A High Pocket Pair and Two Players
There are very few situations in online poker where you want to play hands like AA or KK slowly. At a full table it’s extremely dangerous not to open raise or reraise a pot with them since these hands are what you would call heads up hands. They perform better and make more profit when you’re heads up against an opponent.
Now, knowing this, why is it that so many poker players will forget to slow play them against an opponent when they’re playing heads-up?
I was in a SnG recently and I had this player who rarely raised preflop. I was stealing his blinds left and right. But everytime he’d reraise me, he’d have a high pocket pair and would show me. AA, KK, QQ. And he wondered why he never got a call.
See, here are the dynamics of heads up play. One, the play will naturally be looser. When a player hits a high pair on an uncoordinated flop, he’s going to neglect to think his kicker matters at all in most situations. And because of this, you can string out your winnings by slow playing your big pairs when you play poker online.
You get AA and your opponent calls. Just check. The flop comes, and your opponent bets out pot. You call. Same for the turn. And unless you have a really good read or the board is getting scary on the Turn, you lead out on the river.
If your opponent is a thinking opponent, then he’ll see it one of two ways. Either you’re trying to steal, or you’re betting a hand you hit on a later street (which is hopefully lower than the pair he hit on the flop). And he’ll call you down. If not, and he just folds. You’ve just gained 2-3 half pot bets you wouldn’t have gained if you were to lead out strong with your pocket pair.
The only time I can see you wanting to reraise a raise heads-up with a big pocket pair is when your opponenty grossly overbets. This is usually a sign of a small pocket pair, and he’s racing against you with only 2 outs if he calls.