[W. Deranged]

The problem with this sort of "raise the river" line is:

1. Sometimes you miss bet if villain will got to multiple bets on the flop or later with an inferior hand.

2. You're in a tough spot if you get three-bet and don't have a very solid read on the river.

3. The character of the turn and river cards might slow down your opponent and kill your action.

4. You definitely hurt yourself if villain checks at any point and only one bet ends up going in on every street.

5. An observant opponent with a hand like AT might find a river fold and in that case you'd probably have been better off just raising early and forcing him to call down a bet on every street.

The general reasons to do this are:

1. You encourage villain to bet an inferior hand.

2. You don't give villain all that easy a place to fold until the river.

3. You do slightly better over just raising the flop when you get in 3.5 BB instead of 3 BB (as raising the flop often does).

In general, against most opponents, the way you'll generate the most average action is basically just to raise the flop and bet all the way down. You'll get called down by a worse A like every time. If villain is just donking with a K "trying to find where he's at" or something like that, if you call the flop and the turn that'll often be plenty scary to slow down villain anyway.

So I like a plain old flop raise.


As for the river, it's really read dependent. I'd want to have some sense of how villain played before I made this play. In general, if you are confident enough that villain will bet every stree to take this line, I'd probably think the guy's pretty aggressive and so I'd be inclined to call the river three-bet.