Value Betting The River

This article will look at value betting on the river, where you could be losing a lot of value. When ever you play your hand differently to how you would have if you knew your opponents cards, then you are losing money.

Value betting is a very important concept to understand because it can greatly improve your win rate when integrated successfully into your game. Knowing when to value bet is a lot easier to predict once you can do a better job of assigning hand ranges on your opponents.

There are many situations in poker where the action can get to the river and you may be unsure if you still have the best hand. A common scenario is when you have been betting a top pair hand on the flop and turn and your opponent has check called the whole way. But a scare card comes on the river, such as a flush card which your opponent could have been chasing. Even though you don’t like your hand as much with the potential flush on the board now, when you consider your opponents range of hands they could be playing, it can still be profitable to river value bet to get value from worse hands which more then likely would have just checked back the river.

If you thin value bet the river and your opponent raises, then this is a sure sign of strength and you can easily get away from your hand. At low stakes games, bluff raises are very uncommon, so you know that you are beat. However, what you have to keep in mind is that in the low stakes games, the majority of players are generally pretty bad and one of their leaks is that they can not find the fold button when they have some kind of hand, so you would to exploit this big leak by value betting them.

You should definitely be prepared to value bet the river against fish who are calling pre-flop with a wide range of hands. You also want to consider value betting the river fairly light against TAG/LAG players who are capable of making hero calls. If your opponent is a rock and will only call with the nuts then it would be a mistake to be value betting the river light, as they will only call/raise with better, so know your opponents.

When you have a monster hand value betting the river is a straight forward process, but when you don’t have a monster hand it gets a little trickier. It’s important that you have a plan for the hand if you think a think value bet on the river is the optimal play. You want to make sure you bet with the intention of folding if they raise. Calling the raise was not part of the original plan, so don’t change your mind in the middle of the hand, that would be a costly mistake.

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