How do you know when a river raise is actually a bluff?

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mcdiky

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I've been reviewing a lot of my online MTT hands recently and river decisions are probably where I struggle the most. One thing I've noticed is that it's very easy to look at your own hand and think, "I have trips, two pair, an overpair, etc., so I should probably call."

But when the opponent suddenly raises all-in on the river, the important question seems to be how many realistic bluffs they can actually have.

I've had opponents show up with some pretty strange river bluffs in low-stakes tournaments, which makes it tempting to call wider, but obviously you can't assume everyone is bluffing.

What factors do you guys prioritize when deciding whether a strong hand is actually good enough to call a river shove?
 
When facing any aggression on the river, weather a bet or a raise, the two fundamental questions are:

1) Do I beat any value?
2) Is the opponent likely to be over- or underbluffing?

If we can answer "yes" to 1), we usually have to call, although there are a few exceptions. Like if we think, we beat 3 value combos but lose to 12 combos, and we also think, the opponent is literallly never bluffing, we should still fold to a pot sized bet. But the main rule is, that if we beat value, we call. If not we have a bluffcatcher, and we move on to question 2).

And right off the bat I will say, that river raises are generally an underbluffed line in micro or low stakes games, unless we used some silly small sizing, that might have induced the raise. So defaulting towards folding bluff catchers to a raise on the river, is a strong baseline. But before deciding to make the fold, we can look at things like:

1) Pot odds
2) Previous action
3) Busted draws
4) Opponent tendencies
5) History and dynamics
6) Blockers

Basically just like when we are facing a bet on the river.
 
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If the opponent has a potential straight, flush, or full house, I won't call the all-in; in other situations, I weigh how much I’ve lost leading up to the river—though the size of my remaining stack matters, too.
 
mcdiky said:
I've been reviewing a lot of my online MTT hands recently and river decisions are probably where I struggle the most. One thing I've noticed is that it's very easy to look at your own hand and think, "I have trips, two pair, an overpair, etc., so I should probably call."

But when the opponent suddenly raises all-in on the river, the important question seems to be how many realistic bluffs they can actually have.

I've had opponents show up with some pretty strange river bluffs in low-stakes tournaments, which makes it tempting to call wider, but obviously you can't assume everyone is bluffing.

What factors do you guys prioritize when deciding whether a strong hand is actually good enough to call a river shove?
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good question. when i know this i wil be millionaire 😀
 
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