(Psychological torture is just part of the game, of course.) Showdown Rules
The showdown rules and procedures were developed to keep the game from grinding to a halt whenever you’ve got two such people in the same hand, since in poker we try to avoid actual physical torture. You can only get these stubborn players to show by making bamboo shoots grow under their fingernails. They’d sooner reveal the nation’s nuclear launch codes than their down cards. Unfortunately, a substantial percentage of poker players possess a pathological aversion to showing their hands unnecessarily. Can’t everybody just turn their cards face up and be done with it? If that’s where you are when you hear “showdown,” there’s no need to take cover, as you might have done in the Old West - it’s just a reference to two or more players who are in a poker hand all the way to the end, at which time a winner must be determined.Īt first it may seem ludicrous that there are rules and procedures to such a simple process. When I hear the word “ showdown,” I tend to think of two bad hombres with their hands twitching just over their holstered six-shooters in the streets of Laredo.įortunately, that sort of thing happens very rarely in your better casino poker rooms these days.
