The zen of going to showdown

Going to showdown in poker is a many-faceted, complicated thing. On the one hand, you can't win any money at all without being willing to go to showdown. On the other, the vast majority of the money you'll ever lose will be lost because you decided to go to showdown, and got beaten. So you should definitely go to showdown, and you should also definitely not go to showdown!

One thing that's become crystal clear to me playing both pot limit hold'em and no limit hold'em is that you should go to showdown much more rarely in no limit than in pot limit. One really good way to make sure you don't go to showdown is to avoid paying to see the flop :-) So a corollary to the rule I just stated is that you should pay to see the flop much more rarely in no limit than in pot limit.

A good way to increase your chances of winning showdowns is to avoid going to showdown without a very strong hand. That means you should be folding often. You should be folding pre-flop, on the flop, on the turn, and on the river. You should virtually be a folding machine! If you can just have the patience to fold all your suboptimal hands, you're liable to win a lot of money from the players who don't have such patience.

The gold standard of a well-played session is to have a showdown percentage of 100. I've achieved this several times over the course of my career, and did again last night.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 40 hands and saw flop:
- 4 out of 5 times while in big blind (80%)
- 1 out of 5 times while in small blind (20%)
- 17 out of 30 times in other positions (56%)
- a total of 22 out of 40 (55%)
Pots won at showdown - 3 of 3 (100%)
Pots won without showdown - 0

delta: $19,720
balance: $1,721,532