Practical Poker Math

The River Bet — Last Chance to Earn
The River Bet — Last Chance
to Earn
All the cards are out — there is no chance of improving your
hand. You can win now in one of two ways:
1. By having the best hand in a showdown
2. By using strategy to cause your opponent(s) to fold
their cards.
Remember — your Total Odds of winning the pot are the
odds that your hand will win in a showdown combined with
the odds that you can manipulate your opponent(s) into
giving up their stake in the pot.
It is at this point in the hand where the concepts of Value-
Bet and Value-Call are most plainly demonstrated.
By this stage, three of the four rounds of betting have been
completed. Pots are often large enough to offer positive
money odds to a variety of seemingly risky propositions.
In a heads-up situation, if your best assessment is that you
are a 3 to 1 dog to win the pot, but there are 10 bets in the
pot, then there is an overlay to a call or a bet even without
giving any consideration to whether or not your
opponent(s) will call or fold.
There are 2 important points to remember on the River:
1. The greater your understanding of your opponents’
likely reactions, the less you have to depend
of the strength of your hand
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