On Folding the River
This is something I've been thinking about recently.
We'll start with a scenario:
Villain is in the MP2 with 88 and open-raises. A loosish but moderately aggressive villain cold-calls in the CO (he's 27/9/1.7). The blinds fold and it's two of you to the flop:
Flop: Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 3[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]
You bet, and your opponent calls.
Turn: 7[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]
You bet, and your opponent calls.
River: K[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
You check, and your opponent bets...
In many ways this seems like a pretty easy fold. Villain has called you on two streets. He cold-called a raise pre-flop. Now the K hits and he bets the river with confidence.
But let's consider this another way.
If you were villain, what sorts of hands would you bet on this river if checked to? Would you bet a hand like JTs? QJs? AT? 99?
If we think about the traits that are most common among standard opponents at the small stakes on the river, two things come to my mind for a situation like this:
1. Our opponents generally fail to value bet WAY too much.
2. Our opponents seem to like to bet when checked to when they don't have much, hoping you'll fold.
Basically, it seems to me that in general, our opponents are far more fearless on the river when they have NOTHING, then when they have a moderately good hand that is probably good. (This is neglecting situations where they have very strong hands). Our opponents HATE getting raised on the river, and so will often fail to bet hands that we 2+2ers have trained ourselves to value bet. Yet they'll often attempt bluffs that we probably wouldn't find value in.
So my conclusion is that, in the situation above, our opponent is most likely to be betting one of the following two types of hands: A very strong hand (KQ, KT, J9, TT, and so on), or a very weak hand (66, A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]x[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]x[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], and so on). He's much LESS likely to be betting a hand like QJ, JT, AT, maybe even K9 or KJ, and so forth.
The consequence of this is that, when considering how our hands stack up against villain's range on the river, we need to "terraform" that range, significantly depressing the likelihood of a lot of "middle-range" hands. So the shape of villain's range is kind of bimodal, with peaks on the bluffing end and strong hand end, and a depression in the middle. If we look at how our hands stack up against that range, I think we'll find that in fact a hand like 88 is in far BETTER shape than might immediately be apparent.
So in situations where we've encouraged villain to bet a lot of hands, even if it seems that there are TONS of hands that beat us, maybe we should be calling more. A lot of those hands that are beating us are hands that the vast majority of small stakes opponents simply don't like to bet.
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