When Should I Fold In Poker
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*Poker Hands To Fold
*When To Fold In Poker
*When Should I Fold In Poker TableWhen to Fold
Your Preflop Hand Is Trash. This may seem obvious to poker players with a lot of experience. When you are still learning, it’s a good idea to play your poker hands according to the graph below. This will keep you safe most of the rounds, but it does mean you are folding a lot of your hands. Once you understand the basics it’s time to learn more about equity in poker hands and how you can put your opponent on a range of hands. Given the same 3-bet size, you should fold more when OOP than when IP because of the power that being in position grants you (realizing equity better). The appropriate folding frequencies are somewhere around 40-45% when IP and 45-50% when OOP. The sample size needed here is around 1,500 hands. Preflop Squeeze.
Note: This article only applies to Fixed-Limit Hold’em
Most decent players have a pretty good understanding about when to fold preflop. The decision you make preflop is a crucial one, and is covered extensively on this site (see Longhand Limit and Dynamic Hand Value). Simply put, you want to play premium hands preflop. In terms of marginal hands, you want to play suited connectors and small pairs more when it is a multi-way pot and less so when it is about three people seeing the flop. For big cards such as AJ or KT, the opposite is the case. Be more willing to play these hands in a heads up or three way situation. Always fold garbage hands like Q 5.
Again, these preflop decisions are important, but they are not the whole story. There are three rounds of betting postflop, and the decisions you make are not automatic. Surely, pot odds will help you, especially if you are on a draw, but what do you do if you have a made hand but are unsure of where you are in the hand?
Suppose the pot was raised preflop, and you have pot odds to go ahead and call the flop. What do you do on the turn? This is a judgment call. If someone bets the turn and someone raises and another player calls, you can rest assured that your Jacks are not good and go ahead and fold. However, what if someone bets, everyone else folds and it’s to you? What is the correct decision?
Mistakes
In limit hold’em, the bets are a small fraction of the pot. This encourages action because it is cheaper to see a showdown. This aspect of Limit appeals to fish and new players who like to ’see cards.’
Most bad players lose money at limit hold’em over time and not one any one big hand. This is because they continually make small mistakes. They call when they do not have pot odds, or they continue to call when they are clearly beat. Every time you call when you shouldn’t, you are making a small mistake.
A big mistake at limit hold’em is folding when you should not have. I do not mean folding early and then later finding out you would have hit a miracle river. I mean folding when you have the best hand late in the pot.
Suppose you raised the pot preflop and there were 3 callers (8 small bets). It is checked around to you. You bet, someone raises, 2 people call, you call. The 5 falls on the turn. The raiser bets, the other players fold.
Right now, there are a total of 18 small bets in the pot (8 preflop, 8 flop, 2 turn; remember that a big bet is equivalent to two small bets). What should you do? You are probably beat. However, if you call on the turn and the river, you will invest a total of 4 small bets. If you call to the river, there will be a total of 24 small bets in the pot, so you must win this pot 16.7% or more of the time in order for a call down to be appropriate. Assuming you have 5 outs (which is not the case if he has KQ or AK, but let’s just assume), you have a 10.9% chance of drawing out. You only need to be about 6% confident (16.7% - 10.9%) that you have him beat. This is very small indeed!
Thus, you should probably go ahead and call down, even though you probably are beat. However, many weak-tight players will fold this, which is a disaster if the other player is bluffing or is on a draw.
So When to Fold?
Basically, there are two major decisions to be made at limit hold’em. The first happens preflop, whether to play your hand or not, and the second decision is to be made on the turn. The flop decision is not that important because most of the time you will just be making or calling a small bet; this is a decision that can be made almost entirely based on pot odds.
The second major decision is on the turn. Assuming you call the turn, you should call the river because it would be a disaster to fold the winning hand on the river. Calling the turn and the river means investing 2 big bets, equivalent to 4 small bets. Assuming the pot is raised preflop and just one bet is made postflop, you would have only invested 3 bets to see the turn. Thus, you can fold at the turn and lose slightly less than half the money you would have lost had you called to a showdown.
The river is not the time to fold your hand. The only exceptions to this are when you missed a draw (such as a small flush draw) or if there is so much betting and raising that you know you are beat.
Big Mistakes vs. Small Mistakes
If you want to win at poker, understanding the difference between a small mistake and a big mistake is very important.
In poker, a mistake is a play with a negative expected value.
Good gamblers understand that the only thing that matters is expected value. Luck means you win sometimes and lose sometimes. Over the long run, the luck will even out. The only thing that matters in the long run is the expected value of the bets you make.
So a small mistake is a decision with a small negative expected value. For example, you are playing $.50-$1 no-limit and make a decision that has a -$.05 EV. Five cents is not much money in a $.50-$1 no-limit game, so this would be categorized as a small mistake.
A big mistake is a decision with a big negative expected value. For example, a decision that has -$16 EV in a $.50-$1 no-limit game is a big mistake.
So how do you know which mistakes are ’big’ mistakes? Basically, you have to take into account three factors:
*1. The quality of your hand against your opponent’s actual hand.
*2. The probability that your opponent would have that hand versus other hands under similar circumstances. 3. The size of the pot.
Let’s analyze each of these factors in depth.
First, let’s examine factor #1: your actual hand against your opponent’s actual hand.
Your chance of winning in this situation is about 87%. Thus, if you bet $50 and your opponent called $50, you would expect to receive $87 on average. Basically, making that bet earns you a profit of about $37 in the long run.
Of course, you do not always know what cards your opponents have. Because of this, you must take into the account the fact that you are putting your opponents on a spectrum of hands. Here is an example of where you are uncertain of what your opponent holds. The reality of poker is that you will never know for sure what your opponent holds. Nevertheless, your reads of your opponent will enable you to make an educated guess of what your opponent’s hole cards may be. Consider this example, where you have made certain reads on your opponent:
You have deduced that there are only two possible hands your opponent could have: A K or Q J. There is an equal chance that he holds each of these hands.
In this situation, the EV = 0.5 * (chance of winning against A K) + 0.5 * (chance of winning against Q J).
Your chance of winning against A K is about 13%, and your chance of winning against Q J is about 53%. Thus, in this example, your overall chance of winning is about 33%. As you can see, your overall chance of winning is highly dependent on the percentage chance you think your opponent has Q J versus A K.
Being able to reasonably estimate the chance than an opponent has a certain hand takes a lot of experience and skill. The important thing to remember is that when evaluating a mistake in retrospect, you need to factor in the chance that the opponent may have had a different hand. Poker is a game of limited information, which needs to be accounted for when evaluating the severity of a mistake.
The final component of analyzing the size of your mistake is the size of the pot. This is because the size of the pot affects the expected value of decisions you make at the table. For example, suppose your opponent bets $20, and you know through your infinite poker prowess that you have exactly a 25% chance to win. Should you call?
Well, it depends on the size of the pot. If the pot is $0, clearly not. That would be a mistake of roughly $10 ($40 * 25% - $20). However, let’s say the pot is $100 before your opponent makes the bet. In this case, you would only be putting in $20 into a final pot of $140 ($100 plus the two bets of $20). Since you have a 25% chance to win, your expected value from the pot is $35. Since $35 is much more than $20, you should call. If you had folded, you would have made a $15 mistake.
The most obvious real-life example of how the size of the pot affects decision-making at the table is pot odds. Essentially, pot odds is a shortcut for evaluating factors #1 and #2. You assume that your hand probably is not good enough to win as is, and you assume that you will win the pot if you are able to hit your draw. Hence, the chance of hitting the draw is equal to the chance of winning. What the other players have does not matter since you are assuming they are able to beat you unless you improve your hand.
Thus, with pot odds, you simply calculate the expected value of staying in the pot. If the EV is higher than the amount of the bet, you go ahead and call.
There are many situations where people may make large mistakes and do not realize it. Consider this example:
You flopped top pair. There is $10 in the pot. A fairly tight player goes all-in in front of you for $25. What do you do? Let’s analyze this situation given the three factors mentioned previously.
Factors #1 and #2: Your opponent could have many different hands. He could have top pair with a better kicker (AK), a set (88), two pair (A8), or a draw (K Q). He could also have some other hands like a pocket pair (QQ) or top pair with lower kicker (A9), though these hands are much less likely.
Factor #3. The size of the pot. In this case, the size of the pot is small in comparison to the size of the bet. The pot is only $10, so your opponent’s bet is 2.5 times the size of the pot. You need a fairly high chance of winning to justify the call.
Now, let’s analyze the different hands your opponent could have, and the EV of calling if he actually had it.Opponent’s hand Your chance of winning Your EVLikely HandsTop Pair, Good Kicker 13% -$17.20Set 2% -$23.80Two Pair 15% -$16.00Draw 62% +$12.20Unlikely HandsMiddle Pocket Pair 87% +$27.20Top Pair, Bad Kicker 82% +$24.20
As you can see, you should probably fold. You are at best a moderate advantage and very likely at a huge disadvantage. If the pot is so big that you are only putting in 10% of the pot, you should probably call. However, in this case, the bet is large in relation to the pot and you expect this player to probably have a good hand. Because of this, you should fold.
The above example illustrated a player making a huge mistake because he made a loose call. However, many poker players have the opposite problem: they make huge mistakes at the poker table and do not realize it because they think they are making ’great laydowns.’ The decision to fold in a pot can be even more disastrous than the decision to call a bet.
For example, suppose you are playing a $5-$10 fixed-limit hold’em game. There is $80 in the pot.
A player bets $10, two players call. You decide to fold.
Suppose it turns out that other the three players had the following hands:
It turns out that you had a 12.5% chance of winning this hand. In this situation, you would have put in $10 into a final pot of $120 on the turn. If you hit your straight on the river, you probably would have won an additional $10 to $20. Thus, in reality, you would only be putting in $10 to win about $135. If the 9 came out, you probably would not end up paying off on the river because the other players would start raising each other with four clubs on the board.
Thus, your mistake in this situation was worth $6.87. The EV of staying in the pot was about $16.87 and you would need to pay $10 to stay in that pot. In a $5-$10 game, EV of $6.87 is a pretty big mistake, since that’s about 0.7 big bets. Most people average a fluctuation of about one big bet per hour at each limit hold’em table they play, so this is a pretty big mistake.
River Betting
The river is a unique round. During all previous rounds of betting, each person had a chance of improving his hand. On the river, bets are pure value bets or bluffs. There is no need to knock someone out, and it is impossible to semi-bluff. These changes in gameplay require an alteration in strategy. While each river is different, I will highlight three common situations where an advanced player can gain an edge.
Multi-way pot with semi-strong hand
You are in middle position. You wait for the check-raise. The button bets, small blind calls, you check-raise, button and small blind call your raise.
The turn comes another jack, so now you hold trips. You bet. The button and small blind call.
The river comes a ten, but there is no flush draw on the board.
Besides you, two other players are still in the pot. The small blind bets. It is your turn and the button is after you. What do you do?
Clearly, you do not fold. There is simply too much money in the pot to lay down trips with top kicker. So your two options are to raise or call. In this situation, I would definitely call. The reason is is that if you call, there is a high likelihood that the player on the button will call. However, if you raise, that player will probably fold. If you raise, the small blind will likely reraise you if he has you beat. However, he will only call you if you have him beat. Therefore, if you have the best hand, you will likely win the same amount whether you call or raise. However, if you hold the second-best hand, you will likely lose two more big bets if you raise instead of call.
So let’s say there is a fifty percent chance you hold the winning hand. Let’s also assume there is a fifty percent chance the button will call if you call but will always fold if you raise.
Now, we should analyze the proper play based on two scenarios: when you call, and when you raise.
If you call: If you call and lose, you will lose one bet. However, if you call and win, you will probably win 1.5 bets (50% chance button will call and lose to you).
If you raise: If you raise and have the losing hand, you will lose three bets. This is because the small blind will reraise you. If you have the winning hand, you will win two bets. The button will fold and the small blind will call your raise.
Obviously, this is an imperfect example. These probabilities are arbitrary, but they do prove a point. If you call, you expect to win .5 bets (1.5 when you win an 1 if you lose). If you raise, you expect to lose 1 bet (2 if you win, 3 if you lose). Thus, calling will earn you an expected value of 1.5 bets!
On the river, there is no need for you to worry about being drawn out. In the type of situations described above, you have a hand that can beat most hands. The few that can beat you are certainly not going to fold if you raise (they will much more likely reraise you). Thus, you are only focused on winning as many bets as possible or minimizing your losses if you hold the losing hand. Getting an extra bet by having someone call after you has just as much value as a call from someone you raised. When you have a strong, but potenitally beatable holding on the river, it is often better to allow people to make crying calls after you then to try to extract one more bet from one guy by raising him.
Heads up when you have been the aggressor
When you hold top pair in a heads-up pot, you are more than likely betting it through the flop and turn. Now, suppose the river forms a scary hand. What do you do?
It really depends on your position. Let’s say you have position on him. For example, he is in mid-position and you are on the button. Your opponent checks. You are contemplating making a value bet, though you are wary of a check-raise. Let’s say he will always raise if he has you beat and will always call if you have him beat. This means you need a 2/3 chance of winning to bet. This is because you will win one bet if you have the better hand and lose two if he has the better hand.
Of course there are situations where he will still just call with a better hand and not raise you. There are other times when he will raise you even when you have the better hand.
Texas holdem dealer big blind visually. You will need to use your own judgment on whether to bet in these situations. There is very little I can offer as advice on this subject because this decision is so situational. Just bear in mind that you should not be scared if only one type of holding can beat you. Provided there are many second-best hands that will probably make a crying call, you should bet. However, if the only thing that he could be calling with is a draw that missed and any other hand that he could possibly hold will now beat you, you should probably check after him.
If you are in early position, you should be much more willing to bet. Why? Because even if he has a strong hand. he is going to bet or raise you. Thus, you lose only one more bet by initially betting. However, most of the time, he will probably not have hit that strong of a hand. He will still call you because the pot will be so large that he will need to make a crying call.
Even if he has a semi-strong hand, he may not raise you. When you bet to him, you show strength. He will be reluctant to raise becasue he will fear the reraise. However, if you check, he may sense weakness and will go for the bet. Therefore, whether you bet or check, you lose one bet. Your initial bet doesn’t matter in this scenario.
Of course, there are some situations where you should not bet your made hand if you are first to bet. If you hold AJ and the board on the board is AJ5QT with a flush draw on the board, you should probably check. But the important point is that you should be more willing to bet when you are out of position on the river in Limit Hold’em.
Heads up when you have been drawing
If you hit a big draw, what do you do? If you have position on him, it’s obvious. Bet and raise. You more than likely have the best hand, get your value out of it!
However, if you are out of position, it is much trickier. Do you go for the check-raise or do you go ahead and bet? It depends on your opponent.
If your opponent is very aggressive, I would recommend the check-raise. First, he may have nothing and has been bluffing into you the whole time.
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*Poker Hands To Fold
*When To Fold In Poker
*When Should I Fold In Poker TableWhen to Fold
Your Preflop Hand Is Trash. This may seem obvious to poker players with a lot of experience. When you are still learning, it’s a good idea to play your poker hands according to the graph below. This will keep you safe most of the rounds, but it does mean you are folding a lot of your hands. Once you understand the basics it’s time to learn more about equity in poker hands and how you can put your opponent on a range of hands. Given the same 3-bet size, you should fold more when OOP than when IP because of the power that being in position grants you (realizing equity better). The appropriate folding frequencies are somewhere around 40-45% when IP and 45-50% when OOP. The sample size needed here is around 1,500 hands. Preflop Squeeze.
Note: This article only applies to Fixed-Limit Hold’em
Most decent players have a pretty good understanding about when to fold preflop. The decision you make preflop is a crucial one, and is covered extensively on this site (see Longhand Limit and Dynamic Hand Value). Simply put, you want to play premium hands preflop. In terms of marginal hands, you want to play suited connectors and small pairs more when it is a multi-way pot and less so when it is about three people seeing the flop. For big cards such as AJ or KT, the opposite is the case. Be more willing to play these hands in a heads up or three way situation. Always fold garbage hands like Q 5.
Again, these preflop decisions are important, but they are not the whole story. There are three rounds of betting postflop, and the decisions you make are not automatic. Surely, pot odds will help you, especially if you are on a draw, but what do you do if you have a made hand but are unsure of where you are in the hand?
Suppose the pot was raised preflop, and you have pot odds to go ahead and call the flop. What do you do on the turn? This is a judgment call. If someone bets the turn and someone raises and another player calls, you can rest assured that your Jacks are not good and go ahead and fold. However, what if someone bets, everyone else folds and it’s to you? What is the correct decision?
Mistakes
In limit hold’em, the bets are a small fraction of the pot. This encourages action because it is cheaper to see a showdown. This aspect of Limit appeals to fish and new players who like to ’see cards.’
Most bad players lose money at limit hold’em over time and not one any one big hand. This is because they continually make small mistakes. They call when they do not have pot odds, or they continue to call when they are clearly beat. Every time you call when you shouldn’t, you are making a small mistake.
A big mistake at limit hold’em is folding when you should not have. I do not mean folding early and then later finding out you would have hit a miracle river. I mean folding when you have the best hand late in the pot.
Suppose you raised the pot preflop and there were 3 callers (8 small bets). It is checked around to you. You bet, someone raises, 2 people call, you call. The 5 falls on the turn. The raiser bets, the other players fold.
Right now, there are a total of 18 small bets in the pot (8 preflop, 8 flop, 2 turn; remember that a big bet is equivalent to two small bets). What should you do? You are probably beat. However, if you call on the turn and the river, you will invest a total of 4 small bets. If you call to the river, there will be a total of 24 small bets in the pot, so you must win this pot 16.7% or more of the time in order for a call down to be appropriate. Assuming you have 5 outs (which is not the case if he has KQ or AK, but let’s just assume), you have a 10.9% chance of drawing out. You only need to be about 6% confident (16.7% - 10.9%) that you have him beat. This is very small indeed!
Thus, you should probably go ahead and call down, even though you probably are beat. However, many weak-tight players will fold this, which is a disaster if the other player is bluffing or is on a draw.
So When to Fold?
Basically, there are two major decisions to be made at limit hold’em. The first happens preflop, whether to play your hand or not, and the second decision is to be made on the turn. The flop decision is not that important because most of the time you will just be making or calling a small bet; this is a decision that can be made almost entirely based on pot odds.
The second major decision is on the turn. Assuming you call the turn, you should call the river because it would be a disaster to fold the winning hand on the river. Calling the turn and the river means investing 2 big bets, equivalent to 4 small bets. Assuming the pot is raised preflop and just one bet is made postflop, you would have only invested 3 bets to see the turn. Thus, you can fold at the turn and lose slightly less than half the money you would have lost had you called to a showdown.
The river is not the time to fold your hand. The only exceptions to this are when you missed a draw (such as a small flush draw) or if there is so much betting and raising that you know you are beat.
Big Mistakes vs. Small Mistakes
If you want to win at poker, understanding the difference between a small mistake and a big mistake is very important.
In poker, a mistake is a play with a negative expected value.
Good gamblers understand that the only thing that matters is expected value. Luck means you win sometimes and lose sometimes. Over the long run, the luck will even out. The only thing that matters in the long run is the expected value of the bets you make.
So a small mistake is a decision with a small negative expected value. For example, you are playing $.50-$1 no-limit and make a decision that has a -$.05 EV. Five cents is not much money in a $.50-$1 no-limit game, so this would be categorized as a small mistake.
A big mistake is a decision with a big negative expected value. For example, a decision that has -$16 EV in a $.50-$1 no-limit game is a big mistake.
So how do you know which mistakes are ’big’ mistakes? Basically, you have to take into account three factors:
*1. The quality of your hand against your opponent’s actual hand.
*2. The probability that your opponent would have that hand versus other hands under similar circumstances. 3. The size of the pot.
Let’s analyze each of these factors in depth.
First, let’s examine factor #1: your actual hand against your opponent’s actual hand.
Your chance of winning in this situation is about 87%. Thus, if you bet $50 and your opponent called $50, you would expect to receive $87 on average. Basically, making that bet earns you a profit of about $37 in the long run.
Of course, you do not always know what cards your opponents have. Because of this, you must take into the account the fact that you are putting your opponents on a spectrum of hands. Here is an example of where you are uncertain of what your opponent holds. The reality of poker is that you will never know for sure what your opponent holds. Nevertheless, your reads of your opponent will enable you to make an educated guess of what your opponent’s hole cards may be. Consider this example, where you have made certain reads on your opponent:
You have deduced that there are only two possible hands your opponent could have: A K or Q J. There is an equal chance that he holds each of these hands.
In this situation, the EV = 0.5 * (chance of winning against A K) + 0.5 * (chance of winning against Q J).
Your chance of winning against A K is about 13%, and your chance of winning against Q J is about 53%. Thus, in this example, your overall chance of winning is about 33%. As you can see, your overall chance of winning is highly dependent on the percentage chance you think your opponent has Q J versus A K.
Being able to reasonably estimate the chance than an opponent has a certain hand takes a lot of experience and skill. The important thing to remember is that when evaluating a mistake in retrospect, you need to factor in the chance that the opponent may have had a different hand. Poker is a game of limited information, which needs to be accounted for when evaluating the severity of a mistake.
The final component of analyzing the size of your mistake is the size of the pot. This is because the size of the pot affects the expected value of decisions you make at the table. For example, suppose your opponent bets $20, and you know through your infinite poker prowess that you have exactly a 25% chance to win. Should you call?
Well, it depends on the size of the pot. If the pot is $0, clearly not. That would be a mistake of roughly $10 ($40 * 25% - $20). However, let’s say the pot is $100 before your opponent makes the bet. In this case, you would only be putting in $20 into a final pot of $140 ($100 plus the two bets of $20). Since you have a 25% chance to win, your expected value from the pot is $35. Since $35 is much more than $20, you should call. If you had folded, you would have made a $15 mistake.
The most obvious real-life example of how the size of the pot affects decision-making at the table is pot odds. Essentially, pot odds is a shortcut for evaluating factors #1 and #2. You assume that your hand probably is not good enough to win as is, and you assume that you will win the pot if you are able to hit your draw. Hence, the chance of hitting the draw is equal to the chance of winning. What the other players have does not matter since you are assuming they are able to beat you unless you improve your hand.
Thus, with pot odds, you simply calculate the expected value of staying in the pot. If the EV is higher than the amount of the bet, you go ahead and call.
There are many situations where people may make large mistakes and do not realize it. Consider this example:
You flopped top pair. There is $10 in the pot. A fairly tight player goes all-in in front of you for $25. What do you do? Let’s analyze this situation given the three factors mentioned previously.
Factors #1 and #2: Your opponent could have many different hands. He could have top pair with a better kicker (AK), a set (88), two pair (A8), or a draw (K Q). He could also have some other hands like a pocket pair (QQ) or top pair with lower kicker (A9), though these hands are much less likely.
Factor #3. The size of the pot. In this case, the size of the pot is small in comparison to the size of the bet. The pot is only $10, so your opponent’s bet is 2.5 times the size of the pot. You need a fairly high chance of winning to justify the call.
Now, let’s analyze the different hands your opponent could have, and the EV of calling if he actually had it.Opponent’s hand Your chance of winning Your EVLikely HandsTop Pair, Good Kicker 13% -$17.20Set 2% -$23.80Two Pair 15% -$16.00Draw 62% +$12.20Unlikely HandsMiddle Pocket Pair 87% +$27.20Top Pair, Bad Kicker 82% +$24.20
As you can see, you should probably fold. You are at best a moderate advantage and very likely at a huge disadvantage. If the pot is so big that you are only putting in 10% of the pot, you should probably call. However, in this case, the bet is large in relation to the pot and you expect this player to probably have a good hand. Because of this, you should fold.
The above example illustrated a player making a huge mistake because he made a loose call. However, many poker players have the opposite problem: they make huge mistakes at the poker table and do not realize it because they think they are making ’great laydowns.’ The decision to fold in a pot can be even more disastrous than the decision to call a bet.
For example, suppose you are playing a $5-$10 fixed-limit hold’em game. There is $80 in the pot.
A player bets $10, two players call. You decide to fold.
Suppose it turns out that other the three players had the following hands:
It turns out that you had a 12.5% chance of winning this hand. In this situation, you would have put in $10 into a final pot of $120 on the turn. If you hit your straight on the river, you probably would have won an additional $10 to $20. Thus, in reality, you would only be putting in $10 to win about $135. If the 9 came out, you probably would not end up paying off on the river because the other players would start raising each other with four clubs on the board.
Thus, your mistake in this situation was worth $6.87. The EV of staying in the pot was about $16.87 and you would need to pay $10 to stay in that pot. In a $5-$10 game, EV of $6.87 is a pretty big mistake, since that’s about 0.7 big bets. Most people average a fluctuation of about one big bet per hour at each limit hold’em table they play, so this is a pretty big mistake.
River Betting
The river is a unique round. During all previous rounds of betting, each person had a chance of improving his hand. On the river, bets are pure value bets or bluffs. There is no need to knock someone out, and it is impossible to semi-bluff. These changes in gameplay require an alteration in strategy. While each river is different, I will highlight three common situations where an advanced player can gain an edge.
Multi-way pot with semi-strong hand
You are in middle position. You wait for the check-raise. The button bets, small blind calls, you check-raise, button and small blind call your raise.
The turn comes another jack, so now you hold trips. You bet. The button and small blind call.
The river comes a ten, but there is no flush draw on the board.
Besides you, two other players are still in the pot. The small blind bets. It is your turn and the button is after you. What do you do?
Clearly, you do not fold. There is simply too much money in the pot to lay down trips with top kicker. So your two options are to raise or call. In this situation, I would definitely call. The reason is is that if you call, there is a high likelihood that the player on the button will call. However, if you raise, that player will probably fold. If you raise, the small blind will likely reraise you if he has you beat. However, he will only call you if you have him beat. Therefore, if you have the best hand, you will likely win the same amount whether you call or raise. However, if you hold the second-best hand, you will likely lose two more big bets if you raise instead of call.
So let’s say there is a fifty percent chance you hold the winning hand. Let’s also assume there is a fifty percent chance the button will call if you call but will always fold if you raise.
Now, we should analyze the proper play based on two scenarios: when you call, and when you raise.
If you call: If you call and lose, you will lose one bet. However, if you call and win, you will probably win 1.5 bets (50% chance button will call and lose to you).
If you raise: If you raise and have the losing hand, you will lose three bets. This is because the small blind will reraise you. If you have the winning hand, you will win two bets. The button will fold and the small blind will call your raise.
Obviously, this is an imperfect example. These probabilities are arbitrary, but they do prove a point. If you call, you expect to win .5 bets (1.5 when you win an 1 if you lose). If you raise, you expect to lose 1 bet (2 if you win, 3 if you lose). Thus, calling will earn you an expected value of 1.5 bets!
On the river, there is no need for you to worry about being drawn out. In the type of situations described above, you have a hand that can beat most hands. The few that can beat you are certainly not going to fold if you raise (they will much more likely reraise you). Thus, you are only focused on winning as many bets as possible or minimizing your losses if you hold the losing hand. Getting an extra bet by having someone call after you has just as much value as a call from someone you raised. When you have a strong, but potenitally beatable holding on the river, it is often better to allow people to make crying calls after you then to try to extract one more bet from one guy by raising him.
Heads up when you have been the aggressor
When you hold top pair in a heads-up pot, you are more than likely betting it through the flop and turn. Now, suppose the river forms a scary hand. What do you do?
It really depends on your position. Let’s say you have position on him. For example, he is in mid-position and you are on the button. Your opponent checks. You are contemplating making a value bet, though you are wary of a check-raise. Let’s say he will always raise if he has you beat and will always call if you have him beat. This means you need a 2/3 chance of winning to bet. This is because you will win one bet if you have the better hand and lose two if he has the better hand.
Of course there are situations where he will still just call with a better hand and not raise you. There are other times when he will raise you even when you have the better hand.
Texas holdem dealer big blind visually. You will need to use your own judgment on whether to bet in these situations. There is very little I can offer as advice on this subject because this decision is so situational. Just bear in mind that you should not be scared if only one type of holding can beat you. Provided there are many second-best hands that will probably make a crying call, you should bet. However, if the only thing that he could be calling with is a draw that missed and any other hand that he could possibly hold will now beat you, you should probably check after him.
If you are in early position, you should be much more willing to bet. Why? Because even if he has a strong hand. he is going to bet or raise you. Thus, you lose only one more bet by initially betting. However, most of the time, he will probably not have hit that strong of a hand. He will still call you because the pot will be so large that he will need to make a crying call.
Even if he has a semi-strong hand, he may not raise you. When you bet to him, you show strength. He will be reluctant to raise becasue he will fear the reraise. However, if you check, he may sense weakness and will go for the bet. Therefore, whether you bet or check, you lose one bet. Your initial bet doesn’t matter in this scenario.
Of course, there are some situations where you should not bet your made hand if you are first to bet. If you hold AJ and the board on the board is AJ5QT with a flush draw on the board, you should probably check. But the important point is that you should be more willing to bet when you are out of position on the river in Limit Hold’em.
Heads up when you have been drawing
If you hit a big draw, what do you do? If you have position on him, it’s obvious. Bet and raise. You more than likely have the best hand, get your value out of it!
However, if you are out of position, it is much trickier. Do you go for the check-raise or do you go ahead and bet? It depends on your opponent.
If your opponent is very aggressive, I would recommend the check-raise. First, he may have nothing and has been bluffing into you the whole time.
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