Good lord no.
When we have the best hand - not even the nuts, just the best hand - we want to get as much value from our hands as possible. The first big lesson people learn in NL hold ‘em is to not pay off other peoples’ monster hands. The second big lesson - and by far the most important to improving your win rate - is learning how to get maximum value from your big hands. This is rarely possible when you slow play.
Sure, you can have a monster hand, and your opponents won’t have anything - slow play, fast play, it won’t matter; you weren’t making anything from the hand anyway.
Or there are some times when we have the board so crushed, we -have- to slowplay in the hopes that someone catches up to something, anything…For example, we have AQ, and the board comes out AAQ rainbow. It’s almost impossible for anyone to have anything. Even pocket Kings will probably only call one bet on the flop, if that.
But when your opponents do have something, that’s when we -have- to take 'em for max value town.
Let’s look at the action: The pre-flop raiser raised from UTG. If he’s a reasonable player at a reasonable table, his range should be fairly tight: JJ+/AK/AQ, -maybe- AJ. Obviously if we have a history of villain being super laggy/spewy, that’s different (and we would play the hand completely differently), but the only reads we have from Hero here is that the UTG player is a ‘winning player’. A winning player ain’t raising 92o from UTG.
Next, we have a MP call - but not a raise. This is interesting, and quite a strong action, because the MP not only has to consider that the UTG raise may well be QQ+, he has the rest of the table behind him yet to act. Since he didn’t raise, we can probably dismiss AA and KK. If the table overall was fairly passive (not a lot of 3-betting), he *might *have pocket pairs going down to 7s or 8s and could just be playing to set mine - but it’s hard to tell because we don’t know the UTG’s stack size! (which goes back to why it’s so important to know stack sizes for the major players in the hand). But in a vacuum, we put MP on JJ+, AK/AQ, -maybe- mid-pocket pairs, and we slightly discount AA and KK.
And hero has pocket 10s. Now, pocket 10s are a good hand, but as we’ve seen, we may well be behind the UTG’s raising and MP’s calling range. Which means really that we’re probably playing our hand to set-mine, because it’s unlikely that we’ll both a) get a flop, turn and river of 9-high, and b) still be good with our pocket 10s by the river.
And again, this goes back to why it’s so important to pay attention to stack sizes. The odds of hitting a set are only about 1-in-7, and plus sometimes we don’t make much on the hand even when we do hit our set (we hit our set, villain has nothing and folds to our first bet). So a good rule of thumb with pocket pairs: don’t call raises with 'em unless you can expect to make at least 10x the raise size. If you want to be conservative you can even go 15x. (Also btw, the general rule of thumb for suited connectors is 20-25x, and 30-35x for suited gappers). If the pre-flop raiser raised to $6, we want him to have at least $70-100 behind to profitably set-mine.
I’m not saying Hero should fold here - the UTG and MP both appear to be deep enough, and appear to have reasonably strong hands that can pay us off when we hit, so the pre-flop call is fine. But it’s something to be aware of.
Flop ($21): 10 club 10x King club.
That’s a really wet board - in other words, there are a LOT of hands that can continue on: obviously any 10, but also any King, flush draws, straight draws, etc. So when the pre-flop raiser c-bets this board into two people, he almost certainly has a hand: AA, AK, etc. I guess QQ is -possible-, betting to ‘see where he’s at’, which is horrible, but it happens.
But what’s interesting is the size of the UTG flop bet: He goes BOMBS AWAY, betting more than the size of the pot. He’s betting, but he’s betting so much that he doesn’t -really- want the hand to go on much longer. That screams exactly one hand to me: AA, worried about getting sucked out on.
And yet the MP STILL CALLS, even though Hero is still behind him yet to act!
I can not stress enough how strong that is.
The key here is the MP call. We know from the preflop and flop that MP a) should have a fairly big hand, and b) he can’t have a 10. Which means the mostly likely part of MP’s range here is either a massive draw, a big King (AK is a HUGE part of his range at this point given the pre-flop call instead of raise), pocket Aces, or if we’re really really lucky, pocket Kings.
Do you think any of those hands are folding to a standard raise on the flop?
Obviously if we shipped for $280+, he might find a fold with AK, but he’s never folding to a standard raise. The UTG might find a fold with AA given a call and raise back to him, but he might also call one street.
The problem with slow playing here: look at all the turn cards that kill your action. If the turn is the four of clubs, putting the flush draw out there - how much money are you getting from AK? Remember, he can’t have AK of clubs, because the King of clubs is on the board. Do you think you’re getting his stack on the river?
If MP has a flush or straight draw, and the turn and river brick out, how much will you get from him? He might call a small bet on the turn, but he’s unlikely to bluff the river if he misses, since HERO’s hand looks so strong (calls preflop, calls flop).
We have to build the pot up now, on the flop, while we can still get action - once the pot gets bigger it gets harder for people to fold, and in fact, often it’s incorrect to fold given pot odds and stack sizes. More importantly, if we just call, our hand is essentially face up as a 10, which makes it harder to get value from a hand like AK unless -specifically- another King hits. If we raise, it might look like we’re on a draw.
As it happened, Hero got lucky, because the turn brought one of only two cards that improved Villains’ hand enough to entice a river shove: A third king. Even an Ace on the turn doesn’t do much, because Villain would still be behind pocket Aces or any ten!
And that’s why smooth-calling is so horrible - the only time they put more money in the pot on the turn or river is if they hit, which is a minority of the time. Secondly, as I noted above we can put MP pretty squarely on at least a King when he over-calls the big flop bet from the preflop raiser!
And that’s just terribad advice. Why in the world do we want to make it ‘too expensive’ for a straight flush to see a river? We don’t want the draws to fold, we want to get *value *from the draws.
