Facing a river raise

How to answer a raise of your river bet: why it is strong, which hands continue, and how your bet size changes it.

Approximate: the ranges here are hand-written teaching ranges or rest on Rail's narrowing model, not on a solve of the whole hand. The direction is what to take away.

In this lesson

Read a river raise as strong: fold most one-pair hands to it.
Decide which hands can still call a river raise, and which re-raise.
Expect more raises, and more bluffs among them, against small bets.
Price a call against a raise, and see why the price alone does not decide it.

Read first: Calling down with a bluff-catcher · Advice, not a lock: every lesson opens.

Concepts used: Bluff-catching, GTO and exploitative play

A raise is strong

When your river bet is raised, the opponent is telling you their range has narrowed to hands that beat the ones you bet for value, plus whatever bluffs they choose. In Rail's river solves the raising range is mostly strong made hands, and the answer to it is folding: when its own bet is raised, the solve folds about two thirds of its top pairs and two pairs.

The price looks tempting. You bet 15 bb into 20 bb and are raised to 52.5 bb. The pot is 20 + 15 + 52.5 = 87.5 bb and you must call 52.5 − 15 = 37.5 bb more: you need 37.5 / 125 = 30%. But a call needs that much against a range that is mostly better, and one pair rarely has it.

Which hands continue

The hands that continue are the ones that beat some of the raising range: straights and flushes continue more often than they fold, and the very top — full houses and better — re-raise a good part of the time.

The size you bet matters too. A small bet invites raises: Rail's solve raises small river bets much more often than big ones, and its raises against small bets include more bluffs. Against an overbet, a raise is close to the nuts.

Folding is not weakness

The price alone never decides a call against a raise: the range does. When the line says the raise is value, fold your one-pair hands without regret, and keep calling with the hands that beat its value as well as its bluffs.

River solves on demand: the charts' ranges narrowed on the flop and turn by Rail's heuristic model, with bets of 33%, 75% and 150% of the pot, raises of three quarters of the pot and all-in, at most two raises.

Rules of thumb

Read a river raise as strong: fold most one-pair hands.
Continue with hands that beat part of the value, not just the bluffs.
Re-raise only the very top.
Small bets are raised more often, and with more bluffs, than big ones.

When they break

Against a player who raises every river as a bluff, call down more.
Against one who never raises without the nuts, fold even strong hands.

Example hands

Examples come from two places only: your own analysed hands in this lesson's spots, and a hand Rail deals and grades itself. Never a hand from outside Rail.

From your own hands

Practice

The lesson is mastered when every exercise below that Rail can grade is passed. Missed items come back later as review cards.

Exercise 1

Pass: 3 of 3 right

Three rivers where your bet is raised: put each hand class into fold, call or raise, graded class by class against Rail's river solve.

Exercise 2

Optional

Your own river decisions facing a raise, the costliest first.

Module R2 review · Facing river bets

6 items mixed across this module's lessons: a spot from one lesson, a sum from another. Telling which idea a spot asks for is half of it. Missed items join your review cards; the score is not kept.