Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (38 page)

Consider betting top pair on the turn only when the board is fairly draw-heavy and you think your opponent will rarely raise the turn with a draw. Suppose you raise A
-K
to 3BBs out of your 200BB stack and your opponent calls on the button. The flop comes K
-5
-4
. You bet 5BBs and your opponent calls. If the turn is any card that doesn’t hit most draws, like any A, K, Q, J, 10 or 9 that isn’t a club, you should bet again, hoping your opponent will call with a draw. Again, consider checking here if your opponent often raises with draws as well as made hands. In general though, if you think your opponent is on a draw, you should not let him draw for free if you have a fairly strong hand. This is basically a protection bet, of which I am only slightly fond. You hope your opponent will fold a hand with decent equity against yours and still call with worse made hands. On the turn, if you don’t know what to do with top pair, it’s usually best to check and try to get to showdown.

  Chapter 8

Playing the River

The river is an interesting street because if you can accurately narrow your opponent’s range down to a few hands, you can figure out whether or not you are going to win the pot. While you can rarely narrow his range to one specific hand, you can usually put him on a fairly tight range. Be careful when doing this against great opponents, as they will use deception throughout a hand to try to confuse you, causing you to make mistakes. I will give you some solid guidelines in the next few chapters to help you avoid being swept away by the river.

Calling when You Think you are Beat

The pot will usually be fairly large by the time you get to the river, and you will generally be getting at least some sort of odds to call. You should often call if the pot odds exceed the odds that you have the best hand, even if you will lose most of the time. Be more prone to fold once these calls start taking up a lot of your stack, as you don’t want to risk your tournament life by calling off in a spot where you are getting good enough odds to break even. As with any decisions in tournament poker, breaking even is not good enough. You need an edge.

Suppose you get to the river and you think your opponent’s range is made up of 75 percent made hands that you can’t beat and 25 percent busted draws, which you can beat. If your numbers are accurate, you should probably call if you are getting better than 3-to-1 odds. One benefit to calling and being wrong is that you see your opponent’s hand, helping you to figure out his range next time you meet. You also let your opponents know you may call with a weak hand on the river, which encourages them to play more straightforwardly against you. This makes it much easier to put them on a range, allowing you to play the river better in the future.

How to Value Bet the River

Players often miss value on the river because they either don’t understand hand values or are scared to make a decently large bet when they could be beat. In this chapter I will give guidelines for when to value-bet the river. These are only guidelines; you should make all decisions with your specific opponent in mind.

You should usually check when out of position with a weak made hand, such as top pair with a bad kicker or middle pair with a good kicker, because most opponents will only call with a better hand. This is especially true if you bet the flop and turn, as your hand will be slightly over-represented, meaning that if your opponent will call bets on all three streets, you usually have the worse hand. In position, assuming one street was checked, as I suggested earlier, you should usually value-bet these weak made hands if you think your opponent will call with worse. If you think he will only call when you’re beat, which is often the case, you should check.

Tend to check out of position with medium-strength hands, such as a high overpair or bottom two pair, because again, it is tough to get called when you are ahead. Obviously, as your hand gets stronger, the way you get to the river matters more.

Suppose you raise 5
-4
from middle position and the button calls. The flop comes 8
-5
-2
. You bet and your opponent calls. The turn is the K
and you both check. The river is the 4
. Bet here every time, as no one would put you on a random 5-4.