3 Hidden River Mistakes That Are Costing You Money
The river is the street where the gap between what you see in GTO models and what happens in reality is the largest.
GTO strategy is risk-neutral. You’re not.
This is the core issue that drives most of your mistakes.
In this article, I am going to break down 3 river mistakes you’re making and give you tactical insights to stop making them right now. The first two are about doing more while the last one is about doing less.
Let’s dive in!
River Mistake #1 – Not Bluffing Enough
I’ve studied databases for a long time and this is a pattern that consistently holds across time.
Your opponents are risk-averse. They tend to fold too much.
The problem is that you are also likely risk-averse when it comes to bluffing.
This means that your bias of under-bluffing is getting passively exploited by their bias of over-folding.
Am I arguing that you should start blasting off at every chance? Nope. But I want you to start doing more of it in a systematic, intelligent way.
I get it. Whenever you bluff, it seems like you’re risking a lot to win a little.
For example, you may be risking $75 to win a $100 pot.
The risk feels large relative to the reward. Not only that, but even if it’s a +EV bluff (works 45% of the time let’s say), it feels like it doesn’t work, because you’re losing more than half the time.
This is only exacerbated when we talk about overbetting.
In that case, you’re usually risking something like $130 to win the $100 pot.
Now it feels like you’re risking way more to win the same amount as before. You’d have a profitable bluff when the opponent folds >57% of the time. The frequency of folds that you get makes you feel like you’re winning more than losing. But when you lose, it feels much worse because you lost about 2.5x more than what you had already invested prior to the bluff.
Now, notice the emphasis on the word “feels”. That word doesn’t matter when we talk about math. The expected value (EV) equation doesn’t have a variable that contains what it feels like*.
I want to give you a pattern to start following.
Start consistently bluffing when your opponent has made an action or a set of actions that signaled that he has a weak hand.
Smaller bets lean weaker and so do double- and triple-check ranges. Start attacking those.
*Pro note: Am I saying that vibes don’t matter? Absolutely not. Intuition has a big place in any high-level player’s game. What I do want to bring attention to is that in order to achieve a very strong intuition, you have to sharpen it through tens of thousands of iterations at the poker tables and through off-table data analysis.
Without those, what you feel is not only irrelevant, but it’s biased in a way that hurts your win-rate. That’s because human nature is built around risk-aversion and survival.
River Mistake #2 – Not Bluff-Catching Enough Against Recreational Players
What do almost all recreational players like to do? They play loose preflop.
What that means is that they get to see the flop, the turn, and the river with a ton of weak hands.
They also don’t always like to showdown those hands, so they end up bluffing with some of them.
The problem that a lot of these players have is that, while they do bluff with their weak hands, they are usually too timid with their value. Betting with a hand that they know is likely good at showdown feels risky.
Risk-aversion kicks in again.
What if they get raised and have to make a tough decision? Checking and winning a lot at showdown feels safer.
What happens then is that their river betting ranges usually get skewed towards weak hands.
The thought process you use to evaluate a bluff-catch against a reg will not work as well against a recreational player.
They don’t see the game the same way regs do, so they don’t have the same river ranges. They also don’t value bet the same hands nor do they bluff the same hands.
Their style is random, yet predictable. Your job is to ignore the noise and follow the pattern. Click the call button more against them.
Pro note: I am not saying that you should do this against all recreational players. Some of them are really nitty and bluff-catching against them on the river will be very costly. Always use your best judgment.
River Mistake #3 – Calling Too Light After Being Multiway on the Flop
Multiway pots are a whole different beast.
The mathematics of the situation create a very different dynamic and a very different optimal strategy for all players involved.
The logic behind it is simple:
If bluffing was triggering people’s risk-aversion when up against one person, it compounds when there are more people involved.
Players start betting on the flop with fewer bluffs than they should, then drop off some more on the turn, and almost completely give up on the river.
If there is one spot where I want you to start being nitty with your bluff-catching, it’s this one..
Hands that are snap calls in heads-up pots become snap folds in multiway ones. Some of them even become snap raises.
Now, the thing that matters for you is that people are too nitty when it comes to betting in multiway pots.
Wrapping Up
Fixing your river mistakes is a sure path to improving your win-rate, as these pots are, on average, the largest and most exploitable. There is a lot of edge to be had here, so make sure you get yours.
I hope you enjoyed this article and that you learned something new from it. If you have any questions regarding these topics, please let me know in the comment section down below and I’ll do my best to reply.
‘Til next time, good luck, grinders!
To learn more about mastering the river, read: The River Block Bet: Why Small Bets Can Be Your Biggest Edge.
