Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Sandbagging and Slowplaying
Sandbagging and Slowplaying When you hold a good hand and you either check or bet weakly with the intention of raising or to let your opponents take the lead in the betting, you are either "sandbagging" or "slowplaying." Sandbagging is checking with the probable best hand with the idea of raising later. Slowplaying is betting a strong hand weakly to try to mislead your opponents into believing you had a mediocre hand. Both of these psychological playing semibluffs can be put to good use in various betting situations.
In standard Draw Poker,
In standard Draw Poker, playing position is most important when attempting to sandbag. The obvious reason is that when playing this draw game the dealer acts last and the leader (player to the left of dealer) acts first, thereby giving the dealer the positional advantage, since he acts after all other players have spoken. However, after the draw, the opener acts first, rather than the leader, thereby diminishing the dealer's positional advantage. This is where slowplaying comes into its own.