River bet sizing: Multiple-size strategies and positional awareness!

In the first two articles of this series, we focused on the flop and turn play. Now, it is time to have a closer look at the concept of a river play.

First, note that we can bet as big as we want on the river since we are playing a no-limit game. Moreover, a smaller size could be a mistake in some instances. The leading factor to your bet sizing is the range composition of one player to the other.

Usually, the more condensed your range is versus a polarised Villain’s range, the smaller you want to bet and the more polarized your range against Villain’s condensed range, the bigger you want to bet. Oh boy, if poker was that easy. There are cases when neither statement is true to players’ ranges. Sometimes ranges are so vast and contain certain hands that benefit from a specific sizing due to blocker effects, etc.

By the river, a multiple-sized betting strategy will be the most common. The size value hands often want to use depends on the actual strength of your hand. Be careful not to overapply this concept. In cases where the majority of your range wants to bet a specific sizing and your actual hand doesn’t fit into that category, it’s a blunder to bet with that hand. For instance, BB versus BTN, you check-called a 1/3 c-bet on the flop J♦️9♠️7♥️, the turn 5♥️ goes check-check, and you have AT. You could bet big with strong top pairs and block with a second pair; for instance, you could bluff for any coherent sizing with your value hands and have good blockers for the calling range and unblockers for the folding range. In the case of AT, you have a bit of a showdown value; your blockers are awful, both blocking folds and unblocking calls. So, it would be a theoretical mistake to bet any size with that specific combo.

The bluffs depend heavily on the value hands. Suppose you have only one value sizing on the river; you shouldn’t use another size for bluffing (at least in theory, because you’ll be exploitable), and also remember. In that case, there is a correlation between the size you use and the bluff-to-value ratio that is „allowed”.

There is a massive difference between being in position and out of position. Generally, you don’t want to reopen the action with marginal hands for a small sizing IP. There is tiny gain in it (very few worse hands that can call), and at the same time, you’ll be exposed to raises and further aggression. While out of position, there are various reasons to bet specific sizes, including the above-mentioned small or so-called blocking sizes.

You might ask: „But what if I size OOP according to my hand strength? Wouldn’t it be that exploitable?”. Well, with some practice, you might construct your river betting ranges, where a small size also includes powerful hands—the most common of these hands when you are absolutely blocking the calling range. For instance, you call the CO open and 1/3 c-bet on the flop (A♥️5♣️9♦️) from the BB with ATo. The turn (A♣) goes check-check, and the river is the T♥️. In this case, you might opt to check your AT or include in the part of your range where you use a small size. On the contrary, if you had pocket 99 here, you would go for really big, unblocking the calling range, respectively.

Another reason why a multiple bet size strategy won’t be an issue is if you carefully construct your bluff-to-value ratio. Remember that the smaller you bet, the fewer bluffs you can have, as your opponent has better pot odds to call. Check back to article to refresh your knowledge about pot odds.

Let’s examine three common spots: the three-barrel, the bet-check-bet IP and the river probe line.

You might be familiar with the three phenomena, but just to make sure we are on the same page, let’s introduce them one by one quickly. Three-barrel is when we are the preflop raiser and can have 3 streets of continuous betting.

There might be various runouts, an equity-changing turn or river card, an unusual betting pattern, etc. However, the most common scenario is that you bet whatever on the flop (even range), you polarize on the turn and arrive to the river with a polarized range, while Villain has a condensed range. This is even more true when we are in position.

In a neutral world, where none of the draws is complete, and there is no massive shift in which player has more EQ, the third barrel is usually a big-sized, polar bet. Depending on the range and nut advantage, this could be a 66-75% big bet or even a 125+% overbet.

We open A♣K♣ from the CO 2,3bb and BB calls, the flop comes K♥️7♥️2♦️, and you decide to range c-bet for 1/3 pot (which simplification in strategy works pretty well against the average low-midstakes pool). The BB calls, and the turn is 3♣, where you decide to continue with a 125% overbet, which the BB calls again. On the river 2♠️, you stop for a moment to think about the best-fit bet size. There is still clear value against weaker Kx combos and any bluff catcher that might want to come along. Villain is very unlikely to slowplay any strong hand, like sets and two pairs (became full on the river), so her strongest holding might be a drill, but a 2x that arrives at this node must also be a heart flush draw. So, there is a limited number of A♥️2♥️, K♥️2♥️, Q♥️2♥️, 5♥️2♥️, and 4♥️2♥️. That’s a pretty great scenario to overbet again on the river.

Usually, in EQ changing cards, for instance, many draws are completed on the river, and Villain either has a nutted hand or a weak bluff catcher, we tend to check back medium stuff. There is no huge incentive to reopen the action, and very few weaker hands are calling down against our mediocre hands. From out of position, the issue is a lot trickier. You need to include a lot of checking and/or block bet sizes (25-40% pot) while keeping a big size in the mix as well.

Bet-check-bet is the line in position we can apply as the preflop aggressor by c-betting the flop, checking back the turn and reopening the action on the river.

What happens here? There is a lot going on if we examine the ranges. The caller didn’t raise the flop and didn’t probe the river. We can be pretty sure that the caller has a condensed range (plus some slowplayed strong hands if competent). While we c-bet with a wide range (even the entire range), including backdoor bluffs and zero EQ hands. However, we didn’t continue on the turn, which means the top tier hands are missing from our range (we would be incentivized to continue betting), so the strongest hands in our range will be rivered 2-pairs, sets, etc., weak top pairs and bluffs, i.e. we’ll have a polarized range as we mentioned above, in this relation of the ranges we would like to bet big but not huge. Usually 66-75%, and occasionally, an overbet should also be in our toolkit.

Take the following example:

We open from the HJ Q♥️J♦️ for 2bb, and the BB calls. Flop comes Q♠️6♥️5♥️, and you decide to c-bet for ¾ pot, which the BB calls. The turn is the 7♠️, and you decide to check back your top pair, as you should with the weakest top pairs without extra (draw) EQ. Getting blown off of our hands would be a disaster on such a dynamic board where BB could have a considerable variety of draws. The river is a brick; the 2♦️ and BB checks to us. When you construct your river betting range here, this will probably be the lowest EQ hand you can still valuebet. On the other hand, there will be very few stronger hands than this in your range after this line. So, we can see that our hand (and range) is capable of value betting, but we are more capped than the BB. Resulting in the biggest sizing we can apply, which will be at the ballpark of 2/3 pot on this runout.

Last but not least, the river probe is a spot when we are the preflop defender, calling a flop c-bet. The turn goes check-check, and we have the opportunity to probe the river out of position.

This is one step ahead of the previously discussed spot. What do ranges look like if we bet as the caller on the river? Our range will be mostly condensed (this is the same range arriving to the river as above); only the fact that we bet makes it stronger. We have the opportunity to probe pretty wide here. Even a second pair could be worth a thin value bet here. Remember how we discussed smaller sizes that are out of position? So usually, you want to introduce at least two sizing OOP, a smaller blocking size (25-40%) and a bigger size, which may vary (66%-overbet).

Take a look at the following example:

BTN opens for 2,5bb, and you call from the BB with Q♦️T♦️. The flop comes A♥️7♦️2♠, BTN c-bet 1/3, and you decide to check-call. (If you find this call strange, it’s strongly recommended to check how to defend on the flop against small-size c-bet from a wide range). The turn is the 6♠, and the action goes check-check. The river brings the T♥️, and you can bet or check. You conclude that this hand class is worth a valuebet but certainly not a huge one. You decide to bet ¼ pot, and your opponent quickly calls with pocket 44.

We’ve started this article by saying you might go as big as you want on the river. As you can see, some factors mitigate this. If there are zero hands in your range that benefit from a small size (i.e. IP practically every spot), then it just doesn’t make sense to use that sizing with any of your hands.

However, who said that any of the sizes are predetermined? If you can bet small, there is no rule that you can only bet between 25-40%. Moreover, there might be extra benefits in betting 10-20% of the pot in some cases, especially exploitatively.

What about the overbets? Do you have this size in your toolkit? And what is your default? 125, 150, 200%? If your hand benefits the most from going as much as you can, why not use a 400% all-in size? Remember, we play no-limit hold’em here. The details and consequences of using unusual sizes are far beyond the scope of this article. Before adding any new concepts, practice, experiment and construct ranges outside the tables.

As you can see, river play is the most complex street in poker due to the number of lines and nodes leading to this point. In addition, we can choose any bet size we want, which multiplies the complexity of decision points. The best you can do is to work out and simplify a strategy for yourself where you have a coherent bet sizing pattern. You should always pay attention to position (bigger sizes IP, multiple sizes OOP), the composition of ranges, and what size your actual hand would benefit the most. Don’t be afraid to throw in unusual bet sizes until they correlate with the theoretically sound range construction; there will be no or very minimal EV loss to do so.

We are waiting for your feedback about the topic!

Until that, good luck at the tables!