Poker Superstars
Phil Hellmuth
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 Most of the poker books you read are going to tell you that on those rarer occasions when you are dealt the big daddies in poker (AA KK QQ), you should raise. Obviously this is a standard procedure, as most of the point of poker is to bet and get money into the pot when you are ahead and let your opponents be the ones drawing, and also to protect your big hands from those random two cards making magic. But the biggest dividends often lie in hands where you disguise yourself, and put your opponent off what they think you have and onto another page entirely.
Most of the times when I am playing my ‘A-game’, or not messing up too many pots, the times I can remember getting thrown off this game have come when I run into something unexpected. Ie: I think I’m pushing the best hand hard and end up all-in against a well-disguised pair of AA or KK who didn’t raise preflop.
Not raising with QQ or KK is great too because not only does it disguise your hand, it minimizes your losses when you have to slow down when those ugly overcards come crashing down on the flop.
Not raising preflop with these big hands all the time is a great way to mix up your game and keep your opponents from knowing who you are at the table. If you are a particularly tight player, you might find that people start folding to you no matter what you do, knowing you are coming in with the goods. Not raising or reraising with big pairs allows your opponent to be lulled into a false sense of security: they think, “Oh, he didn’t raise, I can cross these hands off my list.”
You see this kind of play a lot of the time with pro cash games on TV, like High Stakes Poker. In fact, a lot of the time, you only see pros betting when they don’t have anything, and letting others bet when they have a monster. Especially at aggressive tables, slowplaying big pairs is a like setting dynamite under the table. A lot of players don’t know how to counter it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard or said myself, “That guy was limping with Kings? Just calling all the way down with Kings?”
Give a guy enough rope and he’ll hang himself: that’s an age old saying for a reason.
Though that same rope can be used the opposite way if you’re not capable of laying AA down when the flop is hideous. In order to slowplay, you have to be equally ready to let it go if it becomes clear one pair is no longer a winning hand and you do not improve. That’s a whole other blog though.
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