The big poker question: To show or not to show?

There is certainly no hard and fast rule about whether to turn over your cards after you’ve made a successful bluff against a poker opponent, especially if you’ve just won a big pot. On one hand, it can be effective in some ways. You can gain an all-important psychological advantage on an opponent, maybe throwing him off his gale and outing him on tilt. And several hands down the road, if you are heads up against that person in a pot you may tempt him to call your big bet on the river thinking that you’re bluffing again, only to show the best hand. However, as many a experienced, grizzled veteran has said, the most valuable commodity in poker is information. You never want to give away any information, and you want to gain as much information on other players as possible. And if someone is going to get information from you, you want them to pay to see it.

I am of the belief that if you willingly show your hand after a successful big bluff, you are giving away information for free, and that’s never a good thing. I do understand that there can be benefits to it, for the reasons listed above, but unfortunately I think the reason many players do it is so they can posture and talk smack.

But, the decision ultimately rests with each poker player, who must decide what is the best for their game.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 10:04 am and is filed under Fun On The Net, Gambling World, Universe Of Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.