River Value Bets (1) - Basics
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River Value Bets (1) - Basics
by MiiWiin
The river is the last street in Texas Hold’em, the hands are made and you're just before the showdown. In a lot of instances, it may be worth placing one last bet. It can either serve as a bluff, with the aim of making a better hand fold, or it could be a way of extracting value one more time.
Value bets are left out or used incorrectly all too often. For example, there's no sense in just betting and seeing what happens. You should know why you're betting and what to expect from your opponent.
The problem
From a mathematical point of view, a river bet is the easiest to formulate. Unlike the previous streets, you don't need to watch out for draws, odds and outs or pot control. The hands are made, you know what you're holding and you should be in a position to give your opponent an approximate range.
The question is: if you place a bet, will your opponent call with a range that you have more than 50% equity against? If so, it's a value bet.
Essentially, these are ideal conditions to make the best possible decisions. Nonetheless, players sometimes don't take enough consideration on the river.
In a lot of spots, you're just happy to be on the river. Most of your holdings are more likely to put you in tight spots and you won't have the nuts very often.
That's why there are automatic checks too often and occasionally an automatic but senseless bet.
Below are the main problems on the river:
- Incorrect range assumptions:
You've either thought too little about the ranges or just incorrectly. On the last street your decision making process should take the longest. You've been able to gather loads of information, you've seen what your opponent did preflop, on the flop and on the turn. You need to derive your opponent's potential range from this information.
In most cases it's quite small, if there's been action on the previous streets.
You need to be in a position to process this information as quickly as possible. Ideally, you'll have already thought about this a lot on the turn and limited the range there.
Then you should be much "cleverer" by the river!
- Just bet, because Villain can't be holding anything:
This is possibley one of the biggest mistakes. As pointed out above, you need more than 50% against Villain's calling range. For this, you would only need to consider point 1 to make a good decision. It doesn't help much if you're mostly ahead but can only be called by better hands.
An example to demonstrate the differences:
PartyPoker $25 NL Hold'em (6-handed)
Stacks & Stats
UTG ($25)
MP ($25)
CO ($25)
Hero ($25)
SB ($25)
BB ($25) (15/10/1.2/3) [VPIP / PFR / AF / 3-bet]
Preflop: Hero is BU with 
3 folds, Hero raises $0.75, 1 fold, BB calls $0.75
Flop: ($1.60) 
(2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $1.20, BB calls $1.20
Turn: ($4.00) 
(2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $3.00, BB calls $3.00
River: ($10.00) 
(2 players)
BB checks, Hero...
What should you do? To bet or not to bet?
You find yourself doing range analysis. Your opponent can be considered more of a passive player, he calls preflop out of position and calls twice postflop. This heavily limits his range.
You can rule out one thing with almost complete certainty here: pure bluffs. This opponent will never call crap here to check raise as a bluff on the river. Only a busted draw would be thinkable for this.
What could Villain be holding?
- AK, KQ and KJ are thinkable, this player wouldn't necessarily have to raise this with 3% 3-bet value.
- Flush draws are possible, as a possible combi-draw (e.g.
, ) and you can't rule out pure flush draws either. - Sets and two pairs are possible. Of course, you should assume that the strongest hands on the flop and the turn would have been raised, however you can't ever rule them out. A lot of tight players who are aware of their reputation, like to trap. This is no big mistake either, if they believe you could also loose barrel three times. For this, they accept the lack of protection.
- A straight with 67s is also possible, even if it should generally check raise on the turn (see the point above).
- Middle pairs such as QQ-TT would be possible.
The last point can be extended as desired. Do you have special reads? How do things look image wise? Could this opponent be in the position to make very loose calls as he gets the impression that you're a very (perhaps too) aggressive player?
These thoughts should be taken into account, although in this particular example, they're superfluous.
So, the range is almost established. A 15/10 player can't have a wider range.
Where do you stand with your hand? Let's assume the following as a possible range (diverse, basic assumptions need to be made; Villain won't call all KJo hands preflop, not every set will c/call twice etc.)
99-JJ, 55, AKs, A4s, KJs+, JTs, T9s, 98s, 76s, 54s, AKo, KQo
| Equity analysis | |||||
| Board | |
||||
| Equity | Win | Split | Loss | Hand | |
| Player 1 | 34% | 34% | 0% | 66% | |
| Player 2 | 66% | 66% | 0% | 34% | 99-JJ, 55, AKs, A4s, KJs+, JTs, T9s, 98s, 76s, 54s, AKo, KQo |
As you can see, you don't even need to ask yourself the question here if you should bet. It's a clear check behind.
Here are some parameters to illustrate the problem.
Villain is only holding AKs, KQs, QQ, 
and 
on the river
How's it looking now?
| Equity analysis | |||||
| Board | |
||||
| Equity | Win | Split | Loss | Hand | |
| Player 1 | 58.33% | 58.33% | 0% | 41.67% | |
| Player 2 | 41.67% | 41.67% | 0% | 58.33% | QQ, AKs, KQs,, |
Does this mean you have a value bet?
No!
Whether you're ahead against this range here is not the deciding factor, rather if his calling range has more than 50% equity.
The QQ combination stands for all marginal middle pairs, you can tentatively assume that he calls this again up to 50%, so you can eliminated three of the six combinations from his calling range.
will clearly not call, as all other hands won't call anymore.
| Equity analysis | |||||
| Board | |
||||
| Equity | Win | Split | Loss | Hand | |
| Player 1 | 37.5%% | 37.5%% | 0% | 62.5%% | |
| Player 2 | 62.5%% | 62.5%% | 0% | 37.5%% | AKs, KQs,  ,  , , |
Although you're ahead against his range on the river, you can't profitably value bet.
- Keep the pot small:
This is often the arguement against a bet. If you have a marginal hand, then play a marginal pot. This isn't so crazy, nonetheless, the question still remains from the previous point: what could Villain be holding and what will he call against your bet?
If you believe that your opponent will call with a wide range, the pot size can't put you off a bet.
- Fear of a check raise
In most cases this is unfounded. What you musn't forget though: the range is thin on the river, there's a very small value-check raise range and an equally small bluff-check raise range.
Look at the example above again: will probably want to check raise on the river here, is the only hand that could bluff.
However, this by no means means that it will actually happen!
That's why you shouldn't be scared of check raises. Consider if you have a value bet given the criteria mentioned above and then think about what hands your opponent could check raise. Based on this, you should play bet/fold or bet/call.
If you're of the opinion that your opponent is very aggressive on the river and can bluff a lot of busted draws, then you should play bet/call.
Beginner's rule – three hands
The theory is nice but what does it look like in practice? Unfortunately, you won't be able to take a time out and use the Equilator. The decision has to be made in a relatively short space of time at the table.
There are players who have the ranges in front of their mental eye and players who find this very difficult to do.
At the beginning you can counteract here with a very simple rule:
- Name three worse hands that call your bet
- Name three better hands that call your bet
If you see lots of worse hands in Villain's range and assume that these will call, then you should make a value bet.
By the way: as value bets (as well as bluff bets) need to be considered on the river, it would be good to not automatically bet or check in clear situations, but always take a bit of thinking time.
This means you won't give any timing tells and won't readable.
Basic options
Up to now everything has been based on acting in position. Of course, a lot of spots will have to be played out of position as well, you can't make things quite as simple for yourself there.
In position you've got two options with a made hand: value bet or showdown.
Out of position you've got three more:
- Check/fold:
if you believe Villain rarely calls a bet with a worse hand and mostly only bets himself for value. - Check/call:
if you believe Villain rarely calls a bet with a worse hand but can turn a lot of his hands into a bluff. - Check raise:
if you're holding a strong hand but believe that the hands that would call your bet, would bet themselves anyway. In addition, Villain can turn a couple of hands into a bluff or be holding such a strong hand himself which he's reluctant to fold to a check raise, however he will probably only call a large bet from you.
An up-coming column on "out of position" will look at the topic in more detail.
Exceptions
Last but not least a tip: unfortunately, it's not necessarily as easy as it appears from the description above.
Over time, a dynamic develops at the table. A history develops and the reads resulting from it, you get an image and also give your opponents one. Some exceptions can emerge from this:
- If you bluff lots of hands on the river, you can value bet more easily (your opponent's check/call range grows)
- If you play more reservedly on the river (at least in the phases where your opponent could have observed you), it's harder to make a light value bet
- So balancing could be a part of the decision
In closing: there two more effects in the theoretical observation of EV:
- It's possible that a value bet will also make better hands fold
- A "false" value bet could positively influence future EV. As it's believed you can value bet very lightly, you may get more credit if you 3-barrel bluff in the future
| » SUMMARY |
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As you've seen, in theory, playing on the river isn't too difficult, however in practice unfortunately, it's not as easy to implement. If you have big problems recognising your opponent's ranges, then stick to the 3-hands rule initially. If there worse hands which could call don't fall straight away, you probably don't have a value bet any more. In the next part, we'll examine spots in position and in the follow up to that, we'll look at unpopular spots OOP. |
