Bet Folding vs Check Calling The River

A common question you will repeatedly ask yourself when playing poker is, what’s the optimal play on the river? Once the action gets to the river, you need to determine with a great deal of accuracy whether or not you have the best hand. Hopefully with the reads you have on your opponent you know with some certainty if you have the best hand. Sometimes it’s not so black and white, particularly when betting gets to the last street and you are playing a relatively tight straight forward opponent who also has a decent hand. You could have a hand like top pair with KQ and the flush card hits on the river.

What do you do in these type of situations? If you think you probably still have the best hand, and you have your opponent out kickered, then you should bet the river with the intention of folding to a raise if you are first to act. This is an optimal play because if you check back and your opponent also has a top pair hand like KT/KJ they will definitely check back with the flush on the board, because they have showdown value. So by betting on the river, it will be difficult for your opponent to fold top pair, and you will likely extract an additional bet.

When you have a medium strength hand like top pair good kicker, and you are unsure if you have the winning hand, the worst way to play the hand on the river is to check call when there is a bad card on the river. The majority of players will play very straight forward, so if they decide to bet the river after you check, they are doing it for value and you are value towning yourself.

Obviously when you take the bet fold line you want to make sure you don’t commit yourself to the hand and actually fold if you face a raise. You are definitely beat when facing a river raise if you only have a one pair type hand. One of the huge advantages of taking the bet fold line with medium strength hands which are likely still the winning hand is that other players will see you are willing to bet with hands which are not the top of your range, in other words you are going for thin value. Because of this, they will adjust and sometimes over adjust to your advantage and call you down more because they know you are betting on the river with medium strength hands.

Never check call on the river, if you haven’t got the message already! The only time I would check the river was if it was a draw heavy board and knew the opponent is on a missed draw, and can be confident they will bluff the river, because that is the only way they can win the hand. In this situation then yes you want to check the river but with the intention of check raising, not check calling. Check calling the river would have to be one of the biggest leaks intermediate level players make in online games. Make sure you are not one of those players.

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