Tuesday, September 09, 2014

PokerNews article #30

This one is all about the showdown, pardner.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/the-showdown-rules-procedures-and-etiquette-19237.htm


3 comments:

Wayne W. said...

I have been playing poker for a number of years now, but I have still read all of these articles and have found them to be interesting and useful. Thank you for doing them - I wish they had been around when I was starting!

Rob said...

Enjoyed your article, as I have all of them. As Wayne said, I wish I'd read them when I got started playing poker.

However, this one took me by a bit of surprise. I've gotten several comments from you on my blog scolding me for showing my cards too soon. This led me to several posts on your blog where you defended your position about steadfastly refusing to show your cards when it wasn't on you to do so.

I seem to recall some comments back--if I'm not mistaken even one or two from your current girlfriend--criticizing you for being so adamant about it.

Your article seemed to encourage players to show right away, whether it was their turn or not....which sound like you have changed your tune.

I suppose you might say you were writing for beginners and not experienced players. Still found it a bit surprising.

Rakewell said...

I haven't changed my mind. I think it's fine to show voluntarily and quickly out of turn--especially where there are multiple people with live hands and no betting on the river. But at the same time, I don't think you should let people get away with refusing to show when the responsibility is clearly on them. If there are just two of us, and he bets and I call, he should instantaneously be either showing or mucking. If he's not, I'm not going to let him off the hook. Hence the language in my article about politely requesting the dealer to enforce the standard protocol.

Another way to think about it is this: If I'm just calling somebody else's bet on the river, rather than raising, I probably don't have the kind of really strong hand that puts me into the situation where social opprobrium would follow not showing quickly.