For Every Move, There is a Season

"When is it appropriate to slow-play a big hand and when is it dangerous?" is one of the many questions that players often ask me about tournament play. I usually answer by asking a question in return – "What is the situation?" – because in tournament poker, it is the situation that very often dictates your best move.

At the 2001 World Series of Poker, a highly respected tournament player provided us with a perfect example of how to play the same hand in two different situations. However, before I give you the scoop on how he did it, let's review the advice that I provided in Tournament Poker about when to slow-play a big hand and when to play it more aggressively. In no-limit hold'em, many players will limp in with aces or kings from early position, hoping that an opponent sitting behind them will enter the pot with a raise and give them an opportunity to reraise. Sometimes it is appropriate to continue the slow play after a very aggressive opponent has made a big raise behind you. In this case, you can smooth-call him and then try to trap him on the flop.

At other times, you may reraise him before the flop, depending on the size of your stack and his stack. If your opponent has made a substantial commitment of chips and probably cannot get away from his hand, you might go ahead and reraise before the flop if your reraise will put him all in and you believe that it is the correct play against that particular player. But, if you both have a lot of chips, you may wait and try to trap him on the flop in order to win a very big pot.

If you are short-stacked, be more inclined to reraise and go all in if you think that you will be called; if you are not called, it's no big loss because you win anyway. The most judgment is required when both you and your opponent have medium to large stacks, and there is no substantial preflop commitment of chips. This is when you should be more willing to slow-play. It is dangerous to slow-play from the flop onward when several opponents are in the pot and the flop comes with suited connectors, for example, that make draws possible. In this scenario, you should bet and try to win the pot immediately, especially in pot-limit or no-limit games.

Thanks to Diego Cordovez's play and Andy Glazer's reporting, let me give you a perfect example of "situational" play with the same hand against two different opponents that occurred during the first few hours of play on the first day of the 2001 WSOP. In the first situation, Glazer wrote, "A couple of hours into the event, (Annie) Duke raised a pot to $375 from the small blind, and Cordovez raised back $1,100 more. Duke, who'd seen Cordovez limp with some bigger hands already, decided that the raise meant weakness, and … moved all in with J-J. Cordovez called instantly with his A-A. The community cards didn't change anything, and Duke … was an early casualty." In this example, the two aces raised the small blind's initial raise before the flop rather than slow-playing them.

Situation No. 2 involved my writing partner T.J. Cloutier (whom I congratulate for his second-place finish at the Tournament of Champions) and Cordovez. Holding pocket kings, Cloutier raised a pot to $425 and Cordovez, again holding pocket aces, flat-called from the button. On the queen-high rainbow flop, Cloutier bet $1,000 and Cordovez raised it to $3,000 (a "teaser" raise, in my opinion). When Cloutier countered the raise by going all in with his remaining $13,000, Cordovez called in a heartbeat. Adios, Cloutier, or as Glazer put it, "… Cordovez had hit the no-limit player's trifecta twice: pocket aces, someone else has a big hand where you get big action from him/her, and the aces don't get cracked." In this example, the two aces slow-played before the flop rather than being aggressive with them. (I only wish that these two hands had been played before I wrote my book, because they truly are "textbook" examples of situational play.)

I would be remiss if I closed this edition of Tournament Talk without thanking and congratulating Bonnie Damiano for bringing the popular Queens tournament back to Downtown Las Vegas after its two-year hiatus from the major tournament calendar. If you're planning to play the Four Queens Poker Classic and would like some inexpensive practice at no-limit hold'em before you plunk down $5,000 to enter its championship event, the Horseshoe Casino currently is running its "double shootout" satellites for the tournament. From the Horseshoe, it's an easy walk across Fremont Street to the tournament room at the Four Queens – a lot easier, in fact, than slow-playing in the right situation, which I hope we both will do so that we can meet at the final table at the Four Queens tournament later this month.

Editor's note: Tom McEvoy is the author of Tournament Poker and the co-author with T.J. Cloutier of the Championship series of poker books. McEvoy and Cloutier are billed as "Poker's Leading Team of Winning Authors." Their books are available through Card Player.