Using The Free Showdown Play

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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 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

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, say you have a shaky hand against an aggressive player. He bets the pot on the turn, and you have maybe ten times that left in your stack. If you call, he might bet something less than 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 had you just called, and committing lots of chips isn’t your goal with the free showdown play.

Indeed, the free showdown in no-limit tends to act as a sort of preemptive 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.

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