Play Better Poker

The turn is the street in Hold’em where you should be making most of your best lay downs.  If someone bets at you on the turn and you have a made hand, then you have to call a big bet there and potentially one on the river as well.  This can give you very poor implied odds.  So the turn is the one street where, when in doubt, you should probably lean towards folding if an opponent gets aggressive. As with all decisions it depends on a lot of factors, implied odds, your opponents, all of that stuff.

                On the flop you can take a lot of speculative holdings to the next round because the bet is so cheap and if you make a strong hand you have two rounds of double bets to get paid on it.  On the river you probably only have to call one big bet to see if you hand is good and are getting great odds to do so. On the turn, however, it is a much different story.  You are facing a big bet, which makes your direct pot odds often worse than they were on the flop.

                Also your implied odds are often much worse since you might have to call a big bet on both the turn and the river. Furthermore, you only have one round of betting left to capitalize if you make a big hand.  Because there are no more cards to come on the river (meaning that knocking people out has much less value), people tend to play much more passively there as well; you become less likely to get a lot of bets out of someone.

                So the turn is the one street in Texas hold’em where we often must give folding some serious thought if we have a good hand.  Preflop you pretty much know what to play and what not to play; the decisions are mostly fairly easy.  On the flop the decisions become a bit tougher, but as long as you aren’t drawing dead even a bad call is generally a big mistake.  Your decision on the river is fairly easy as well.

                Of course good turn play, like every other part of the game, comes with experience.  Just keep in mind your odds, both direct and implied, and how they are affected by the double bet.  And remember that there is no prize in Hold’em for having had the best hand on the flop.  If the turn comes bad for your hand and it appears to have you beat, then there is no sense putting in more money, unless of course you have the odds to draw for an even better hand on the river.