Playing Texas Holdem in Stealth Mode

Imagine winning a hand without giving your position away and then attacking at the end and adding a great deal to the pot.

If you have a great hand, you don’t need to give away your position by betting big at the start. Many players bet on the card shown. If the flop shows a high card or maybe a pair the player might bet and tell you, through his betting, what he is holding. If a king is flopped and he bets, than you can assume that that card helped his hand. Maybe he is holding a king and now has a pair of kings. Not bad, and possibly a winning hand. The player is trying to kick out players before they draw a winning hand on the turn or the river, which is quite common. But, if you have an ace with a high kicker and don’t bet when the card is turned up, then you will not give away your cards. All that is needed for this strategy is to check or call when the bet is made. Lets say that an additional ace is flipped (you now have 3 aces) and the person gets really wild with the betting, you can follow with a call to his raise. Now the river comes and you just had a card turn up that gives you a full house. What a feeling. This person never knew what you were holding and thinks that he has the hand won. Now it is your turn. After his large bet, you hit him with an incredibly large bet. What is he to do? You must be bluffing, right. You never raised his bets but only called. He has too much invested to fold so he calls or even better yet…he raises. Wow, he just wants to keep adding to your bank account, which I am sure is fine with you.

This strategy will not work with a straight or a flush but works great with pocket pairs or single high cards.

Lets take a look at an example hand:

This strategy works well in many situations. If you have low pocket pairs for example, lets say pocket 4s. You just check or call the initial bet. Most players will bet on the cards they are holding so you can gauge them. If they have pocket pairs, even small they will bet or raise and show that they have possibilities. This strategy will never give away your position. On the flop is a king, jack and a four.

Look at this, you now have triple 4s! The small pocket 4s are looking like a winning hand. Most players would go wild on this next bet, but we want to hide our position. I am sure that there will be a wager on the flop with the king showing, but we know that 3 of a kind will beat a pair of kings anytime. When the bet comes around we just check or call. Now the holder of the kings thinks that he has someone to feed his account. Ah, we have him. The turn card shows an 8.

We are looking really good. No possible straights and no other pairs. Things couldn’t be better. The pair of kings is looking even better so the bets become bigger. Most players faced with this situation would really bet heavy on the triple 4s knowing that the kings are not an issue, but this is not our goal. We shall just check or call the bet and move to the river. If we are lucky someone will raise the bet adding to our pot and we will always just call the raise. The pot is looking pretty nice and will be yours soon. With betting complete we move to the river card. It’s a…. it’s a 3.

Yes, that is exactly what we were looking for. As long as no one was playing stealth, we have the winning hand. Most players can't help but to bet on their cards, thus giving away thier position. Thats what makes this style so powerful. The king better is so excited, maybe he had a king and a 3 for his pocket cards which would give him 2 pairs. This has to be pretty exciting. He has top pair and now an additional pair. The betting is going to be much larger now. With all of the excitement (no one has raised his previous bets and he now has 2 pair with one being top pair) he bets really big. The betting arrives to your position. What to do? Hmmmm that is a good question. This guy has bet on his kings, no one has re-raised and he bets really big now. There are no pairs on the board, no straight or flush possibilities because you checked that out many times. You are in a complete winning position. Time to bet really big. So you raise his bet. The player with the 2 pairs thinks…he has to have the winning hand because you never bet or raised his bets. He thinks again…yes, I have the winning hand and calls your very high raise or even re-raises you. This is getting pretty exciting and the pot is really starting to bloat in size. After all of this extreme betting the cards are laid down. Mr 2 pair is stunned to learn that he has just lost. You have just played a stealth hand and increased your account substantially.