The Free-Showdown Play in Action

Last issue, I introduced you to a tactic called the free-showdown play. The idea is that if you have position, you can raise the turn with a marginal hand to encourage your opponent to call and then check the river. Then, you can check behind and take a free showdown. Choosing this line instead of simply calling down charges your opponents more to draw, and it also lays down some cover for those times that you have a legitimately strong hand.

Free Showdown in No-Limit Hold’em

Your opponent bets the turn, and you raise, planning to check behind on the river. Generally speaking, you’ll want your raise to be something significantly smaller than pot-sized, as depending on the stacks, a pot-sized raise might commit too many chips if your plan is to abandon your hand to a raise. For instance, let’s say that you have a shaky hand against an aggressive player. He bets the pot on the turn, and you have maybe 10 times that amount left in your stack. If you call, he might bet something less than the pot on the river, or he might check. If you make a pot-sized turn raise, you’ve already committed more chips than you would have if you had just called, and committing lots of chips isn’t your goal with the free-showdown play.

Indeed, the free-showdown play in no-limit tends to act as sort of a pre-emptive blocking bet. If you call $20 on the turn, your opponent might bet another $50 on the river. But you can make a $30 turn raise and often escape the $50 river bet. There’s no “right” size for a free-showdown raise, but sometimes a minimum-raise will be perfect, and sometimes you should choose something more substantial, depending on the opponent and the game history.

You Don’t Want Outs

Usually, having outs is a good thing, but the free-showdown play is typically better when you have few or no outs if behind. More accurately, when you have outs, other options that ensure that you’ll see the river card become relatively more valuable. For instance, our example from last issue gave us the 10 10 on a Q 9 5 flop. When the turn card was a blank, the 3, we still had just two outs if behind to a queen. Let’s say that we raise the turn and get reraised. We can be fairly certain that if our opponent isn’t bluffing, we’re drawing to, at most, two outs. That gives us less than a 5 percent chance of pulling it out on the river, so being forced to fold doesn’t give up much equity.

But what if the turn card had been the 8, instead? Now we have six outs against most better hands: two tens and four jacks. We have nearly three times more equity when behind than we did in the first example, so being forced to fold to a turn reraise is significantly more costly. It’s better to simply call, see the river card, and perhaps call again to see a showdown.
Similarly, if the turn card had been the 3, we’d have had spade-flush outs to go with our tens.

The bottom line is, the more outs you likely have, and the stronger these outs are, the more valuable seeing the river card becomes, and the less attractive it is to raise the turn, planning to fold to a reraise. Most good free-showdown situations arise when you have few or no outs if behind.

Watch the Stack Sizes

You have to have the right stack sizes to use the play correctly in no-limit. In particular, you have to make sure of two things:

• Your turn raise won’t leave your opponent with a convenient remaining stack size for an easy all-in push.
• Your stack sizes have to be right so that a smallish turn raise doesn’t look too suspicious.

The first condition means essentially that you need to make sure you’re not in “The heck with it, I’m all in” territory. Once the stacks get below a certain size, many players will use this logic: “Well, if I’m going to call, I might as well just put the rest in. He might fold.” This is, of course, exactly what you plan to do if he puts the rest in. The reraise-semibluff is the bane of the free-showdown play, so don’t try it when reraise-semibluffing is relatively painless for your opponent. Do it when the reraise-semibluff is a scary play for him to try, when he has a lot to lose if he’s wrong and you really “have it.”

The second condition means that you should make sure it’s plausible that you might really “have it.” There are numerous situations in which you might make a minimum-raise or other small raise on the turn with a genuinely good hand. The free-showdown play will work best when it appears that you are in such a situation. You don’t want your opponents to be able to figure out that if you had a strong hand, you’d surely play it another way, so you must be weak.

An Integral Tool for the Positional Tool Chest

Whether your opponents are tricky or predictable, aggressive or flaccid, the free-showdown play deserves a role in your overall strategy. When you are playing limit hold’em against predictable players who always back down in the face of turn aggression, you can use the free-showdown play again and again to exploit their weak play. When your opponents are tricky and can spring a turn reraise, you have to be more judicious. But you should still use the play occasionally. It’s an integral part of a balanced strategy, and if you never use it, your positional advantage will be sapped.

Try the free-showdown play when you have a decent hand that would normally be worth showing down. It’s best when that hand has a fair chance of being ahead, but relatively little chance of drawing out if behind. It gets an extra bet out of your opponent when he’s semibluffing or betting a weak made hand, but it exposes you to a dangerous semibluff-reraise or slightly less dangerous out-of-position river bet. Consider the risk of those outcomes before you try the play.

The free-showdown play works well in frustrating strong players with your position, but it really shines against weak players who will never play back at you. In games with weak players, wield the play like a hammer to enforce the tyranny of position.

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.