The River
So now that you’ve made it all the way to the river, well now what? There are still a lot of difficult decisions that need to be made. Let’s look at an example to see what I’m talking about.
Let’s say you picked up two aces, awesome hand, you’ve raised before the flop and have been called. Now from the flop comes Q 10 7 with two diamonds. Kind of a dangerous flop so you’re going to bet to protect your hand. Well let’s say your opponent calls. No we’ve got a 4 on the turn that looks like a great card for you, totally safe. So you’re going to bet again and your opponent calls. The river card comes a J of diamonds; it’s probably the worst card you could see. It’s filled the straight, it’s filled the flush, and it’s filled a potential two pair.
So at this point it’s really no time to get cute. You want to shutdown with your aces and check to your opponent. Now if your opponent bets, what you do from there really depends on your read from your opponent. Is this guy a constant bluffer? If so maybe you’d want to call. Otherwise, chances are he was in with something and that card filled everything for him. So the main concept for the river is that you basically want to avoid getting too cute, it’s no longer about value as much as it is about conserving and winning what’s already in the middle.
http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/daniel-negreanu.php