The Turn is one of the most miss-played streets of action for many players, it can be a tough time to decide do we need to ditch our hand or shall we continue with it, especially when we are up against aggressive opponents and playing out of position.
In this post we look at four key examples of how to play different hand types on the turn, we run through our decision making process and tell you the perks of playing like a top pro.
Top pair and a straight draw
$1/$2 $200 Deep
BTN: Raises to $6
Hero in BB: calls with A♠ 5♠
Flop: A♣ 3♥ 2♠
Hero: Checks
BTN: Bets $8
Turn: T♦
Hero: Checks
BTN: Bets $20
Hero: ?
This is a good spot for us to continue calling, we block better hands like AQ and AK by having an Ace in our hand and for the times we are behind we have our back up gutshot draw to the wheel.
We don’t love calling the bet here and against a very tight player who is only going to have a value range on the turn we could look to make some tight folds, however against an aggressive player on the button folding this hand would mean we are over-folding and players can just bet us off too many of our holdings.
There is no value in a raise here either because we will only be getting action when we are beat as all worse hands will just find a fold.
Bottom Pair
$1/$2 $200 Deep
BTN: Raises to $6
Hero in BB: calls with K♣ 5♣
Flop: J♦ 7♥ 5♠
Hero: Checks
BTN: Bets $8
Turn: T♦
Hero: Checks
BTN: Bets $22
Hero: ?
We will want to be folding this hand on the turn, we have to call on the flop as we will want to call with all our bottom pair hands and better, but once we don’t improve and with no backdoor draws we have an easy fold here, we will have many better hands to call bets on this type of board, bottom pair is one of the ones we can just let go.
Pair and A Flush Draw
$1/$2 $200 Deep
BTN: Raises to $6
Hero in BB: calls with K♣ J♣
Flop: J♦ Q♥ 5♣
Hero: Checks
BTN: Bets $9.25
Turn: 2♣
Hero: Checks
BTN: Bets $19
Hero: ?
We have an easy call here, we have unlimited equity against our opponents range, they can have worse bluffs like KT & T9 and we have a pair that could be good as well as a flush draw to go with it, so even when we are against the top part of our opponents range we have a decent amount of cards that will give us the win.
Raising is always an option for us with a holding like this, however we would then be pushing out hands that may make second best hands on the river that we get a lot of action from, for instance if our opponent has two lower clubs and we hit our flush, raising on the turn will shut them out of the pot and we never win the massive cooler.
Pair and A Flush Draw
$1/$2 $200 Deep
BTN: Raises to $6
Hero in BB: calls with T♥ 8♥
Flop: J♦ Q♥ 5♣
Hero: Checks
BTN: Bets $10
Turn: A♣
Hero: Checks
BTN: Bets $21.50
Hero: ?
This is a good pot for us to raise, because whilst we have many good river cards we could hit to win a big pot calling and missing with our no showdown ten high is not a winning play, so mixing in a raise with our double gutshot is a good way to try and win the pot here on the turn or if we are called and we hit our hand we can win a bigger pot on the river.
We can look to get a decent amount of folds from one pair hands with this raise and set up a big bluff or value bet on the river which can apply more pressure to our opponents weaker part of their range.
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