Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Raise-folding the River
Raise-folding the River There will be times on the river when you want to raise for value while realizing you will have to fold if your opponent pushes on you. For this to be the case, you must have a strong made hand, you have to think your opponent has a decent made hand that is weaker than yours, and you have to know your opponent will rarely re-raise as a bluff. Suppose someone raises from middle position to 2.5BBs out of his 150BB stack and you call on the button with 5-4. The flop comes K-8-2. Your opponent bets 4BBs and you call. The turn is the 3. Your opponent bets 8BBs and you call. The river is the Q. Your opponent bets 12BBs. Your opponent may or may not have a huge hand but you know you’re way ahead of his range. There are 42BBs in the pot. A pot-sized raise would be to 66BBs out of your 123BB stack, making the bet a little too large to fold to a push. If you raise to around 34BBs, about 3 times your opponent’s bet, you can make an easy fold to a re-raise, as most players will only re-raise here with a better flush. In this example over-pushing all-in would be a bad play because your opponent can have a lot of hands that beat you. Also, he will only call your push with hands that have you beat, which means you are turning your weak flush into a bluff. While your opponent will certainly call a small river raise with hands like sets and two pair, he will rarely call a push with those hands.
When you raise the river in this spot,
When you raise the river in this spot, be sure you have the discipline to fold to a push. You may consider just calling the river against a good, aggressive player, especially if you know he is capable of bluffing. While his ability to bluff the river should make you want to raise with the intention of calling off, you have to realize he will only have a few bluffs in his range, meaning you will lose about 80 percent of the time when you call, making that a bad line to take. Most opponents will never re-raise the river as a bluff, but a few sick players will take that line from time to time. In general though, when you have a strong hand that is almost certainly ahead but could be behind, raise the river for value and fold to a re-raise.