Laying down hands on the river

You can’t become a great poker player if you never lay down the best hand on the river from time to time. However, neither do you want other players to know that you’re capable of making a play like that. If that’s how they perceive you, they’ll almost certainly attempt more bluffs when playing against you.

The image you’d actually prefer to have is that of a calling station – that is, a player who rarely raises or folds, but calls a lot of bets. You see, it’s usually an insult when someone pegs you as a calling station.

The rewards of that image, however, usually far outweigh how that label might bruise your ego. That’s because your opponents will be less likely to try creative bluffs against you if they assume you’re just going to call anyway.

But here’s the real reason that it’s difficult to lay down hands on the river: At the river, the pot is probably laying a very reasonable price for you to make the call.

You’ve got to be very careful, though. Allowing the price you’re being laid to influence your thought process too strongly will absolutely cloud your judgment. And if that happens, you’ll start coming up with all kinds of excuses to make sloppy river calls.

Now, there’s one specific type of player who often justifies his bad calls on the river because he’s certain that the pot odds are in his favor. Who is that player? He’s the Math Guy!

Let’s look at an example where a math player makes a bad river call because he’s too strongly influenced by the pot odds.

At an eight player table with blinds at 100/200 and a 25 ante, Math Guy raises preflop to 600 with Ac-7d. Only the big blind calls the bet.

The flop comes Kc-4d-4s. The big blind checks. Math Guy makes a continuation bet of 900 and gets a call.

The turn is the 9d and both players check. The 6s hits on the river and the player in the big blind bets out 400.

Well, that’s an extremely small bet. It only costs Math Guy 400 to win 3,700 with his ace-high if his opponent is bluffing. In other words, he only needs to pick off a bluff one in nine times to show a profit on his call.

Those are some amazing pot odds, but there’s a problem. What hands could his opponent possibly play that would lose to his ace high?

There’s no draw on the board so the only way Math Guy can justify making the call is if he believes the big blind is on an elaborate bluff. But would he make a deceptively weak bet on the river to appear as if he was really strong?

While it might seem that the price is right to make the call, in reality, the likelihood of Math Guy’s A-7 being the best hand is minimal. So unlikely, in fact, that not even 9-to-1 pot odds is the right price to call when your best hope is a random wild bluff or possibly a split pot.

This may be an extreme sample hand, but it does illustrate the point that when you’re trying to figure out whether a call makes sense, you should never allow pot odds to lead you to make an incorrect and sloppy call.

Don’t get me wrong; calculating pot odds is always an important consideration. Just don’t make pot odds your only consideration. Poker math shouldn’t be the pivotal factor in your final decision to call or fold on the river.

XVisit shop.cardsharkmedia.com for more information about Daniel Negreanu’s newest book, Power Hold’em Strategy, from Cardoza Publishing.

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