Playing The River

One thing that I took with me in my recent major shift from limit hold‘em to no-limit hold‘em is a solid grasp of play on the river. The turn and river are where you really make your money in limit hold ‘em, and that is true in no-limit as well because the pots are bigger by the river. You can make bigger bets that leverage your bluffs better as well as making more money when they call your value bets. I see so many mistakes on the river in no-limit. It really makes me happy to see my opponents missing value and severely narrowing their river range.

The first major mistake that I see people make on the river is giving up on a bluffing line. Here’s an example. I call a middle-position raise with A J on the button, and one of the blinds comes along. Stacks are 100 big blinds plus deep. The flop is J 7 5. The blind checks, original raiser bets 60 percent of the pot, I call, and the player in the blind folds. The turn is the 2, he again bets, this time 70 percent of the pot and I call. The river is another blank and the preflop raiser checks. I bet, and he folds, showing the 10 9.

What are some things I have learned by him showing the 10 9? Well, first of all, he’s unwilling to fire three barrels even when it’s clear that he will be unable to win the pot at showdown. Unless I have the 8 6, I have to have the best hand. From that, I can infer that any time he fires three barrels on this type of board, he has a value hand and most likely top pair or better. This makes it easier for me to play my top pair/top kicker on the river. If he bets the river in this situation in the future, we can assign him a range of jacks plus, sevens, fives, A-J suited, and A-J offsuit, since many players in this situation will check top pair quite often when the draw misses to try and pick off bluffs. PokerStove says we are about 9-to-1 dogs in this situation, so if he bets anything more than 10 percent of the pot we have to fold. If my opponent simply adds 10 9, 9 8, 10 8, and K-J suited into his river betting range, the equity shifts to 74-to-26 percent, and a bet of 50 percent of the pot makes my decision exponentially more difficult. He’s basically offering me a high-variance coin flip that I have to decide to take or not. All of this improvement in his river betting range came with only the addition of a five hand combinations.

The second mistake that players make, and one that’s more damaging to their range, is the failure to raise the river with very strong hands. I played this hand the other day: three people limped and I checked my option in the big blind with A-8 offsuit. The flop was 8-7-7 and everyone checked. The turn was a three, completing the rainbow. The small blind checked, I bet three big blinds, the button called and everyone else folded. The river was a deuce and I bet seven big blinds, having put the button on some mediocre eight that he would call with, but wouldn’t bet if checked to. He called and turned over K-7.

This was a bit of an anomalous hand, since most of the time people will raise with trips, but he said something that I hear plenty of people say that doesn’t make much sense. He said “I put him on an eight but I didn’t think he’d call.” It’s true, I would have folded my hand, but there are lots of sevens in my range, and I would at least call with almost all of them. The problem with not raising in this situation is that in the future I know that he will only raise me with a full house on a paired and otherwise uncoordinated board. His hand is basically face up when he raises me on the river in this situation in the future.

As mentioned, I don’t see this happen very much with trips. I do, however, see this happen quite often when people have non-nut, two-card flushes. They call a bet on the flop and turn drawing to a non-nut flush, and then when they are bet into on the river, they convince themselves that they are beat quite often and don’t raise the river. That sounds like it could be OK logic except for one problem. I get to value bet them to death and never pay off their raises. I can bet/fold lots of very strong value hands like sets and up to the second-nut flush against players like this because I don’t fear their raises, and they will probably still call with their two pair and better hands. If I know their river raising range on an unpaired flushed board is something like the nut flush and sometimes the second-nut flush, I can just always fold unless I have the nuts. Even the second-nut flush is pretty easy to fold because if they only raise the river with the nuts and second nuts, and I’m holding the second nuts, that only leaves one possibility for their hand. Easy game.

In order to avoid running into this problem in your own game, make sure you evaluate your range in these situations and work with PokerStove to be sure you are incorporating enough value hands and enough bluffs into your river ranges to make it tough on the other player. The tougher you make their decisions, the better it is for your bottom line. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG