What Would You Do? Poker Hands to Decide on the River (6 Spots)
What would you do in these 6 poker hands? Each one is told through to the river, the most expensive street, and you get the last decision: bet for value, call to catch a bluff, or bluff yourself. Decide before you read the answer: on the river, the right play depends less on your hand than on what it beats and what beats it in your opponent's range.
The 6 hands
Answer key
See the answer
- Cutoff, A♣J♣, board J♠ 8♦ 4♥ 7♣ 4♠; you bet small on the flop, the turn checked through, the big blind checks the river — small bet (a third pot). Top pair, good kicker: a small bet gets called by weaker pairs and worse jacks; a big one only gets called by better.
- Big blind, J♣J♦, board Q♦ T♣ 5♣ 2♠ 2♥; you called flop and turn, you act first on the river — small lead (a quarter pot). This blocking bet takes value from tens and small pairs and spares you from facing a big bet from the button.
- Small blind, Q♠J♠, board J♦ 8♠ 5♣ 9♠ 2♦; the button bets 80% pot on the river — call. Top pair does not raise, since only better hands would call, but it beats enough bluffs to call.
- Button, A♠8♠, board A♦ J♣ 6♥ 3♠ 9♦; you bet flop and turn, and the big blind leads the river for 150% pot — call. Against a polarized bet, top pair is a bluff‑catcher and has to defend often enough.
- Button, A♦3♦, board K♦ 9♣ 5♦ 7♥ 2♣; you bet flop and turn, the big blind checks a third time — overbet (150% pot). The flush draw missed: the ace removes AK and other aces that would call, and A‑3 almost never wins at showdown, so it is the ideal bluff candidate.
- Big blind, 9♣9♠, 3‑bet pot, board K♠ 7♦ 5♥ 2♣ 2♠; you called flop and turn, the small blind jams the river — call. The jam is polarized: missed straight draws can only win this way, and a pair of nines beats all of them; against enough bluffs, a pair below the king must call.
The 4-question method
| Question | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Does my hand beat the hands that call? | bet for value |
| Does my hand mostly beat bluffs? | call rather than raise |
| Does my hand never win at showdown? | bluff or give up |
| Which size gets called by the hands I beat? | small for thin value, big to polarize |
The common mistake: playing your hand instead of their range
"I have top pair, I raise" or "I have nothing, I check" both skip the only question that matters on the river: against which of your opponent's hands does your decision make money? Top pair can be a call, and ace-high can be the best bluff.
On 14 October 2026 we sorted the 183 river spots in our puzzle library by expected answer: a check in 81, a bet of some size in 98 (65 of them small), a call in 4. Check is the single most common answer, ahead of the small bet, because many river hands neither get called by worse nor make a credible bluff. Only 4 of the 183 put you facing a bet, and three of them are questions 3, 4 and 6 above: bluff‑catching spots are still rare in our library. Every answer comes from rules we wrote and is explained on the puzzle; none comes from a solver.
Keep going
- More decisions on every street: the poker quiz.
- The math behind every call: pot odds.
- How often a bluff has to work: how often does a bluff need to work.
- The bets that set up the river: the c‑bet quiz.
- Train on spots like these: our free poker trainer.
- Before calling on the river, check the price: the pot odds quiz.
- Every street, from easy to hard: poker puzzles.
- One spot a day, with a leaderboard: the daily poker puzzle.
- Before comparing with the price: count your poker outs.
- Estimate your odds without a calculator: the rule of 2 and 4.
- How much of your range to defend against a bet: minimum defense frequency.
- Calling a river bet with a medium hand: the river bluff catcher.
- Betting a hand that is only slightly ahead: the thin value bet.
- Reviewing your own hands the same way: how to review poker hands.
Sources
- Questions from the curated Poker Puzzle Trainer corpus (October 10, 2026).
- Answers follow rules written by the app's author; they are not solver outputs.