[Guy McSucker]

[ QUOTE ]

I can't do much more to explain it. Read the ToP (or maybe it's in SSH) section on it. You don't raise for a free showdown to fold out a better hand. That's called a bluff-raise. You raise for the 3 reasons I mentioned before.


[/ QUOTE ]

No.

The free showdown raise gains its value from the times your opponent folds a hand that beat you or that had enough outs to call your raise.

You don't get value when you're behind but improve on the river for the reasons SpicyMoose said: in that case you get the same number of bets by calling the turn and raising the river.

You don't get value when you're behind and fail to improve on the river. In this case, the best we can hope for is to show it down for two bets, and we're opening ourselves to the possibility of investing more bets or failing to get to showdown.

You don't get value when you're ahead on the turn and he folds correctly. In that case you're better off calling the turn and snapping off his bluff on the river.

You do of course get value when you're ahead and he incorrectly calls. This is not usually what's going on with a free-showdown raise, since if we're planning to check the river through unimproved, we're not that confident we're ahead.

The remaining possibility is that we're behind and he incorrectly folds. That's where the free showdown raise has potential for value over and above calling down.

The point is just that we're planning to call down, so we think we're ahead often enough for that; but we choose to invest bet number two in trying to get a few folds out of the opponent on the turn rather than calling the river.

This move really backfires when we have a hand that needs to call a threebet and fold the river unimproved, like this hand, since we end up putting in three bets rather than two when we lose.

Guy.