One of the toughest
questions 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?
Hand-reading
is a very inexact science
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.
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.
Need more
advice for online poker games? Click here!
