River Play - Part I

My buddy Ray and I discuss a lot of poker topics over AOL Instant Messenger, and one thing that we have been discussing a lot lately - which is very crucial in all forms of poker, particularly limit - is playing the river. The river is so important to play well because all of the cards are out, eliminating the luck element of drawing out, as there is a best hand and one or more second-best hands (excluding pots that could be chopped). The tricky part is figuring out how best to play your hand, whether it be to value bet, fold a likely losing hand, bluff with a weak hand, check to induce a bluff, or check with the hope of pulling off a check-raise with a big hand (or with a weak hand as a very big bluff).

Ray is a huge poker-stats guy, and he keeps turning the conversation to different Poker Tracker stats - specifically, the "Won Money at Showdown" percentage. Since I am not a Poker Tracker guy, he often has to translate the Poker Tracker terms into the more general terms that I use when explaining poker theory, and it makes for some fun and sometimes confusing conversations.

Inasmuch as Ray and I discuss this topic so much, I decided to let him write the bulk of this series of columns, although a lot of it may sound like me, as I did edit it quite a bit in certain spots! So, without further ado, here are some of our thoughts regarding river play (and other related concepts), presented by Ray:

As you may remember, I was involved in one of Thunder's previous columns, regarding pub poker. Since then, I have been monitoring the forums at http://www.thunderkeller.com, and with more than 800 registered users having joined in just a few short months, it's starting to get a bit challenging. Despite the occasional frustrations, the work is definitely worth it and I take a lot of pride in it. I like maintaining a "tidy house" when it comes to sorting posts on the various forums and controlling spam, and I work tirelessly to constantly improve the forum's friendliness to new users and to build a solid community of which we can all be a part, to learn from one another and improve our poker games.

The main benefit of walking through every thread is that I am exposed to new ideas daily, and oftentimes two or three posts will merge in my brain and brew until they emerge as one new idea that I want to discuss with other players. Two posts in particular led me to write this series of columns. The first was from a player who had just started using Poker Tracker. He was looking for some feedback on his stats after his first few thousand hands. I noticed that one of his stats, percentage of W$SD (Won $ at Showdown) was slightly low, so I decided to talk to him about it. His W$SD was only 38 percent, meaning he won (or chopped) the pot only 38 percent of the time that he played a hand to the river. In the ninehanded and 10-handed games that he was playing against a field of fairly loose, aggressive players (which is often the case in a good midlimit online game), a good, profitable W$SD percentage would be more like 50 percent or 60 percent, which is considerably higher than his 38 percent. Since this stat seemed so far off, I started questioning him to see if I could figure out why it would be so low, and perhaps help him plug some of the leaks in his game.

If your W$SD is less than 50 percent, it's likely that you are staying in too often and making weak calls on the river, for a variety of reasons. To clarify this, here are three primary things to look for if your W$SD is too low:

1. You may be fighting too hard for small or medium-sized pots with less than stellar hands. If the pot is small and you have a weak hand, learn to give up early, especially when facing a lot of pressure from your opponents. I know that many players these days can play maniacally, making relatively weak hands sometimes good against even considerable post-flop action, but you can find better spots to get your money in, especially against these types of players who will give so much action with such weak hands.

2. You are not giving up with very weak hands, even in large pots. Even if the pot is large, your pocket deuces are probably not going to hold up against several other aggressive bettors. You need to lay down hands that don't stand a significant chance of beating the field of hands you're likely up against. When your flush draw misses, you almost never should be overcalling an extra bet on the river with your ace high when there has already been a bet and a call in front of you, even in a particularly big pot.

3. You are bluffing too much. You can exercise your bouts of poker aggression as much as the next guy, but when people consistently call you down, it's time to realize that your image is likely a problem and you need to tighten up your play, especially post-flop.

Conversely, if your W$SD is higher than 60 percent, odds are that you are folding too many hands, possibly both preflop and post-flop. If you play more hands to the showdown, you'll likely improve your overall results even though your W$SD percentage will decrease.

Next time we'll go into situations in which you may want to show down even if there is a good chance that you are beat. We'll also discuss the hazards of having a W$SD that is too high.

Thomas "Thunder" Keller is a 25-year-old professional poker player and one of poker's young and rising stars. He can often be found playing at UltimateBet.com under the name thunderkeller. To learn more about him and to enlist in his new squadron, go to his website at http://www.thunderkeller.com. Also, feel free to contact him at [email protected]. Ray Powers is an aspiring poker player and avid student of the game. He also runs the poker forums at http://www.thunderkeller.com, where he advises players on all aspects of poker. You can e-mail him at [email protected].