Should be standard, did I play it like that?

[Spicymoose]

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If you're convinced you don't have the best hand, calling down is pointless. Calling the turn maybe if you have odds, but why call the river if you know you're going to lose?

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I call down because although I think I am behind, I do win sometimes


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The free showdown move can win in 3 ways:
1) Villian folds to the raise
2) You have the better hand anyway
3) You hit a better hand on the river.

If we're committed to calling the river (this is important) then you must believe #2 is a possibility. If it's a possibility, then a free showdown can be a worthwhile play.

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I think the main benefit in a free showdown would be getting the villain to fold to a raise with a better hand. I just don't see that happening here. I think getting him to fold with a worse hand is actually something that we don't want to happen.

So, I am really seeing no benefits here. Although it seems pretty similar in value to calling down, I would say that the two negative things are if we fold out a worse hand that would have bluffed the river, and if we get 3-bet on the turn.

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.

You say you don't want to fold out a worse hand on the turn with a raise, but then you turn around and say you'd raise the river if you hit, but why wouldn't he just fold the river to you raise? And what makes you think he's going to fire yet another barrel at the river with a worse hand, especially when the board gets scary? Or even call you're bet if he doesn't fire?

[Spicymoose]

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You say you don't want to fold out a worse hand on the turn with a raise, but then you turn around and say you'd raise the river if you hit, but why wouldn't he just fold the river to you raise?

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He might, but we still get that extra bluff BB from him. If we raise for the free showdown, he get none. Furthermore, he may have improved to a second best hand that he thinks is good, and will call our river bet (yet another BB for us).

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And what makes you think he's going to fire yet another barrel at the river with a worse hand, especially when the board gets scary?

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I don't think he necessarily will. I think it is a possibility. If he 100% does not, then both our lines have the same value. If he sometimes bluffs the river, we get more BB from him by letting him bluff.

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Or even call you're bet if he doesn't fire?

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Again, if he does this even 1% of the time, there is some value. I think the number is higher than that. But the point is, we don't need this value, it is just a bonus.

I still havn't been able to see where we are gaining our extra value on the turn raise, yet have seen a few places where we might lose it.

*sigh* Read ToP, that's all I can say. There's a reason Sklaskly is a published author..he can explain things far better than I.

[Spicymoose]

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*sigh* Read ToP, that's all I can say. There's a reason Sklaskly is a published author..he can explain things far better than I.

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Can't find it. I assume it is under the section of "Raising", but I don't see it anywhere. Help?!

[Peter]

Raising the flop was one of my thoughts. Can't I safely fold to a turn bet if he 3bets the flop? (Assuming a diamond wouldn't have fell on the turn).

Raising the turn was also one of my thoughts, but since I really can't fold to a 3bet that didn't feel good either.

Folding to the river 3bet also crossed my mind. I'm splitting the pot at best there in my opinion. Or are there still hands I can beat?

Peter

[Guy McSucker]

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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.


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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.