I work on ranges, not hands, so seeing a specific hand is of little importance. Slowing up showdowns is -EV for winning players. Never insist on the order of showdown.

And in this specific case, I'm pretty sure what he has that loses to me anyway.

At any rate, we still see his hand when we lose (and sometimes when we win).

We show first, they hold on to their hand for just as long before they muck. No difference.

yah man - I don't think I can fold here - I think I'd call and pray on the remote chance that we're good ....

Well, if it turns out AA is good we want to know is it a straight-up bluff, a wa/wb turned improvised bluff (like JJ/KQ), or is it a "slowplay" of a strong hand (like AQ, KK, Q8)?
I know it's only one hand, but that's the nature of live games - we work with a small sample size and it's not necessarily going to have a large effect on "what is his range in this specific situation" but I'd want to update metaparameters like his "creativity", "getting out of line," and "overvaluing marginal hands."
OTOH, I get that we kinda want to protect ourselves from the bias induced by a single weirdly played hand.

Man:

The question is whether obtaining a statistically insignificant sample size (the fact that you can't afford to poll 5,000 likely voters doesn't make a poll of 5 likely voters valid or useful) is worth slowing up a showdown and thus reducing the number of hands you play in the hour, especially when you already have an idea of what sort of hand would donk this river anyway.

YMMV, but my experience is that the "waiting for the other guy to show or muck" showdowns take much longer than the "check my cards a couple of times and Hollywood before mucking" showdowns.

You are probably correct, that's why I say "what do you got", "show it", "you're first" instead of waiting quietly. I also do that when I am out of the hand and two people are just staring at their cards or each other after all action has ended... but more "Come on guys, show." I am a fairly sociable person and am not rude about it so I doubt I tilt anyone.

In my opinion dealers should be more directive in this situation even if it is obvious who should show first.

All in all I take value in your experienced opinion and will pay more attention to the effect that enforcing order of show has on showdown speed.

WTF at showing first, there's a huge difference between whether he has AK/KK/AQ/JJ/JT or whatever he is betting the river with. Getting so few hands with opponents where you are generally playing for bigger stakes (than what you would play online at similar skill levels), it's even more critical that we get some data points on what they are thinking/how they play.

IOW, say you are an online 1/2 multi-table grinder and a live 20/40 player professional. It's more important that a single decision you make at 20/40 is right because each decision is magnified both by fewer hands and higher stakes.

Captain, the fact that you play fewer hands live does not repeal the laws of sample size.

If the only information available is statistically insignificant, it's still statistically insignificant.

Meanwhile, I can prove with math that speeding up showdowns is +EV for any winning player.

But he didn't he say that.

Having fewer data points should make them more valuable, not less. (This, of course, presumes that one doesn't place inordinate value on them.)

lawdude, stop please

BBB, if 4 or 5 people find a topic interesting, that's because it's interesting. Let it percolate.

lawdue, you're off-topic arguing at the end of a thread; that's not a new thing. please don't do it in this forum.

End of discussion. Move along people, nothing else to see here.

And you're shutting down a discussion people are interested in.

You're the moderator, BBB, so you can do what you want, but seriously, if there are people discussing the issue, and you really think it's "off topic", why shut it down and castigate me rather than, say, moving it out into a separate thread the way every other moderator at 2+2 would do? Seems to me that's standard operating procedure. It's not like we're arguing presidential politics here-- we're on topic TO THE FORUM, just the thread evolved.

Check with other moderators. That's what they do-- not what you are doing.