If those 8 other people are bad players, it doesn't matter if they see your hand. Not only do they not know what to do with the information, but they also didn't even pay attention to the betting after they folded.

If they are good players, (1) get a table change, and (2) they are good enough to know what your range was a anyway.

I don't think the information you get from one hand has more than minimal value to a good player.

Also, there's an inconsistency here. If the information was really extremely valuable, you'd invoke IWTSTH as often as you are allowed to. And yet I'm sure nobody here does that.

Let me suggest an alternative explanation. The reason people want to see the other guy's hand at a showdown is ego. They want confirmation that they were right. And that explains why they don't invoke IWTSTH in hands they aren't in. There's no ego investment there.

While I played online before BF, i have always been primarily a live player.

The idea that being a "good player" minimizes the value of the information you get from seeing someones hand is a little silly. Almost by definition, a good player utilizes the information he gets more effectively than a worse player. It doesn't need to be tremendously valuable or unique information to have value.

There is no inconsistency. It is valuable information(although I never once have said or indicated I think it is "extremely" valuable). The value of the information is almost always less than the value of the other factors you advance my not waiting to see.

I have no idea why other people do the showdown thing. And frankly I don't really care. I can only speak to why I don't think its useful.

The term that describes the value of seeing a single losing hand at showdown when the player called and thus was right about the opponent's range is de minimis. Not zero, I guess, but de minimis.

Post-by-post this is getting pretty boring for (i'd venture to say) everything but the participants. In general, though, i find it a really really fascinating thread because it illustrates a huge culture clash in poker. You could very casually say it's between the "old-time poker mentality" and the "young hotshot mentality", although taking those stereotypes too far would be lamentable. I'm late 30s, playing since 2004, but try to internalize the "old-time" because that seems to be long-term more respected at the stakes i want to be playing.

I see value in both points of view, though.

That tilts me more than anything else ITT (except my next point), because it's a service professional who's either ignorant or disinclined to do his job. I probably wouldn't actually say this, but i'm very tempted to reply, "First dealer to run the game gets a tip!"

Discussed to death, i know, but the reasoning expressed by lawdude and some others is just atrocious, by far the worst rationale expressed for any point of view ITT. Mediocre "decent" players are happy to "wait for a good spot" and avoid scary river bets in big pots and all sorts of other stuff because they can win enough anyway. Experts are always looking to maximize value in all situation. If, leaving aside all the very valid reasons that getting this information isn't zero-cost, you would refuse to accept information that actually is zero-cost because "decent players don't need it anyway", decent probably isn't the word to describe your approach to poker.

jack492505 is right of course. Good players are able to come to a preliminary judgment yet still refine that judgment as new info comes in.


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Now to my longwinded point: At the tables, i tend to adopt a third way that's between the two extremes expressed here (and most similar to Ray Zee's post). From what i can tell, 90% of recreational players go by this same approach and just don't spend a lot of time fretting over the edge cases. I'm not eager to give away free info or fail to obtain it. If i call and don't think i have a winner, i'll wait a couple of seconds for the aggressor to table. If they don't, depending on my intuition about motives, i'll either take a non-conciliatory or conciliatory approach.

My conciliatory approach is just to say, "I have jacks" or "Two pair" or whatever. I still wait for affirmation i'm good; if it doesn't come, i'll possibly table the hand anyway (again, judgment call). If they show up with a better hand they didn't misread, i'll consider it a slowroll and try to remember to make them show in turn next time.

If the conciliatory approach seems inappropriate, I'll reiterate, "I call," with an intonation implying that they might have misunderstood the action and not know it's time to show. If that doesn't work, i might state, "I called you" and let the dealer do their work.

Summary: I think either the strict or the conciliatory approach can be appropriate based on intuition about the situation.

By this logic the value of seeing ANY hand at showdown is "de minimis" so theres no need to pay attention to the other hands going on after you fold as you have said we should. Thank god. I hate paying attention.

Imagine you're dealing a game with blinds of 100/200. These players know the order of showdown. Do you think the players would react well to a dealer saying, "Okay, you show first" ? I assure you, they would not. And they'd be right, because they know how to handle showdown.

The dealers say "show me a winner" or some such, because that's how showdown works. All these "but I called him, run the game!" complaints are from people who play 1/2 or maybe 2/5. They need to dealer to run their game because they don't know it works.

The person with a winner is encouraged to show first. When that fails, then you go by "showdown order". Saying "show me a winner" gets showdown running properly the vast majority of the time. When the players balk, then I prompt the last aggressor (or first position on a checked river).

Broadway, I know you've had problems with floor and staff in the past. This attitude that someone's not doing his job when he's actually very much doing his job might be a factor?

Again, attitude. We're just discussing here. It's not personal. You may not agree or understand the reasoning, but that doesn't make it atrocious. If I've insulted anybody in the thread the way you have here, I apologize.

I agree with your approach, and this is generally how showdown works most of the time. You even say yourself that the "last aggressor shows first" is your backup plan, not your original plan. It seems you agree with those of us putting forth this "atrocious" viewpoint.

Let's flip it around. Let's say you've made a thin value bet or possibly a bluff, and your opponent has you beat. Do you want the dealer forcing you to show first in a case where the other player might be happy to expose and let you get away without showing? You'd probably be irritated at the dealer for stopping the other player from revealing information. It goes both ways.

Since good players bet more than they call, encouraging the winner to show first actually helps the good player.

Why wouldn't you treat it the same way as any other delay in acting in turn? AFAICT the accepted practice is for the dealer to subtlymotion, sort of tap the table, in the direction of the stalling player. If they know how to handle showdown, then they're not going to get into these silly deadlocks where no one wants to show. And actually, i don't do your job or play in these games, but "First one to show wins!" sounds even more juvenile in that context than in a 4/8 or 1-2 game.

That's not at all the part that i consider atrocious. In fact, we're 80% in violent agreement that keeping the game cordial and fast is a key consideration.

What's very very very very very very very weak is the logic used in one post to defend our (mostly) shared view. Not the person making the post, and not the position being defended. Just the logic.

In general i don't think the same level of diplomacy is required on an Internet message forum, especially THIS forum, as in face-to-face interaction. I still want to be constructive and assess ideas, not individuals, in a way that faithfully expresses magnitude as well as direction of my opinion.

What would you consider a more constructive term to indicate that logic is very very very very very very very weak? When people call my play atrocious on 2+2, i pay attention because i know it's costing me more money than play that's merely questionable or unsound. I don't generally take the use of that word as a personal condemnation, but certainly on Internet forums things can turn heated very quickly. It would be a bad outcome if others took my words as ad hominem.

Have you visited Greektown? If not, i'll have to thank you for your judgment about their floorpersons' competence but ultimately not really assign it a very high weight compared to those who've played there. I never had these issues in Tunica, AC, or other places i've played, and only relatively minor issues when i was a noob at Foxwoods. I have carefully considered and rejected the opinion that i'm even as much as 90% to blame for the conflict i experience at Greektown.

All pretty much a hijack here, of course....

You've been very vague about what specifically you find atrocious, so I can't really come up with an alternative approach.

I'm not judging any floorperson's competence.

Saying "first dealer to do his job gets a tip" is combative and unproductive, regardless of the floor's competence or the dealer's skill level. I wouldn't call it atrocious, but it's certainly up there.

I thought it was pretty clear but i'm sitting in McCarran trying to get on a flight standby so perhaps i was distracted. Come to think of it my post was probably pretty hard to read.

I think the logic is bad because good players' range assessments aren't static but rather variable based on new info. And tbh it sounds like just a contrived way to support a conclusion. "I'm such a good player, i don't need that info anyway!" The point is that the value of the info might or might not outweigh the cost of obtaining it, which requires more nuance than the sour grapes position that the info doesn't have value.

I agree saying, "First dealer to do his job gets a tip," is unlikely to end well and i've never said it. I feel like saying it. Big difference.

I think the point is that the value of the info doesn't outweigh the cost of obtaining it. My reason for feeling this way is because I'm in a calling situation on a big pot against an unknown good player so rarely, and yet feathers can remain ruffled for a long time. Furthermore, people who might not understand my reasons may just see me as coming off as a dick, and no amount of logic at the table will change that (in fact, it only makes it worse).

So sometimes that gets simplified to "not useful info".

At least, that's my take on it.

Fair enough. I guess I started this whole thing by being a bit of a terminology nit. But it was just annoying me that people were saying there was "no value" to seeing hands.

It's de minimis value. I can't imagine a good player really needing it. And i can't imagine most players being able to use it.

I don't NEED it. I also don't NEED to look at my cards. But when I get a better sense of the hands my opponent could have of course its of value to me. Do you not play poker or something?

I agree 100% that this situation is incredibly annoying, but I 100% disagree with you that it's the OP's fault.

When I bet/bluff the river and get called, I either immediately muck or immediately table the hand. If you bet and get called, IMO the caller has earned the right to resolution of the hand, right now. Either show the hand or muck it. He paid your price, now it's on you to act...emphasis on 'now.'

It is very bad sportsmanship/etiquette/manners/whatever to get called and then sit there like a toolbox waiting for the other guy. You got caught. deal with it. table it or muck it. Now.

I don't understand why people keep saying this. A bunch of people have quoted a rule that says if you probably have the best hand then show it down. All the "wait for showdown" people are saying is "i have bought the right to see his hand or have him muck." Where is this right coming from?

This is simply not true. You might want it to be true but it just isn't.

It is commonplace and an understood part of the game to not turn over your hand when called and caught on a bluff. It is also commonplace for the obvious winner to immediately turn over their hand.

There are many variations of this. And if I have called down light I will need more than a hesitation to turn over my cards. But the only thing I care about in the moment is winning the pot. Anything else is counterproductive to winning poker. If the guy takes some time to turn over or announce his hand, so be it. If I win which is >99% likely at that point, I am happy.

There are times I am that guy. I hesitate or say something like "if you called you win". But I won't muck in the possible event of a mistake by my opponent. Or by my own analysis. And there are times I have won and misunderstood just how zany my image is.

It would be better if the player describes their hand as in "no pair" or "K high". But my goodness. This thread goes on and on. Just like the showdowns you are purporting to try to avoid.

I play mostly 20/40 LHE where there are many seriously good players. Who value information. And for the most part, what takes a long time at showdowns are mostly not this. It is losers who can't believe they have been sucked out on and won't relinquish their once beautiful cards. Everybody in my game understands why players don't want to turn over their bluffs. Which is why virtually nobody wants to further embarrass the player. And also why everybody knows that the courtesy will be extended to them.

If you still don't get it, then read Tommy Angelo's "The Elements of Poker". That book taught me how to truly respect the game.

I play poker, I am a winning live player over several years, and you are making the fundamental mathematical mistake of LOLsamplesize here.

I have zero idea what you're trying to say. If you are saying I am making a mistake that an individual hand has value because its too small a sample size to determine anything then i just dont know what to say to you.

Call it that if you want, but if you flip up the nuts, and he mucks right away, you STILL don't know what he had. Even though he was supposed to show first. Now you have to go through God-Knows-How-Many-Hands of him running over the table and not showing.

So, you guys are gonna call it slowrolling, but no one's going to call him out on not tabling his hand ASAP?

Look.

Everybody arguing over this plays small stakes. And that's cool. That's what most people play. I'm not even good enough to play small stakes, so I'm not judging anybody for it.

However, I deal all games. This is rarely a problem or a discussion at high stakes. What do you think that means? Why is it that higher stakes players and dealers in this thread all seem to agree on the general customs of the game? If you're trying to understand it, that's fine, but ya gotta stop arguing against it. This is how it is. There's no changing it, only understanding it.

THIS post I totally agree with. When the dealer says "show me a winner", it's usually because all parties of the hand are hesitant to flip 'em up. The dealer just says this to speed up the game, and doesn't care who shows first if someone is willing to do so.

But, sometimes no one wants to show first. When this is the case, the bettor (or first from the button when checked) is STILL the first one who SHOULD show. The dealer isn't invested in the hand, but WILL enforce the bettor/aggressor showing first....that's the rule, and a good dealer will uphold that rule.

Before we got distracted debating semantics of my critique of lawdude's point, this was my real point -- this is an interesting and very real divide in the poker world. I'm trying not to judge either view, just remarking that it's interesting to me.

Thanks! That is exactly why i'm annoyed by a dealer who says, "First one to show wins." (That's different from "Show me a winner," followed by more specific direction.) Contra pfapfap, a dealer who isn't running the showdown isn't doing her job. Give them a few seconds to work it out among themselves but then please get the show on the road.

Seriously, pfapfap, do you say, "First one to show wins," or similar in a high-stakes game? I find that really hard to believe, and if it's true, i find it even harder to believe it's well-received.