For my 500th post I thought I would give a little back to this great community that has helped me so much in my poker endeavors, and write about something that every poker player needs to understand in order to improve as a player ---> Value Betting Rivers

What does it mean to "value bet" on the river?

(Specifically, it is assumed that we are heads-up, in position, the river card has just fallen, and our opponent has just checked to us)

Many of the definitions I found from various online sources were inadequate and stated something like:

 A) " You should value bet the river when you think worse hands will call"

or

B) " You shouldn't value bet the river if you think better hands will call"

or

 C) " Value betting is the act of extracting value from your hand when you have the best hand"

My problem with these examples is that they don't explain the concept mathematically, and are hardly specific enough to be of any real use.

Take example "A" for instance. Obviously when we hold the nuts on the river our course of action is clear, since EVERY hand our opponent could have is a worse hand (excluding chops) we should choose to bet the highest amount that we think will be called in order to maximize profit since there is no chance we are beat. Even if we are relatively certain our bet won't get called we still bet because there is value in it the small % of the time we do get called (Not to bet the nuts on the river is a poker sin, whatever your reasoning. Don't be a Darvin Moon! ---> YouTube - Checking The Nuts)

However, holding the nuts on the river is a rare event, so we're likely going to be against some hands that beat us and some hands that don't, which clearly makes example "C" seem worthless (If our opponent could have better and worse hands than us, how are we supposed to know if we have the best hand this time if we can`t see his hole cards?)

So referring back to example "A", when we hold the non-nuts should we always bet when we think worse hands will call? Conversely, referring to example "B", should we always check behind when we think better hands will call? It may be surprising to many of you that the answer to both of these is no!

***In order for value betting to be correct on the river, we want the number of hands that our opponent is calling a river bet with which are worse than ours to be greater than the number of hands which are better than ours which are also calling a bet***

(Notice that in both cases our opponent is simply 'calling' our river bet. Discussions regarding whether our opponent may c/r for value or as a bluff are beyond the scope of this post)

Hopefully you can inherently see why this is true. The higher % of the time we have the best hand versus our opponent's river calling range, the more money we shall make. You should also see why it is not reason enough for us to value bet simply because worse hands will call. If there are more better hands in our opponent's river calling range than there are worse hands, we will (on average) lose $$$ by betting.

How do we explain this mathematically? Actually it's quite simple:

"If we have greater than 50% equity versus our opponent's calling range on the river, we should bet for value"

What this means is that if we rate to hold the best hand over 50% of the time, we should bet. Why 50%? Because if we hold the best hand over half the time we stand to gain (on average) any money going into the pot.

How do we know if we have the best hand over 50% of the time? This actually takes a lot of work, since there are many factors that go into coming to a right conclusion.

1) You need to practice forming hand ranges for your opponent on every street so you can have a base from which to form his river calling range. These hand ranges need to be as specific as possible and based upon observations/data/player-tendencies/reads you have while at the table.

2) You need to practice putting these ranges into pokerstove and comparing them with your hand(s) in order to get a feel for what your equity versus their calling range could be. Ex-If you're opponent is a calling station, you'll need to add a lot of weaker hands to his calling range and subsequently should be adding more hands to your river value betting range. Conversely, if your opponent has a tight preflop range and is passive postflop, you should generally avoid value betting mediocre hands on the river since his range is so strong.

3) You need to consider board texture and be aware of your relative hand strength in order to determine if value betting is correct. (ie should you be value betting AA on a 4T5Q7 board if it is likely your opponent will be calling with any decent diamond and they are in his range?)

When putting all these factors together you should be able to determine whether a bet for value is correct.

Let`s try an example. Let`s say we hold Q J on the button vs an opponent in the cutoff who we`ve isolated after he limped, and the board runs out Q3845 after he`s check-called two continuation bets by us, and he again checks the river.

Let`s say that we have some history with this opponent and that we know the hand range for him getting to the river this way is KQs,Q9s+,KQo,Q9o+, and we also know he`s planning on just calling any bet we make. Should we value bet?

Once we plug his hand range into pokerstove we get:




Which shows we have 63% equity versus his calling range, and thus we should value bet.

Now let`s say we are in the exact same situation, with our opponent having the same calling range, and this time we hold Q10, should we still value bet?

Plugging into pokerstove we now get:



Now we only have ~37% equity versus his calling range, and should check behind.

I encourage you to mess around with pokerstove so you can begin to learn which river situations demand a value bet, and hopefully with practice you will become more adept at this fundamental of poker.