I want you to picture this really common spot...
You open off 30bb from the LJ and just the BB calls.
The flop comes down, you see that you've flopped a set, the BB checks and you want to know whether this is a good spot to check back and slow play.
Today I'm going to show you how to work it out.
Let's dive in...
Start with the overarching strategies
The key thing is to first work out the overarching strategy for the flop.
If the overarching strategy says to bet your entire range, then you should just bet your entire range and not slow play a set.
If, instead, the overarching strategy is to check sometimes, then a flopped set, especially top set, can be a great candidate to check back or slow play.
And the best way to work out the overarching strategies is to explore aggregate reports.
What's an aggregate report?
An aggregate report is a report that compiles (or aggregates) data from lots of different situations and puts them together in a spreadsheet that you can then filter and sort.
We can use them to devise overarching strategies by grouping flop textures together and see which boards we should bet a lot on and which ones have some checking.
Which boards should you range bet on?
Looking at the aggregate report, there are some textures where you should c-bet your entire range, like ABB, BBB and Trips boards.
Board texture | Bet | Check |
ABB | 100 | 0 |
BBB | 100 | 0 |
Trips | 100 | 0 |
2 Broadway | 98 | 2 |
Axy | 98 | 2 |
J/T+2 | 98 | 2 |
ABx | 96 | 4 |
K/Q+2 | 95 | 5 |
J/T connected | 90 | 10 |
Paired | 84 | 16 |
Low unconnected | 75 | 25 |
Low connected | 57 | 43 |
So don't slow play a flopped set on these boards (not that you could on a Trips board, of course).
2 Broadway boards, Axy, J/T+2, ABx and K/Q+2 all have at least 95% c-betting, so there's not going to be a lot of slow playing sets on those boards either.
Which boards have some checking?
Looking at the aggregate report again, there are clearly some boards that have a decent amount of checking on too.
This includes low connected (43% check), low unconnected (25% check) and paired boards (16% check).
On these boards, a flopped set is a good candidate to at least think about slow playing.
Let's take a look at a low connected board 7c6c5d which has 58% checks:
77 checks 65.1%, 66 checks 45.6% and 55 checks 28.6%.
Top set is very often slow played on these kind of flops because it's a lot harder for your opponent to have flopped top pair when you can already see three of that card.
Now this goes against conventional wisdom and is potentially counterintuitive because the board is very dynamic.
It's difficult to slow play on boards that look dynamic because it's all too easy to want to get value straight away. So you'll need some discipline to execute the check back with top set on a board that can change a lot by the river.
If you're scared about the straight or flush getting there on the turn, then you're playing with emotion rather than sound, solid strategy backed up by the solver.
Check back some flops with top set, and play some turns. It'll make you a better player and much tougher to play against.
On a low unconnected board like 852r, you should check 48% of the time:
Top set here only bets about 12% of the time and 55 bets a bit more frequently, while still mainly checking.
On a paired board like A88fd you can't flop a set because you'd either have a full house (with AA) or quads (with 88). But on paired boards where there's a decent amount of checking, a flopped full house or quads are great candidates for slow playing.
AA and 88 check 100% of the time on these boards.
Sidenote: one of the biggest mistakes I see on paired boards is choosing to slow play trips. These hands almost always bet, as you can see in the sim above.
Conclusion
Knowing when to slow play a flopped set comes down to recognising the overarching strategies of different board textures and then using aggregate reports to guide your strategy.
On boards where the strategy is to c-bet your entire range—such as ABB, BBB and other high-card-heavy textures—slow playing is generally suboptimal.
But on boards with significant checking frequencies like low connected, low unconnected, and certain paired boards, flopped sets (or full houses and quads) become excellent candidates to slow play.
If you're going to check back a lot, you don't just want to take medium strength or weaker hands to the turn. Keeping in some very strong hands makes you very difficult to play against and will give you easier continues if the BB decides to probe the turn for a big size.
That's it for this week.
See you next time.
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