As opposed to the flop, the play on the turn in limit is going to be a little more significant because the bets double here. Therefore, your aggression will pay off double, as well as your losses if you're wrong. Therefore, we need to be both more aggressive and a little more careful with our actions here.
The first thing we need to be wary of is raises from our opponents on the turn. This is particularly important if their aggression has been delayed until now, and especially if the raise doesn't seem to fit the card that just hit. It's actually more dangerous to play along with a first raise on the turn rather than a raise at the flop followed by another at the turn, unless the player is aggressive enough to raise both regardless. This is because players often will delay their aggression to the turn with a very strong hand, and raise both with lesser hands. We also want to take advantage of this in a lot of cases.
Here's why. If you have a huge hand, and you raise on the river, the player may fold, where if you chase him out at the turn with a raise, you've gained an extra 2 bets. Plus, he's more pot committed at the turn, increasing the likelihood of call. Third, if you raise at the flop, he's likely to check to you in later rounds, reducing our raise to a single bet rather than a double one.
When do we want to use this move? If our players are more passive, it makes more sense to delay in such a way. If they are aggressive though, and are likely to re-raise and/or bet the turn instead of checking, then it's better to be more straightforward. However, a lot of players we will be encountering are more of the passive variety, and will do a fair bit of checking. So the rule of thumb is, if the opponent has a tendancy toward checking and/or folding, delaying our aggression is probably the way to go.
You need to pay attention to how your opponents are responding to these moves though. At the lower levels, they are less likely to adjust, but as we move higher, this will become more of a possibility. The benefit there though is that we can re-adjust to take advantage of this, throwing in a few bluffs with this strategy to win more pots and keep our play more unpredictable. We'lll get into that in later lessons, and for now we'll address ourselves to the type of player you'll normally find at the lower levels. As a general rule though, the more players are going to call, the more we'll take advantage of strength, and the more they'll fold to us, the more we'll take advantage of fold equity. We'll vary our proportion of this in proportion to the way they are playing us, so we're not too concerned about them getting a read on us, and can adjust pretty easily when necessary.
We have to be on the alert for opponents using deceptive tactics on us, such as delaying aggression to the turn, check raising, etc. We're not fold of this stuff, as it makes us work a little harder, but we can still deal with it of course. If you're at a game where a lot of this is going on, it may be time to choose an easier game. Deception tactics are very powerful, and we want to make full use of them ourselves, while not wanting our opponents to do so to their full advantage.
So when you see a player with a tendency to wait until the turn to raise, the first thing we want to do is to assume that we're up against a genuinely good hand, and only stay in if we feel it's best to do so. And we're also going to make a note of this, and look to play more aggressively against this person on the flop in the future to flush out this stuff earlier when we can.
Also, when we're probably ahead, we want to make sure we're making our opponents pay to see the river as much as we can. In almost all cases, we're going to want to be as aggressive as we can on the turn in limit. We may use the check raise here, but only if we're confident that someone will bet and we'll get a chance to use it. We don't want anyone drawing on us with free cards though if we can help it. In fact, we want these players to pay the maximum for seeing the last card, and aren't going to be particularly worried if they fold their draws, although we generally don't want them to, as long as the price for drawing is in our favor.
Keep a close eye on what card hit on the turn, and piece that together with the cards that hit on the flop, the betting action there, and any changes in betting action that occur on this round. Always look to see what other opponents have first, and never just go by whatever you may have. Our hand is only valuable relative to what others have, and it's necessary that you never become careless and not stop to assess your opponents' potential holdings as well as your own hand prior to acting.
Here's some general things we need to be on the lookout for, aside from raises from opponents: (1) Overcards - don't automatically assume an overcard to your pair hit an opponent, although the more in the pot and the higher the card. the more likely it is. (2) Third or fourth to a flush - be wary of the third and extremely wary of the fourth. (3) Straight cards - especially ones in the playing zone (fitting cards opponents tend to play) (4) Paired cards on the board.
While we need to always pay close attention to changes in betting patterns among our opponents on the turn, this is particularly important when a scare card hits like this. We're going to have to assess the typical play of the opponent - is he straightforward or more sophisticated, does he bluff very much, etc. In our typical games though, the wrong kind of card followed by the wrong kind of change in betting action from our opponents usually spells trouble unless we have a strong enough hand that we don't have to worry about this much.
When we do have the goods though, don't be afraid to play back aggressively if you feel you're ahead. Be careful when doing this though and always attempt to put them on a hand first. You want to avoid raising wars when you come out on the wrong end. Make sure you win most of these, or it's a strong sign that you need to slow down.
To sum up, we're looking to first assess the changes in our opponents' hands on the turn card, be a little more careful than in earlier rounds, and play aggressively any time we feel we have the upper hand.
The first thing we need to be wary of is raises from our opponents on the turn. This is particularly important if their aggression has been delayed until now, and especially if the raise doesn't seem to fit the card that just hit. It's actually more dangerous to play along with a first raise on the turn rather than a raise at the flop followed by another at the turn, unless the player is aggressive enough to raise both regardless. This is because players often will delay their aggression to the turn with a very strong hand, and raise both with lesser hands. We also want to take advantage of this in a lot of cases.
Here's why. If you have a huge hand, and you raise on the river, the player may fold, where if you chase him out at the turn with a raise, you've gained an extra 2 bets. Plus, he's more pot committed at the turn, increasing the likelihood of call. Third, if you raise at the flop, he's likely to check to you in later rounds, reducing our raise to a single bet rather than a double one.
When do we want to use this move? If our players are more passive, it makes more sense to delay in such a way. If they are aggressive though, and are likely to re-raise and/or bet the turn instead of checking, then it's better to be more straightforward. However, a lot of players we will be encountering are more of the passive variety, and will do a fair bit of checking. So the rule of thumb is, if the opponent has a tendancy toward checking and/or folding, delaying our aggression is probably the way to go.
You need to pay attention to how your opponents are responding to these moves though. At the lower levels, they are less likely to adjust, but as we move higher, this will become more of a possibility. The benefit there though is that we can re-adjust to take advantage of this, throwing in a few bluffs with this strategy to win more pots and keep our play more unpredictable. We'lll get into that in later lessons, and for now we'll address ourselves to the type of player you'll normally find at the lower levels. As a general rule though, the more players are going to call, the more we'll take advantage of strength, and the more they'll fold to us, the more we'll take advantage of fold equity. We'll vary our proportion of this in proportion to the way they are playing us, so we're not too concerned about them getting a read on us, and can adjust pretty easily when necessary.
We have to be on the alert for opponents using deceptive tactics on us, such as delaying aggression to the turn, check raising, etc. We're not fold of this stuff, as it makes us work a little harder, but we can still deal with it of course. If you're at a game where a lot of this is going on, it may be time to choose an easier game. Deception tactics are very powerful, and we want to make full use of them ourselves, while not wanting our opponents to do so to their full advantage.
So when you see a player with a tendency to wait until the turn to raise, the first thing we want to do is to assume that we're up against a genuinely good hand, and only stay in if we feel it's best to do so. And we're also going to make a note of this, and look to play more aggressively against this person on the flop in the future to flush out this stuff earlier when we can.
Also, when we're probably ahead, we want to make sure we're making our opponents pay to see the river as much as we can. In almost all cases, we're going to want to be as aggressive as we can on the turn in limit. We may use the check raise here, but only if we're confident that someone will bet and we'll get a chance to use it. We don't want anyone drawing on us with free cards though if we can help it. In fact, we want these players to pay the maximum for seeing the last card, and aren't going to be particularly worried if they fold their draws, although we generally don't want them to, as long as the price for drawing is in our favor.
Keep a close eye on what card hit on the turn, and piece that together with the cards that hit on the flop, the betting action there, and any changes in betting action that occur on this round. Always look to see what other opponents have first, and never just go by whatever you may have. Our hand is only valuable relative to what others have, and it's necessary that you never become careless and not stop to assess your opponents' potential holdings as well as your own hand prior to acting.
Here's some general things we need to be on the lookout for, aside from raises from opponents: (1) Overcards - don't automatically assume an overcard to your pair hit an opponent, although the more in the pot and the higher the card. the more likely it is. (2) Third or fourth to a flush - be wary of the third and extremely wary of the fourth. (3) Straight cards - especially ones in the playing zone (fitting cards opponents tend to play) (4) Paired cards on the board.
While we need to always pay close attention to changes in betting patterns among our opponents on the turn, this is particularly important when a scare card hits like this. We're going to have to assess the typical play of the opponent - is he straightforward or more sophisticated, does he bluff very much, etc. In our typical games though, the wrong kind of card followed by the wrong kind of change in betting action from our opponents usually spells trouble unless we have a strong enough hand that we don't have to worry about this much.
When we do have the goods though, don't be afraid to play back aggressively if you feel you're ahead. Be careful when doing this though and always attempt to put them on a hand first. You want to avoid raising wars when you come out on the wrong end. Make sure you win most of these, or it's a strong sign that you need to slow down.
To sum up, we're looking to first assess the changes in our opponents' hands on the turn card, be a little more careful than in earlier rounds, and play aggressively any time we feel we have the upper hand.
