One of the toughestquestions to ask yourself in an online poker game: Have I been beaten on the river?
Good day, online poker game fans, disciples and loyal followers of the Church of Texas Holdem. Sharon Charon here.
Punting people across the Styx on their way to the Afterlife grows tiresome after several thousand years, so I’ve been ‘boning up’ on my Texas Holdem strategy to earn myself some extra cash on those long, dull evenings when nobody dies.
That infernal goody-goody Father Ashley has asked me to talk to you about tricky rivers. They don’t come much trickier than the Styx, you know, so I am the perfect person to ask.
Even so, in an average online poker game, you will face many tricky rivers.
You will be scratching your head in puzzlement, with that sinking feeling that only rivers can give you, roughly ten or fifteen times per session.
Figuring out the river begins much sooner than you think... The best place to start assessing your tricky river is PREFLOP.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be. In every hand of every online poker game, you should be constantly ‘putting your opponent on a hand’.
This means, for those poker dummies amongst you, that you should try to get inside the skull or skulls of your opponents and work out what their hole cards might be, based on their actions.
Let’s say you are up against one player. You hold AhKs. You make a small raise preflop, he reraises (this is the time to start asking yourself what he might have). Everybody else folds, you call.
The flop is
You are first to act. You bet the pot, he raises. You see? Well before the river comes, you now have work to do. What kind of hand do you put him on?
Before we go on, I should warn you. None of this advice is going to make you Overlord of your online poker game of choice, because without superhuman powers allowing you to actually see the other guy’s hand, it’s largely educated guesswork. My job here is to help educate your guesses.
Let’s narrow down the guy’s hand to a few possible holdings:
- AA
- KK
- AK
- 99
- 22
- two diamonds
- some other random holding
Now let’s start to rule out some of those.
AA and KK are definite re-raising hands. AK is a probable reraise hand (it's one of the most over-played hands in poker).
We can probably eliminate 22. It’s very unlikely that he would reraise preflop with 22. Some players might reraise with 99, but most will not, so rule it out.
Would he reraise with a two-diamond hand? Perhaps, if it were a big hand like AKs or AQs. Some loose players might even reraise with AJs or ATs.
Some other holding is always a possibility in the world of crazy online poker games, so leave this option open.
Now we’re down to several hands:
- AA
- KK
- AK
- two big diamonds
- some other random holding
Unless the raise on the flop is enormous, we assume you will call with your top pair, top kicker hand.
Interesting turn.
Now you have three Kings, best kicker. You
can rule out another holding! He can’t have KK. You
check, hoping to check-raise. Disaster, he checks behind you. The river
comes:
Let’s look at the board
in full, now the river’s dealt.
That free card on the turn has turned into
really bad news. This hand of your online poker game is a loser for
you.
Based on his most likely holdings, he has AA (which you can beat) or a flush (which you can’t). You should check, hoping he checks again, or bets small enough with his hand to make it an easy call. Be prepared to fold to a monster bet.
Come back again soon, you river lovers, for more of Sharon Charon’s wise words.