I River TPTK -- Now What?

[counterspell]

i would just call the river. even donks are aware that the ace hits your range right in the junk.

i would raise a rivered queen 100% of the time though. and probably call a 3-bet.

[TomBrooks]

[ QUOTE ]
Tom, why didn't you checkraise the river? Barring that, why didn't you fold the turn?

[/ QUOTE ]

- On that example hand I gave, my turn call is loose if he has an ace but I'm not sure he does anyway.


- When I improve to two pair I don't go for a c/r on the river because...

1. If he doesn't have an Ace he's going to check it through.

2. He will call a donk with any Ace or probably a decent hand like KK, QQ etc.

3. If I c/r, Villain might fold split aces anyway, although not many players are able to do that. He can however pretty easily fold any lesser hand so the checkraise won't always collect from a worse hand anyway.

4. My hand is strong enough to call a raise but not a three bet. C/R'g would put me in risk of getting three bet. Villain could have Aces over eights or twos or a set or whatever. No one knows. On the other hand, if I don't call the three bet with my decent hand I could fold the best hand to an overaggressivly played AK. This puts me in a guessing situation which is where mistakes happen.

5. There is always the chance a guy with AK thinking my donk is a donkey move and him raising me for what he thinks is value. Then the donk gets two bets in anyway. This is in fact what happened.

* Donking put him in a position to make a mistake. If he calls he makes a mistake, if he raises he makes a mistake, and if he folds he makes the correct decision--but who is going to fold Top Pair to a donk? If I caught him folding to donks, I'd start bluff donking.

* C/R'g without a better hand than two middle pair tends to puts me in the position of being the more likely player to make a mistake.

[bobhalford]

I don't raise the river because villain should know that I have AJ-AK by the way I played my hand. Therefore, if you want to raise here, you have to be willing to fold to a 3bet. He may not know how to play poker, but that won't stop him from getting dealt an 8 and whiffing on a turn check-raise.

If this is one of those bad, passive players, he will have you creamed on the river when he 3bets. He sees you are raising with AK, so any passive player just calls when he's holding AJ here.

So for those reasons I just call and hope to win. Raising just risks throwing away an extra bet or two with the worst hand. Your hand looks strong on the river, that is, until the BB bets into you who should have AJ+ and 3 other players! AQo ain't lookin so sweet no more. When you raise the river, it's for value. When you get 3bet, you have to fold. But since there is no value in raising (for the aformentioned reasons) you must call.