Value Betting the River in Texas Holdem

October 19th, 2010

Value Betting the River

If you read any types of advanced poker ebooks or strategy articles you’ll learn that one of the biggest flaws amongst even winning players in the micro-stakes games is that they don’t value bet the river properly.  Unfortunately a lot of regulars butcher the river.  They either don’t value bet the river enough with strong hands, or they value bet in awkward situations where they would be much better off checking for value and taking the safer route.  Think about this one for a second.  Have you ever caught yourself with Ax or mid-pair and decided to raise the board after a check only to get bluff-raised off the pot and fold?  Well this is precisely what I’m talking about when I say that most players don’t play the river profitably enough or exploit enough value from the regulars.

There are no rigid safeguards or rules for how you play the river.  In fact, the river encapsulates what Texas Holdem is all about.  Getting the meta-game right, understanding your opponent’s playing style and narrowing down his hand range is the only right way to playing the river.  If you are having to guess at these stage whether your opponent has something or not then you’re probably not at a very good player yet.

Against calling stations and weak TAG players you should be value betting lightly more often, since they are more likely to call with dominated hands.  Against decent LAGs and solid players however you should only be value betting with strong hands.

Value Bet or Check the River?

You only want to value bet the river when you’re ahead.  Typical hands that I will value bet the river with will be 3 of a kind, the nut flush/straight or top two pair. For example, if I have K10 on a board A-K-4-9-K then it is 99% likely that you are ahead.  You aim should be to extract the maximum value possible from the board, however knowing how to do this will depend on your opponent’s playing style and how he played the flop and turn.  If he showed some aggression by betting the flop and continuing by betting the turn then he’s probably got the Ace and will be calling you down.  On the other hand if he checked both the flop, turn and river then he’s very unlikely to call any sized bet on the river.  He might have even had a drawing hand like JQ and missed it on the river.  Against these types of players you need to make much smaller value bets to encourage them to call.  I’d make a ¼ pot value bet for example rather than a 50% bet which I’d do if my opponent had the ace.

Most players fail to recognise dangerous boards and value bet when they are not 100% confident that they are ahead.  A bad time to value bet the river for example would be when you have 78 on a 9-10-J-Q-4 board.  Although you have a very good hand you could easily be drawing dead to the nut straight.  Hence, if your opponent checks to you then you are better off checking for value and seeing a cheap show down.

To explain why checking is the best option let’s say you value bet for instance.  By value betting 50% of the pot you are only likely to get called by hands that beat you since there are 4 cards to the straight on the board.  What’s more, if you value bet the river then there is a greater chance that your opponent will try to bluff-raise you by representing the nut straight.  Hence, checking for value is the best option in the long term.

Now, obviously there will be much more difficult situations to assess on the river.  Let’s say that you have JQ for example and board shows 6-J-K-2-7.  If you’re opponent checks over to you then your decision to bet the river should be based on your opponent’s tendencies.  If he c-bet the flop but checked both the turn and river then he could have hit the bottom or even mid-pair.  You should value bet against this opponent since there is a high chance they will call with an inferior hand.  On the other hand, if he raised pre-flop, bet the flop and the turn but then checked the river, then there is a greater possibility that he has the K.  Since he showed so much aggression earlier in the hand I will check behind a check under these circumstances and avoid an ugly re-raise.

This was a guest post from our friends at Loose Change Poker, a poker rakeback site you can trust. Look for more poker and other card game articles soon.

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Cards Cards Cards

February 8th, 2010

This is my first post at our card games blogs, so I thought to myself, what better title for an inaugural blog post than “Cards Cards Cards”. And that’s what the entire site is about–playing cards and card games. I’ve been playing cards all my life, and I’ve especially grown fond of both poker and of commercial card games that require a proprietary deck to play. Most of what you read me writing about here will be related to cards and card games.

The great thing about owning and operating a site about card games is that I’ll never run out of things to write about. The sheer number of games that are played with playing cards is astounding, but on top of that, each card game seems to have multiple variations and cultural difference depending on where the game is being played. Pagat does a really good job of relating information about card games played with traditional decks, so that’s why so much of the content on our site focuses on commercial and proprietary card games.

7 Interesting Facts about Cards and Card Games

  1. The deck of cards most English speaking readers will recognize is the Anglo-Saxon American deck of playing cards, but that’s only one traditional deck of playing cards. (The Anglo-Saxon American deck of playing cards is referred to throughout this site as “traditional cards”. This isn’t meant as a slight to other cultures, but I am writing from the perspective of my own culture. This deck of cards has four suits and thirteen ranks. The suits are hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs, and the ranks are 2-10, plus the jack, queen, and king.) A German deck of cards has different suits: leaves, hearts, bells, and acorns. And Tarot cards are used for more than just fortune-telling; you can also play card games with them. Countless varieties of trading card games and proprietary deck games are also available.
  2. All decks of cards have a couple of things in common. Cards are always the same size and shape in a deck of cards. The cards always have two sides, a face and a back, and the backs are always identical to each other. (So you can’t determine what’s on the other side of the card by the back.) Card games are almost always games of incomplete information, so it’s important that the cards be kept secret during gameplay.
  3. Whether you deal clockwise or counter-clockwise depends on where you’re playing. It’s traditional here in the USA to deal clockwise, and that tradition holds true in North American, Australia, North and Western Europe, and in Russia. But in South and Eastern Europe, and in South America and Switzerland, cards are dealt counter clockwise.
  4. Card games don’t really have “official” rules. Some commercial card games have official rules, and when there’s organized play governed by some kind of organization, then yeah, there are official rules. But all card games began as someone’s set of house rules. Most card games we play today are an amalgamation of various house rule changes of other, older card games.
  5. There are lots of different ways to categorize card games. For example, one way of categorizing card games is by dividing them into traditional card games, proprietary deck card games, and trading or collectible card games. Another way to categorize card games is by the players’ goals–trick taking games, comparing games, accumulating games, and shedding games are all variations of card games that are determined by the players’ goals.
  6. It’s common in various works of fiction for fictional card games to be invented. These are common in science fiction, where people in the Star Wars universe play a game similar to blackjack called “Pazaak.” But even in contemporary literary fiction, you’ll find fictional card games. The characters in Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist play a card game called “Inoculation”.
  7. Magic the Gathering is the first of a new type of card game that was introduced as recently as 1993, the collectible card game. People have been playing cards for thousands of years, so it’s interesting that new types of card games are still being invented.

I have lots of content planned for the site. One of my most recent additions to the site is this big list of card games I just finished. (It’s not really finished, but I’ve finished starting it, if that makes sense.) Soon every game on that list will link to a page with a review and the rules for how those card games are played. And soon I’m going to publish the largest card game glossary on the Internet too.

I welcome thoughtful and constructive comments on the site, so please leave a comment here or contact me with your feedback regarding the site.

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