The turn- and river cardHow to play the last two cardsThe game until the turn card It is quite hard to explain a winning strategy for the turn and river card. What has been said before is of course still valid. You should be on the turn card betting round only if your hand at the flop was strong. Another possibility is that you have had many outs, without a complete hand, with great possibilities to get a very good hand with the turn card. An example of this is an open straight with a chance to get a flush like for instance 9h, Th, Flop: 8h, 7d and Ah. If you are going to continue drawing cards or not is to a large extent decided by the odds for making your hand complete and the pot odds (unless you already at this stage have a strong hand – then your task instead is to worsen the odds for the other players). It is very importnant to learn how to use the odds – do not believe anything else! You will learn more about this in the chapter "What is meant by odds and how does it work?”. Depending on your hand you should before the flop have played the situations differently. You should have considered the pots your hand was suitable for. Suited connectors are suitable for multiway pots as these grow stronger when more cards are put down on the table and thus the pot odds will be good enough to play the hand. We talk about high suited connectors as we normally look upon low suited connectors as rubbish before the flop which means we tend to throw these away. Multiway pots are created when you play passively and therefore you should not raise if you want to get good odds. If you make a raise you risk scaring other players away and then you make your own situation worse. Aces and Kings does well in both multiway pots and pots with fewer players. If you have AA or any other high pair you should make a raise. Nobody deserves to call these cards for free. They will also be less valuable if many players see the flop. Etc… Everything is relative and your decisions should be made on how your opponents are playing. Many different factors are important. Back to the turn and river card...In certain situations when you have a strong hand and are sure of winning there of course is not a problem. Then your only strategy is to try to get as much money as possible into the pot. Then you need knowledge about your opponents. Are they playing tight? In that case they might fold if you make a bet. If you have room for it give a free card and hope that somebody will get the second best hand. If you in this situation meet a raise your way of acting is of course a new raise if you are certain of winning. Does your opponent make another raise? It is not usual that players make raises several times in a row without having something good on their hands even if it sometimes happens. Have you really got "the nuts”, that is the best hand? How did the opponent who re-raised play before the flop and at the flop? Have you seen what hands he played at an earlier showdown situation? Is he bluffing? Does he have a very small bank roll? In the last case he might be desparate and just wants to put an end to it. Are there cunning players at the table who slowplay all the time, that is they pretend to have bad hands and they make raises at the end and finally it turns out that they have very strong hands? Are they loose aggressive and get satisfied with the highest pair? The last mentioned type of players should not be taken to seriously at a full table. It is important to check what kind of hands the players have played when you have an opportunity to do so. Never mind surfing the net when it is time for showdown. Instead you should have a look at the hands of your opponents and how these hands were played. This is important if you want to build your own winning strategy. A loose aggressive player who makes a re-raise on your raise at the turn card you only should call as long as you are certain that he has a worse hand than yours. He is then given the impression that you have a bad hand and instead you can get more money at the river card as he then probably tries to buy the pot. He might make a bet if you call when you are sitting at an early position. In this case you make a check raise … and he will call you if he is aggressive, which means more money for you. At the turn and at the river card bets and raises mean twice the money in relation to the bets made before pre-flop and at the flop. My discussion ends here as my opinion is that you learn to play the turn and river card by in the first place practicing and not so much by reading. There are however some pocket books which discuss the topic:
and more… An extremely simplified rule: Play tight at a 10-player table . If you follow the “basic rules” a good result often is the case even if you have not deepened yourself in strategic ways of thinking and probabilities as long as you are playing at low limit tables. A 5-player-table and a less tight game. It often pays off to see the flop with considerably more hands than you are used to when playing at 10-player-tables. Read the article “Shorthanded” for a further description. |
