One of my favorite, and many other poker players’ favorite, poker strategy is slow-playing. This is a very simple strategy to implement, but it can be very dangerous and it can lure opponents into putting large amount of money to the pot for you to win. The strategy is actually very simple, and we are going to discuss it in this article.

Slow-playing can only be effective if you have a strong hand. Instead of raising the bet like you normally do, you should just check or call existing bet. There are two benefits of slow-playing at this stage: you can lead your opponents into thinking that your hand is not strong enough and you can also see if other players have stronger possible hand by seeing their betting pattern.

After the flop, assuming your hand is still as strong (or even stronger), don’t raise the bet just yet and let other players do the betting for you. If one of the opponents raises the bet, simply call and pretend like you have nothing. You can enhance the effect of slow-playing even further by taking your time before you call the bet; taking more time will signal doubts and will lure your opponents even deeper into the trap.

You can raise the bet on the turn or the river, depending on your opponents’ betting pattern. If one of the opponents again raises the bet, you can re-raise the bet substantially to force them into putting more money at stake. Make sure you have the strongest possible hand before you do so, since you will be risking your money as well.

When playing poker, both online and offline, you are calculating risks and rewards on a constant basis whether you realize it or not. Poker is all about taking chances, and understanding risk to reward ratio is essentially important if you want to stay profitable. In this part, we are going to talk about how you can make better decisions using simple risk to reward comparison.

Risks are everything you put into the pot. If you are betting $100, you are risking $100. Rewards, on the other hand, are the total amount of pot money itself. If you wager $100 and the pot money is $1,000, you are risking your money to get no less than 10 times profit; in this case, the risk to reward ratio is 1:10.

When you are holding a strong hand with good chance of winning, you can simply go with the wager no matter how rewarding or risky it can be. If you are holding mediocre hand that you think can still win, on the other hand, risk to reward ratio becomes very important to help you decide if you should pursue the hand further.

By using risk to reward ratio, you can assess the situation and decide if you should pursue your hand. In other words, the risk to reward ratio is used to decide whether a hand is ‘worth’ pursuing based on the rewards you can get from winning. If the risk to reward ratio is 1:10 and you have the second strongest hand, it is worth it to see if you can take down the pot. If the risk to reward ratio is 4:5, on the other hand, you may want to reassess the situation before proceeding.