Turn Play in Poker, Poker Strategy From the Turn

Turn play in poker, the turn in Hold’em is the street where players in poker games are at their most straightforward. All poker players don’t use the same poker strategy from the turn, but you can draw some general conclusions. When someone calls your bet on the flop, it’s either because he doesn’t like to fold that early in the hand (it’s cheap to see the turn), or he hopes you won’t bet on the turn. He might have a weak hand or some kind of a draw. In some cases, he just doesn’t want to scare you off, and he’s planning to raise on the turn when there’s a lot more money in the pot, so he can raise bigger. Whatever his reason for calling, it will all come out in his turn play. If he just called hoping to improve, even the weakest players realize that waiting for their draws to hit on the river will not do, since now it will cost a lot more to see the next card, plus there’s only one card to be dealt. Quite predictably, most players will fold here and admit that they were just being curious on the flop. When your opponent calls your turn bet too, it usually means that he has a medium strength hand he wants to get to showdown with. He doesn’t play to build a big pot, but won’t fold either. The third case is when your opponent has been trapping you, so he’s raising now. At an advanced level, all these patterns can be used to mislead your opponent of course, but I will get back to that in the chapter of our school on poker strategy when bluffing. To cut it short, when you get raised on the turn, it’s rarely a bluff. Weak hands fold, big hands raise, medium strength hands call. You have to keep this in mind here and use the right poker turn play strategy to do well.

Betting On The Turn In Poker

Continuation betting on the turn in poker is based on the considerations above. Against a lot of opponents you can contbet without a hand when a scary card hits, or if you know that he folds a lot on the turn. Weak players often take strong play seriously, so they give up on chasing enough the time for your contbet to be profitable. On a board of T863 there’s no other way to win with AQ than to bet. Against the right opponent, you should always bet here and give up on betting on the river, rather than checking the turn and then bluffing on the river. A contbet on the turn can also be a bet for value of course. That’s when you want your opponent to call, and you should size your bet to achieve that. Turn cards can be so called blanks, cards that won’t change much (e.g. after a flop of AK8, a 3 or a 4 falls on the turn). When you bet for value on such blank turns and you get called, there’s a good chance that your opponent is not on a draw and will call on the river too, so try to get as much in the pot as possible. When it’s obvious that you can’t win at showdown, you may want to bet smaller. Quite often, you won’t contbet on the turn against a calling station, but since he won’t bet either, your ace high might turn out to be the winning hand when you both check on the river too. What this means is that against certain players giving up doesn’t necessarily mean losing the hand, because they play to passive to take the initiative and steal the pot from you.

Conclusion On Poker Turn Play Strategy

With a solid preflop play in poker, and flop play strategy, you won’t have to make fancy plays on the turn in a weak game. Just play your hand and value bet a lot. Slow down if you think you’re chances are thin and bet hard if you want all the chips in the middle. In position, you will often want to see the river for free after betting the flop. Your opponent rarely bets the turn either because he’s scared that you have a hand because you bet the flop, or simply because he’s too passive to bet himself, even with a very strong hand. Checking back the turn rather than contbetting is recommended when you have a medium strength hand that will likely be good at showdown. This play is called pot control, which means – as its name suggests – controlling the size of the pot. For example, you have JJ and the board is 9Q53. You won’t get called by worse hands much, so your hand is way too strong to give up on, but not strong enough to build the pot any bigger. It’s time to accept the trade-off and check back even on a board with a flush draw in order to get to showdown cheaper. You can’t just expect your opponent to have a flush draw all the time when he can easily have a Q too. Checking back is also the right play when you’re opponent is very likely to call and you have a draw to the winner. For example you have JTs, the board goes As6sQh3c, you contbet the poker flop and your opponent calls and then he checks to you. It’s almost sure that he’s got an A here that he’ll almost never fold whatever happens. If you bet and none of your 12 outs hit on the river, you will be facing an unnecessarily big pot where you’ll have a choice of either making a very expensive bluff or just give up on it. By checking back the turn, you will see the river for free, so letting the hand go will be less costly too. In case you hit, you’ve already built a decent pot, so you will have a chance to win another pretty big bet with the right poker turn play strategy. As I said before, you make the least amount of mistakes by always betting strong hands hard in position and out of position too. That’s where your profit comes from, when you play against the right weak passive poker players.

Poker Tips

• Always size your value bets so that your opponents make bad calls with their draws (calls that can’t be justified by pot odds). In fact that’s how you make money!
• The best scenario in poker is when your opponent has a made hand he won’t fold and you have the best hand to play. That’s when you have to make sure all the money goes in!
• There’s no shame in check/folding. It’s the right strategy in many cases.
• The turn is a good street for bluffing against inexperienced and straightforward opponents.

Now that you have learned more about the right turn play and poker strategy from the turn; sign up to play poker and get your 110 % first deposit bonus plus a ticket to our New Depositor $500 Freeroll.

Good luck at the poker tables!

Team Chocolate Poker