.

I have found that in ring games it is dangerous to slow play AA/ KK unless u are prepared to put them down after a flop.

mtt's when blinds are getting high and you are EP/MP with a newly maniacal button/co/hijack

If you mean by that Rex made that move in the late stages of a CC league game on CDP, that`s a special situation.

When you play in a CC buyin game, the standard of play and of player awareness is very high, much better than you would find in a "public" tourney at the same buyin. The only way to win one of those games is to mix up your play. When playing against good players, predictable loses.

Rex can play a bit and I think you`ll find he would not routinely slowplay Aces, but he might very well do so sometimes in that situation.

Yep, I think that's the situation I recall. And yes, I'd agree Rex can play a bit and that the quality of play is high. I guess my question would be, was the reason for the play more to mix it up, or a move he might often pull out when the table gets short.

My ears were burning

Shorthanded play has all sorts of effects on the table. Players are more aware of each other, there's usually a history between individual players. There's often a standard bet size that takes down the pot preflop and there's often a rythm to the blind steals and resteals.

I don't recall the hand, but I suspect that my preflop raises were being respected and I was picking up pots when I raised. If I limped the AA it is probably because I was hoping for a raise behind or that I was confident I would be able to decipher how hard the BB hit the flop from the postflop action. I can't recall minraising AA since the dawn of time, if I did so then there would have been a really specific reason and a lot of context.

If I limp AA it's usually because as Joose said it's a really active table and I'm either UTG or UTG+1, although increasinly limps utg which call a raise or reraise scream AA or KK so it's becoming better to make a standard raise to disguise strength in some cases. But if I do limp then I am accepting that I am losing EV in order to make a play for a really big pot because circumstance dicatates it's time to do so. I may be in desperate need of a double up, or I may have a big stack and be looking to eliminate a shorty. Either way I accept a measure of "gamble" in order to ensure some further action in the hand.

I also often accept that I will be laying it down more often than I would if I raised, it is after all only 1 pair once you see a flop

Short-handed is so context specific it's hard to generalise but there are lot of ways to get creative and under the right circumstances limping monsters is one of them. Dangerous though and not to be tried without a safety net

^^^This, pretty much. I will rarely change my play with big pairs unless I've got a very good reason to do so. If I've got an unobservant lagomaniac in the BB who loves to push or raise limps, then I'll probably limp and see if he'll do the same.

Even at the $16 STTs I play, though, people are generally observant enough to note that I haven't limped all game, and am now doing it with a ~15BB stack. It'll look very odd to them. If I've been raising 3BBs every time it's folded to me, I won't suddenly limp, I'll just do what I've been doing all along.

If a smart player sees you show down a trappy-played AA, he'll know that your standard raises aren't monsters, and you'll get a lot less respect for them. If you disguise your hand by playing it the same as your steals, then he'll be in the dark.

So in general, I don't slowplay them without a very good reason to do so.

Oh, just as a little tidbit:

I was watching Rex (haw haw, exposing a minraised AA) late in a Party MTT, and he'd trapped with AA perfectly. Semi-maniac in the BB, Rex on the button, he quickly minraised to make it look like a steal.

As soon as he minraised, I knew he was on AA/KK, but BB was a monkey, and that's why he did it. Any pair on the flop would be enough to play back with.

After he flopped tens with JT for top pair, he check-raised Rex's very standard-looking c-bet all in, and Rex called.

I was clearly showboating for the galleries


But yep, very context specific and based on the beautiful "relationship" that emerges between a button and his big blind. I played like a donk to trap a donk. Against someone solid they are going to smell a rat and slow right down.

it's 100% read dependent if anyone hasnt figured that out yet.

i wouldnt slow-play with AA's/KK's, i would either go all-in or raise four or five times the short stack.

slow-playing before the flop gives your opponents the edge if they catch two pair or straight or flush draw..

Yeah, I figure if you minraise, then you might be possibly increasing the potential reward, but you're also increasing the risk so you would need to be more ready to let the hand go.


I was leafing through HOH2 last night, the section on Short Table play where he says AA/KK/QQ he will cheerfully slowplay and only occasionally raise as part of a balanced strategy. Maybe that's a bit of a dangerous statement on his part without further examples or explanation. In his problems section, KK minraised flops a set, and in another QQ limped preflop keeps the pot small but loses to 2 pair on the flop that was slowplayed.