Analyzing Showdown Percentages Using Your Poker Calculator

A couple of important, but often over-looked statistics in most poker odds calculators are the “went to showdown percentage” and the “went to showdown winning percentage”. They may in fact be overlooked even though they are quite important as contributing to the over-all profile of your opponents combined with VPIP and PFR indicators.

Being somewhat overshadowed as indicators useable on their own, the WSD and WSD% are actually relatively accurate clues to two very key factors when gauging your opponents. Knowing your opponent’s propensity to call bets like an “elephant” and knowing his likeliness of calling your bluffs are two pieces of information that can be very costly if you don’t have a handle on them.

“Went to showdown” is calculated by the total number of times your opponent has seen the river and basically turned over his cards whether betting, calling or checking divided by the total number of hands dealt. By the very nature of this action, you know his VPIP has be higher, but if both are high, say like VPIP of 46% and WSD 32% you have virtually no chance of taking this player off a pot. You can label this player an "elephant" style player who pretty much always calls while thinking you don't really have anything. They typify wishful thinking to dangerous and costly levels.

The “went to showdown win percentage” helps qualify an opponent’s play in the “went to showdown” indicator because if he is actually winning the showdowns he could be getting a good run of cards, playing great position, and even making some fantastic reads. The truth of the matter is though that your opponent is only proving his lack of poker fundamentals with hole cards and board cards. The lower this percentage is, also indicates a player’s overall experience where something around the 40% range or lower means you are dealing with someone who may simple not know the difference in rank between a straight and a flush.

Again though, it is your job to extrapolate these numbers and play with extra caution in regards to bluffing and betting. When presented with inflated numbers in these categories the only strategy against these guys is decisive value betting. That may mean betting strong hands only, while favoring to check medium strength hands until the river. Just in case you didn't know by now.... they are un-bluffable! Save yourself some aggravation, and hold on to your chips instead of handing them over to a weak player.