Should I call on the River?

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Posted by posted in Low Stakes

Should I call on the River?

Blinds: $0.02/$0.05 (6 Players) CO: $3.63
BN: $25.01
SB: $3.36
BB: $5.00
UTG: $5.09 (Hero)
MP: $5.05
Preflop ($0.07) Hero is UTG with J K
Hero raises to $0.15, MP calls $0.15, 2 folds, SB calls $0.13, BB folds
Flop ($0.50) 9 J 7
SB checks, Hero bets $0.32, MP folds, SB calls $0.32
Turn ($1.14) 9 J 7 Q
SB checks, Hero checks
River ($1.14) 9 J 7 Q 2
SB bets $1.10, Hero calls $1.10
Final Pot SB wins and shows three of a kind, Nines.
SB wins $3.20
Rake is $0.14

Hey all, first time poster. Pretty new to poker and just moved up to 5NL after crushing 2NL at just under +40bb/100bb over 4k hands. Not a huge sample but I found the game pretty easy. So far at 5NL I'm break even after about 1.5K hands and find the game a lot tougher. I've also started studying From the Ground Up and find that it's changed the way I play quite a bit and maybe there's an adjustment period needed before I really reap the benefits.

Anyways. On to why I'm posting. I had this hand the other night after running REALLY bad against the villian. He probably won 2BI off me throughout the night. Twice he flopped sets on me and a few other times he outdrew me. Anyways, here was a hand where I made a call on the river even though I felt I was sure I was beat. Is this a bad call? Why or why not? Any advice would be awesome.

Also, I'm really stoked on this forum. Reading through some of the posts and hearing the insights of the people who frequent this board feels like quite the luxury.

Best,
Kuby

3 Comments

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Tir-X 4 years, 7 months ago

The best way for yourself to be able to answer this or similar questions:
Think abou what hands he can be betting the river with. Naturally there will be two types:

1) Hands that are betting for value (I'm not saying villain necessarily knows the reason why he's betting, it doesn't matter here)
2) Hands that are bluffing

The first part, the valuebetting part is also going to be two kinds of hands:

a) Value hands that beat you
b) Value hands that you can beat

So in this spot just write a list of all 3 types of hands that get to the river as played and can make this bet. This is kind of like the "pen and paper type of setting a range".

1a) Quite a lot of hands can beat you, he might bet two pairs or even a QT, KQ, and of course straights, sets. Lots and lots of combos so we already know we will need a lot of combos in the two other groups if we want to call.
1b) Nothing (in case a bottom pair bets, that kind of counts as a bluff - might happen sometimes but we can easily see without any range software that it's not a lot)
2) Literally nothing. You cannot find a single combo that was a draw on the flop and didn't improve (KQ, QT, KQ). The key is that players will not bet hands like JT or T9 (showdown value hands). Only sometimes and it's not gonna be enough.

So it's a clear fold imo and thats the thought process you should be using when considering a call OTR. I hope this helped, GL!

Eurocrat 4 years, 7 months ago

That is some very solid advice. I think key information here is villains stack size. With less than 100bb, you can be very positive that they are a weak recreational player. This player type rarely bluffs a potsize bet on the river. I don't think it's impossible and would always give them credit for a 5-10% frequency of spazz bluffs (say, in this case, something like A5o) that dont make much sense but they are still somehow there).

That being said, I think it makes sense on NL5 as a default to fold when you cant identify any value combo that you would beat. So I agree you have a fairly easy fold.

Kuby 4 years, 7 months ago

This is exactly what I was looking for. It has been quite difficult for me to try to figure out whether to make calls like this or not. Your advice gives me a lot to think about. Thank you!

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