Getting your Pricing Right on the River in Poker

[star]

Getting your Pricing Right on the River in Poker

By the time you get to the river in no limit Texas hold’em cash games then your hand will be clearly defined. You will either have a very strong hand or a hand strong enough to value bet, a mediocre hand that probably wants pot control or a weak hand that either has to bluff to win or to give up.

Let us say that you have a hand like a flush and you make it on the river. The pot is $20 and your opponent checked the turn and also checked the river.

This is a betting sequence that indicates a weak holding and so although you have to bet something, the key issue here is how much. Some players just get too greedy here and bet the pot button and hope to get called. Your opponents betting actions will dictate the likelihood of them calling a pot sized bet or not. However you need to listen to those actions because if you do not then you are going to miss an awful lot of value post flop.

Actually if you bet something wacky like $5 into a $20 pot and your opponent has nothing then some players could confuse that as a blocker and come back over the top.

It is much more difficult for someone to come back over the top when you bet pot as the financial consequences of them being wrong and losing are much more severe. The entire betting line of them going check-check indicates weakness and so why blast them out of the pot on the river?

The bet sizing just does not make sense and you should be listening to that and betting probably no more than half pot and giving your opponent 3/1 pot odds or more.

I am more likely to bet something like one quarter to one third pot if I feel that my opponent is really weak. One quarter pot offers them 5/1 pot odds and any pair that they hold beats a bluff and so that price is attractive to them. However it is when someone periodically confuses your hand with a weak bluff or a blocking bet that things can really get interesting. This is when your opponent can take it upon themselves to throw in a raise. This is a raise that they would not have made had you bet the pot or close to the pot.

At the lower stakes level up to and including NL100 then your opponents actions tend to mean exactly what the indications point to. This is not always the case in six max and short-handed games but it is far more so in full ring games. This is a form of poker where listening to the betting is crucial for success. I have seen far too many players forget this and look to put plays down at incorrect times when it is plain as day that their opponent is going to stack off and play for stacks.

I see wasted bluffs and semi-bluffs all over the place and I think to myself…….why? All they had to do to find the right play was to listen to the action. If your opponent is playing in a very straight forward way then checks and calls mean weak to moderate hands.

Bets and raises mean strong hands and especially when your opponent is betting on every street. Just how often do your opponents betting actions mean what they claim to mean? Well while nothing is ever guaranteed, you should take your opponents actions to mean exactly that until betting patterns reveal otherwise.

Carl Sampson is a professional poker player who plays online at 888poker.