Do you show them your trash hands?

Last night I decided to try something a little different on the .50/1 stars table. Tight table with a mix of strong and weak. My table image was tight/strong and I was getting folded to quite a bit on PFR. I limped in from UTG+1 with 67s and it was me and SB/BB. Flop was like 4Q8. I bet out 3xBB and got two folds.

At this point it occurred to me to show my hand. Here's my thinking:

I want to tell the table that I play suited connectors and they better watch it on a raggy board or a straight/flush draw board. I played the hand from UTG so I also told them I'll do it from out of position too. I also hoped that aggressive plrs would take note that I can bluff and hoped to benefit from that in a future hand.

I think the overall effect was positive. What are your thoughts on this?

If everyone folds pre0flop and I've played something like that then I'll show them..post flop though and nope I don't show a thing that no-one has paid for, any info postflop could get something from such as if you didn't bet as much as you do on a made hand, etc

i never show my hands... if people want to know what hands i play, they have to pay.

Yeah, my feeling too element but sometimes it's useful to show crap that was folded round to by everyone pre-flop if they have you pegged as a rock due to winning more hands that get to showdown...especially if I follow the same betting patterns for bluffing as for made hands

there are 2 approches.
1. appear super tight make some extra cash with a few outragous bluffs. the downside is your big hands don't get paid off that much.
2. appear super loose, get your big hands paid off. the downside is you don't get to bluff.

element has found a style that works for him, but give the crazy loose showing method a shot. read the mike caro section of the original super system. it's about 5 card draw, so almost all of the information is reads. caro advocates the crazy image. when you have a hand, you get paid, when you don't have a hand you get free cards, because everyone tries to checkraise you.

Originally Posted by DimitriT

Last night I decided to try something a little different on the .50/1 stars table. Tight table with a mix of strong and weak. My table image was tight/strong and I was getting folded to quite a bit on PFR.

Change tables.

when i play to a showdown, the majority of the time i have some meek holding that most people fold preflop and people are amazed when there aces get cracked by 64o.. the hands i showdown get people scratching their heads.. and by not showing my bluffs, people cannot read me for life of them.

if i see 5 or 6 people limp in and im in the blinds i'll kick out a 10x BB raise to take down the pot immediately, if i start showing my bluffs, my pouncing on weakness preflop bluffs wont work.

The purpose of my show was not to stir up the bluff catchers.. that would have been nice but it wouldn't work too well because those players who focus on catching bluffs usually don't last long.

What I was trying to do was put the strong players off balance. I wanted to show them that I will play suited connectors out of position and if they try and steal a pot from me they might run into the nuts.

It's not that bad of an idea really, but you may be doing it for the wrong reason. I like to "give" other players a read on me, play a certain way for a while, just so I could do the opposite of what they expect when it really counts. If you show them some suited connectors and chase after a flush or two, then they think they have you figured out. So when that type of situation comes up again, act like you have suited connectors when you're really playing top set. If you showed them your SC's because you want them to know that you may have them later, then your big hands won't get paid off when you're holding them. (But if you bluff like you have them later, that's using the image to your advantage.)

A lot of people say that giving your opponents any kind of information by showing your cards is wrong, but I don't think so. Give them information, and then use it against them later. This game is all about deception.

My .02

^
Agree.

One of the guys in my home game is someone I play against a lot. We know each other all too well. So I have to throw in some deliberate wrinkles, even misplaying hands just so he won't read me all the time. The other night he raised a standard amount pre-flop, and i got a vibe that he wasn't that happy with whatever he had. So I re-raised him with something garbagey - I think it was A5o. He had raised to 200 (tournament chips) and my re-raise made it 1000 to go. He thought it over and folded, since that was about 1/5 of his stack. I showed the bluff and he told me he had folded pocket 9s, figuring I wouldn't re-raise like that with anything but queens on up.

Next time we play, you can bet I'm going to look for an opportunity to do this again, but for real. Since he raises a lot, it shouldn't be too hard to get a premium hand at a time that he is raising ahead of me. I'm already licking my chops.