The turn is probably the easiest street to play in hold’em. As mentioned before, most of your decisions should be made on the flop so there won’t be a whole lot of guesswork here. You made a plan for the hand and the only thing left to do is follow through with it.
Most of the time when you get to this point you will be looking at a medium sized pot. You raised and got called preflop. You then bet and got called on the flop. How should you proceed from here?
Giving Up
A lot of the time when you have reached this stage you will have some unpaired, bottom or middle pair type hand and it’s time to shut down.
You must always remember that poker is not a game of ego. It is a game of making profitable decisions. Nobody likes to fold but the truth is that when you have shown all this aggression throughout the hand and still can’t shake them, you are usually behind.
And the decisions that you make on the turn and river involve much bigger portions of your stack due to the size of the pot. It is imperative that you do not mess around here and throw away money. This is where some of that discipline comes in. The easy thing to do here is get frustrated and try to barrel them off or pull some fancy play. And I know because I have spewed off countless amounts doing it myself!
However this is just throwing away money most of the time at these stakes. There will be times to continue being aggressive which I will discuss in a bit, but for the most part, you will need to be doing a lot of giving up on this street.
Putting yourself in their shoes is an easy way to think through a lot of spots in poker. Ask yourself here for instance if they would really bet with a mediocre hand, a draw or worse when one of the surest things that we know about micro players is that they are very passive. Probably not. And remember the other thing that we know about the micros, they don’t like to fold.
So to sum up:
–> If you don’t have top pair or better by the turn you shouldn’t be putting another penny in the pot the large majority of the time at the micros.
Similar to before on the flop there is the small caveat that if they bet something ridiculous like 1/4 the pot or less I will not be folding if I have any kind of equity. So once again I want to make it clear that I am referring to reasonable sized bets here.
Example:
You have,
By the turn the board looks like this,
You cbet the flop and got called.
You checked on the turn and (any type of opponent) bets 1/2 pot. You should fold.
