Check/fold, bet/fold, or check/call on the river?

[Absolution]

One situation I often have difficulty with is knowing which of these 3 lines is the best on the river out of position with a marginal hand:

Check/fold
Bet/fold
Check/call

I'm not including bet/call and bet/raise because you generally have a hand too strong to fold in those situations. The situations I'm talking about are ones where, for example, you have a mid pair and the most likely draw hits on the river or someone has been calling the whole way. Most of the time I tend to default to bet/fold and I think a lot of others do as well because getting better hands to call + worse hands to call is generally better than getting better hands to bet + worse hands to check through + some percentage of bluffs to bet.


Here is an example:

The CO in this hand is generally loose passive, especially pre-flop, but can get aggressive post-flop, but I would say for the most part he is straight forward:

PokerStars 0.10/0.20 Hold'em (6 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: 2+2 Forums)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], Q[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">2 folds</font>, CO calls, Button calls, SB completes, Hero checks.

Flop: (4 SB) T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], 7[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(4 players)</font>
SB checks, Hero checks, CO checks, Button checks.

Turn: (2 BB) 6[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(4 players)</font>
SB checks, <font color="#CC3333">Hero bets</font>, CO calls, Button folds, SB folds.

River: (4 BB) 2[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
Hero...

What's the best play here?

[jstill]

I dont think a bet has much if any value (not really a spot ace hi looks u up), and since hes loose passive we dont necessarily have to call a bet if we ck so this probably isnt a defensive bet spot.

if ur read is hes not betting some missed draw or worse hand when u ck here nearly often enough where u have to call getting 5:1 once u ck, that pretty much just leaves one option. I think many laps or weakies ck behind enough when ur good here that ck fold vs many is more ev than ck call or bet fold.

here i think ck call or ck fold would be my options. Leaning towards showing down without some real read on his river play when ck'd to. I think we get better value by inducing him into betting worse hands now than we get from him calling with worse hands. ck folds probably close tho.

[MacGuyV]

Check/call is a distant third IMO - I just don't see many players forgo a flop cbet &amp; then bluff the river. The only thing stopping me from saying 'easy bet' is the possibility of him being passive enough to check behind a better hand: otherwise I don't see why it's a particularly unlikely spot for an A-high call.

[TheHip41]

in the games i play in, I c/c this river like it's my job.

[WhiteWolf]

Loose passive players call a lot more hands than they bet, so check/call can never be better than bet/fold here. I think the only choice is between check/fold and bet/fold. Check/fold doesn't feel right here, so, I'd go with bet/fold in this situation.

[Nick C]

I think Villain is going to have a busted draw more often than anything else here. (There are just so many of them that are possible -- spades, QJ, AJ, AQ, 54, 8x, 9x.)

I don't see much value in a bet, really, and I would call if Villain bet, despite his general passivity, just because of the large number of busts he could have.

By the way, you left one benefit of check-calling out of the equation at the end of your post (which is that sometimes Villain will check behind with a better hand he wouldn't have folded), but I'm not sure how much it applies here (I mean, sure, sometimes Villain will have played A7 or 88 or Tx like this and give you a free showdown, but I don't think that's going to be what he has a particularly high percentage of the time).

Edit: I guess actually that equation at the end wasn't really intended to be thorough, because you also left out, for instance, the benefit of eliminating the possibility of getting bluff-raised out.

[VeraN]

I think you left out vital information about yourself. What is your table image - loose aggressive, tight aggressive, loose passive, loose passive?

Do you want to maintain that table image or do you want to switch it up?

Unless you are portrayed as a tight aggressive player, I would bet here most of the time based on your notes on the CO player. Checking is not a bad option here but betting gives you significantly more advantages over checking in this situation, even if you lose the pot.

[TheHip41]

[ QUOTE ]
Loose passive players call a lot more hands than they bet, so check/call can never be better than bet/fold here. I think the only choice is between check/fold and bet/fold. Check/fold doesn't feel right here, so, I'd go with bet/fold in this situation.

[/ QUOTE ]


You aren't going to bet/fold, it's you are going to bet, he's going to fold.

I'm checking to get value from hands that cannot call. I know I have the nuts about always here.

so check/call makes the most money here.

Even passive ppl bet the river with busted draws given the line you take here.

[WhiteWolf]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Loose passive players call a lot more hands than they bet, so check/call can never be better than bet/fold here. I think the only choice is between check/fold and bet/fold. Check/fold doesn't feel right here, so, I'd go with bet/fold in this situation.

[/ QUOTE ]


You aren't going to bet/fold, it's you are going to bet, he's going to fold.

I'm checking to get value from hands that cannot call. I know I have the nuts about always here.

so check/call makes the most money here.

Even passive ppl bet the river with busted draws given the line you take here.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sorry, I still disagree with you. This is straight up, river-betting-out-of-position, Theory of Poker stuff. Check/call is only better then bet/fold when your opponent is going to bet more hands when checked to than he will call when bet into. Do loose players call? Yes, lots. Do passive players bluff? Sometimes, on occasion. Our opponent is described as loose-passive, so the first event (the call) happens a lot more often than the second (the bet/bluff). When this happens, we get the most value from leading here, not hoping he breaks his natural tendencies and attempts a bluff.

[Nick C]

[ QUOTE ]
Check/call is only better then bet/fold when your opponent is going to bet more hands when checked to than he will call when bet into.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is probably true for the posted hand. But, to be honest, it's badly phrased and I'm not entirely sure to what extent you didn't say what you meant to say and to what extent what you meant to say is simply incorrect. In any case, the sentence I quoted is oversimplified.

For instance, in some cases (especially if the pot is big), the chance to steal the whole pot (if we have some folding equity) makes a bet-fold the best play, and in some cases (versus a LAG, for instance) the possibility that the entire pot will be stolen from us by a bluff-raise makes a bet-fold far too risky.

But let's say we have no folding equity (and I doubt we have any here except for misclick folding equity). In that case, a bet-fold is better than a check-call only if the amount of worse hands Villain will call with is greater than the number of worse hands Villain will bluff-raise with multiplied by the size of the pot after our bet plus the number of better hands Villain would have checked behind plus the number of worse hands Villain would have bet if checked to.

So, let's say we have a 5 BB pot, and, over the course of 100 hands, Villain will have a worse hand exactly 50 times. Let's say that he'll also call with a worse hand 20 times, but will only bet a worse hand only 5 times. Okay, we're +15 so far on a bet-fold versus a check-call. Now let's say that he'll always call (or raise) with his 50 better hands but will only bet 45 of those. We're down to +10 bets, over 100 hands, on a bet-fold versus a check-call. Now let's say that Villain will bluff-raise with 2 of those 5 worse hands he would have bet. All of a sudden, we're losing money on a bet-fold versus a bet-call -- just barely, but the example is hypothetical anyway. (And note, also, that the river is -EV for us for both options, in this example.)

Er, anyway, in the posted hand, as I've already argued earlier, I think Villain is so likely to have a worse hand he won't call with that bet-folding loses much of its appeal, despite the fact that there isn't much threat of a bluff-raise from this particular Villain. I mean, yeah, we'll get some curiosity calls from worse hands, but we're also going to get some calls from better hands Villain wouldn't have bet himself, and, if my recent NL experiences are any indication, we're going to snap off some bluffs from busted draws (despite Villain's passiveness) that he wouldn't have called with in this pot that no one seems too interested in.

The instinct to bet-fold on the river with a marginal hand rather than check-call versus a loose-passive Villain is a good one, but the action in this hand indicates Villain is going to have diddly-squat a lot. So I don't think he needs to bluff a busted draw with any great frequency to tilt the play to a check-call in this particular instance.