In the game of Texas Holdem, the river can be a very tricky street to play. The river is different to other streets in Holdem, because players will no longer be drawing to any hands, as there will be no more cards to come. Therefore you are forced to make the best 5-card hand possible, and you must try and evaluate whether or not you have the best hand before making your action.
If you feel you have the best hand, you will want to try and bet and raise to get more money into the pot for you to win. If you feel you have the worst hand, you will probably check or fold to save yourself from losing any more money. But what if you have a mediocre hand that could either be a winning or losing hand? These situations can be very tricky, and players will often make simple mistakes on the river with mediocre holdings.
A common mistake is being the bettor on the river when you have a half decent hand. If you are first to act and you bet with a hand that could easily be a winner or a loser, one of two things will happen. In the first instance where your opponent does have a worse hand, they will more than likely fold because his hand will be very weak relative to yours. But if your opponent does have a better hand than you, they will call or raise, and you will lose. Now as you can see, neither of these situations will be beneficial.
Now if we take an alternative route of checking to our opponents when we are holding a half decent-hand, there will be another two things that could happen. Our opponent could now check a losing hand and we win, or he could even check a winning hand because they are unsure of how strong they may be. Therefore we could save ourselves some money if they check the winning hand behind us instead of calling a bet from us.
Alternatively, our opponent could bet into us. In these situations our opponent could now be bluffing, so if we called we would take down the occasional pot for every time our opponent bluffs with a losing hand. Of course there will be times when he bets and wins with the best hand, but it is going to be more profitable to check and call a bet when there is a chance that they may be bluffing, rather than bet into our opponents and have them call every time when they have a better hand than ours.
