Showing Opponents Your CardsTo Show or Not to Show
By Don Lewis of Poker-Times.com
In poker, the only time you must show your hand is if you are still in the
hand when it is called on the river (aka: the showdown.) Yet
players come up with all kinds of reasons and justifications for showing
their opponents and the other players at the table their cards at other
times when they really need to keep it to themselves.
The most common reasons include them wanting to let their opponent see as to
how they were behind and sucked out on the river to beat the better hand, to
improve your table image or get more callers by showing that you were
bluffing, to show that you had a good hand and you were not bluffing
and probably the one that can be the worst is that you a monster hand and
you just had to show.
I know that some of these reasons sound really convincing. They had sounded
pretty convincing to me until I really learned poker, and may have some
strategic value while facing an opponent for many hours or several days.
Professional players will often do it at the highest level when playing
against other professional players, but their reasons are for the other
pro’s that are there to insure that they are not always playing tight or
that they made you make a bad decision.
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To them its not about the level of play, it's about the mind game that they play with each other. But why should you make things complicated for yourself? Not showing your cards is never the wrong thing to do and to be honest, unless you are a top ranked player;
you probably wont be able to spot the few times when showing your cards is
helpful.
In order to fully determine the true impact of showing your pockets
you have to know most of the following:
1. Are players even paying attention
and can you really tell online?
2. Of the players that are paying attention,
which ones will make generalizations on your play based on you showing this
hand?
3. How will they play differently against you as a result?
With all of these factors it can be difficult to determine and especially
the last one. Often times when you show a hand, you are probably doing a lot more
harm than good. This is best illustrated with an example:
Let’s say you have Qh Ks in your hand and it is folded all the way to you. You raise and both blinds call. The flop is Ad Js Tc, it is checked to you and you make a bet.
The small blind check-raises and the big blind folds. You call.
On the turn there is the Jack of clubs. Now the small blind lead bets
and you jump on it and raise. The small blind calls. On the river comes a
blank. The small blind checks to you and you bet. Small blind will then fold and
you show your flopped straight in a effort to show the table you had a good
hand and were not just trying to make a play at the pot.
Now if someone really is monitoring you and trying to adapt to your play,
what have you just told them? You will try to steal the blinds from late
position with any half decent mid range hand. You are capable of
slow-playing the flop with the nuts, but you don’t go for the suspicious
raise pre-flop then check it through to the river play and you don’t
automatically go passive when a scare card hits the board.
That is way too much information you have just given the table in order to
try to set them up for your next play (or false read.) In poker, information is
a powerful tool and giving people free information with hopes that they
misuse or misread your play is a very dangerous thing to do indeed.
Why not save yourself the trouble and just muck your hand? Leave your opponents
wondering if you were bluffing or not. This will do more for you in the long
run as they will never know what you have and they'll try to decipher it by the amount of your raise or reraise.
And in a limit game, they will just never know unless they call you on the river.
Good luck in your action!
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