Introduction to the Free-Showdown Play

Having position bestows an enormous advantage upon you. But to make the most of the advantage, you have to employ what I call tactics of ambiguous aggression. You make plenty of bets and raises in position. Sometimes those bets and raises imply a strong hand, and they signify more bets and raises to come. Other times, those bets and raises are bluffs or semibluffs. And still other times, the bets and raises represent posturing from a fundamentally weak hand.

The free-showdown play is a terrific tool that falls into the third category; it’s mostly positional posturing. Here’s how it works: You are heads up, in position, on the turn. Your opponent bets. You raise, intending that money to be the last that you put in the pot. If your opponent reraises, you’ll fold. If he calls and checks, you’ll check behind. If he calls and bets the river, you intend to fold, although sometimes that decision can get complicated. You can use the play in both limit and no-limit, but it takes a slightly different form between the games.

Here’s a limit example: You have the 10 10. You raise preflop, and the big blind calls. The flop comes Q 9 5. Your opponent checks, you bet, and he raises. He plays aggressively on the flop, so the check-raise certainly doesn’t mean you’re beat. You think he would check-raise with any pair and a straight or flush draw. You call. The turn is the 3. He bets, and you raise. It’s a free-showdown play, so you plan to fold to a three-bet, and to check it down on the river.

Like any play in poker, the free-showdown play is perfect in some situations and poorly suited for others. It has strengths and weaknesses, and you should use it in situations that play well to its strengths.

What It’s Good For

The free-showdown play has two major upsides:
• It often helps you to win the most from a semibluffing opponent.
• Sometimes you can get your opponents to fold a hand that they shouldn’t — and sometimes even hands that are better than the one you hold.
Let’s say that you have a modest but decent hand that has little chance of improving. The underpair of tens in the above example is typical. It’s ahead a fair percentage of the time, so it may be worth taking to showdown. But when it’s behind, it’s way behind. The tens have only two outs against someone with a queen.

The most common line to take with this hand would be to defer to your opponent’s aggression and call twice — once on the turn and once on the river. Against many opponents, you would bet the river if checked to.
But what if your opponent is semibluffing with a flush or straight draw? He check-raises the flop as a semibluff, and you call. Then he follows up on the turn, hoping you’ll fold. You don’t. He misses his draw and gives up his bluff on the river, checking. You bet, and he folds. That line gets two flop bets and one turn bet out of your drawing opponent.

If you raise the turn, though, he has to pay an extra bet. He can check and fold on the river, but he’s already had to pay two turn bets. The semibluffer pays more when you use the free-showdown play.

When your opponent is betting a made hand, sometimes he will fold. That’s obviously good for you, because he can’t draw to his outs (usually five). And occasionally he’ll even fold a better made hand.

So, generally speaking, the free-showdown play works well against out-of-position players who like to play aggressively on the flop with a wide range, but back off when faced with turn aggression.

The Downsides

The obvious downside to the blocking bet is that you expose yourself to three-bet bluffs on the turn, and also to last-ditch bluffs on the river. The play is predicated on your opponent becoming docile after your show of muscle on the turn. In many games, particularly medium-limit games in brick-and-mortar casinos, that reaction can be fairly reliable. But it’s not as reliable online, in high-limit games, and in many no-limit games.

A reraise bluff is a disaster for the free-showdown play. Usually, you’re using the play with hands that you intend to take to showdown. The goal of the play is largely maximization; you’re going to lose two bets either way if you’re behind, but this way, you get a bit extra from weaker hands. In no-limit, obviously, there’s also the extra value, sometimes, of getting a blocking bet in.

So, the play stands to offer you a modest gain when it works. It turns a win into a somewhat bigger win. But if you get reraise-bluffed off your hand, you suffer a major loss, turning a win into a significant loss. For the free-showdown play to work well for you, a reraise-bluff has to be a low percentage threat.

Similar, and also threatening, is the river out-of-position bet. Your opponent bets the turn, you raise, and he calls. A blank comes on the river, and he bets. Or, maybe one draw comes in but another misses, and he bets. What do you do? Often, the pot is offering juicy odds, and the choice isn’t clear. You have a hand that you originally thought was worth showing down, and it still might be. Opponents can be tricky these days, and it certainly isn’t unheard of to get bluffed at after a turn raise.

There’s no clear-cut play in this situation. Sometimes the pot odds and likelihood of a bluff will suggest a clear fold. Sometimes they will suggest a clear call. In the case that you have to call, your free-showdown play has backfired, because not only was your showdown not free, you ended up paying three bets when you could have paid only two. This is a natural threat to the free-showdown play, and, as usual, you have to gauge each situation independently. The more likely your opponent is to fire on the river, though, the less willing you generally should be to try the free-showdown play.
Next issue, I’ll write more specifically about using the free-showdown play in no-limit.

Ed’s brand-new book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, is available for purchase at smallstakesnolimitholdem.com. He is a featured coach at stoxpoker.com, and you can also check out his online poker advice column, notedpokerauthority.com.