No-Limit Hold'em River Betting

Proper betting on the river is somewhat of an art form

In no-limit hold'em, or any other poker form in which you have a choice of bet size, betting when there are still one or more cards to come involves a fair amount of technical skill. Once you have an idea of what your opponent has, you want to give him a bad price, a high price, a cheap price, and so forth. You have to think about the math a little bit.

Betting on the river is more of an art form. You often have a good idea what your opponent has, and have to decide what size bet will achieve the desired result. A lot of human factors enter into your decision. Does your opponent have a tendency to call? How does he perceive your temperament and style of play? What does he think you have?

When you have a hand that you think is good, there is a resemblance to the commercial world, where you balance the interest you have in obtaining the most amount of money against the customer's willingness to buy. In commerce, sometimes you set a higher price and it actually makes the merchandise more attractive, by inducing the customer to think you are offering a top-of-the-line product. In poker, even much more often than in the real-world marketplace, we often find that a bigger price will actually make a product more attractive, because an opponent will think that there is a greater chance of catching you on a bluff. I see a lot of players who seem to think it is a universal rule that the less they bet, the greater their chance of getting called. As a result, they try to sell their merchandise for a lot less than the market will bear.

The biggest mistake made by my new poker clients is observing the fallacy that they are supposed to bet on the end anytime they are the favorite to have the best hand. Betting here can easily be an expensive leak in one's game. You may think your hand is good, and even feel strongly about it, and it still might be wrong to value-bet. The occasions when a bet would be incorrect when you think your hand is good usually occur when you are last to act and have the opportunity to turn your hand faceup and see if your feeling was right. In this situation, it would be wrong to bet even if you were 90 percent sure your hand was good, if your opponent would always fold unless he had you beat. You bet in this spot only when thinking that if your hand is called, it is more likely to be by a worse one. If your opponent was probably drawing, but is the favorite to have you beat if he was not, you are making a terrible poker error by betting. If he folds, the only thing you have won by betting is the opportunity to keep your hand concealed. And we have not yet even discussed the possibility (though it rarely occurs in practice) that he will raise, and either get you to call when you are beat or get you to fold when your hand is good.

When acting first with a hand you think has a decent chance to be good, but could be facing a better one, it is often right to make a small bet. This minor display of strength - as opposed to just checking - is made to have a clearer idea of what to do if your opponent raises, as opposed to being confronted with a big bet after you have merely checked. This small river bet is a useful tool, but may backfire against certain people. We pros call it a "fear bet," and are not above trying to take a pot from somebody with a large raise when we see one.

There are times when it is obvious that you cannot hold a big hand. The signature example of this is when you have position against one opponent, there is a flush draw with an unpaired board on the flop, your opponent has checked on the turn, and you check it back. If a blank comes on the river and he checks, how could you possibly hold a hand good enough to make a large bet? A good player would be extremely suspicious in this situation. This is but one example of a situation in which the bet size will have a fishy look to it. Usually, this type of bet is the sign of a weak player running a bluff, but it is also possible to fool a good player into calling with this technique, particularly a tricky player who is often out of line himself.

Let's look at a couple no-limit hold'em hands to see these ideas in practice. In the first hand, you are under the gun in a $5-$10 blinds money game and limp in with the K
Q
. The next player calls, and the blinds call, so the pot is fourhanded. The flop comes Q
2
2
, giving you top pair with a king kicker. The blinds check, you bet $40, the next player folds, the small blind calls, and the big blind folds. The turn card is the 7
, a complete blank. Your lone opponent checks, you bet $100 into this $120 pot, and he calls. The last card is the innocent-looking 6
. Your opponent checks again; what should you do? He could have a queen, a deuce, or a spade draw. Some would venture a small bet here, trying to milk the hand for every drop. I would bet the river without thinking about it if playing limit hold'em, but in no-limit, I would just turn my hand up and see who wins. If your opponent has the hand you hope he has, a queen with a lower kicker, he can't take any heat with it. So, you do not figure to win much by betting, even if he fails to fold. If he was drawing, he can't call (but he could raise, which is not something you want to see). And he could be slow-playing trips. I think the right play against the typical opponent is to flip over your hand and see to whom they push the money.

Here is a hand that I played in a money game at Wynn Las Vegas this summer when I went to Vegas for the World Series of Poker. The blinds were $10-$20 and most of the players had upward of a grand in front of them. I had pocket jacks in middle position and the under-the-gun player, a young fellow who had been raising a lot of pots, opened for $80. I called, and the button called, so three of us saw the flop, which came K-Q-7 rainbow. The preflop raiser checked, I checked, and the button checked. The turn card was a 3, putting a two-flush on the board. The preflop raiser checked, I checked again, and the button bet $250. The preflop raiser folded, and I decided to call, as it looked like he might be stealing. An offsuit deuce came on the river. I checked again, and the button bet $500. What should I do?

The button had the demeanor of a local who was a regular player in that cardroom. He obviously knew the game reasonably well, but was stuck as a result of running into a bigger hand early in the session, and had to buy in again. I was unsure if he knew my identity or not. The $250 turn bet was a fairly hefty amount for the situation (one of the reasons I called). The $500 river bet when the betting had shown that I had probably made a defensive call on suspicion looked way out of line to me. So, I called, thinking that my opponent was probably bluffing, although I would not have been amazed if he flipped up a hand like A-Q or something. When I called, he rapped the table, so I showed my hand and won the pot.

I admit that we have not gotten very far into what is a deep subject, but these are some of the considerations you have in river betting in no-limit hold'em. Having a good feel on the end for the different plays and amounts to bet in various situations is a helpful skill, and you should work hard to hone it.

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