Hi All!
So I am trying to wrap my head around when I should continue bluffing on the turn and river.
Let's say preflop I open raise in the cutoff with 89s. Let's say the flop comes 76K. I c-bet semi-bluff with the open-ended straight draw. Let's say the flop comes...i don't know, let's say a 2 comes. Or let's say an Ace comes. This is the sort of position that I get confused. If a card comes that is any other card other than 5 or 10 (completing my straight), what do I do? How would the 2 coming on the turn change my actions than if an Ace came on the turn? And why? Like I understand the semi-bluff bet on the flop. Past that...I'm completely lost, and so I basically just 50% of the time continue barreling and 50% of the time give up on the turn.
Thanks so much for any clarity here...
Mark
This is a really good question, and to be honest the turn and river are streets, where a lot of poker players probably feel a bit lost. Unless of course they have a nutted hand, because then life is usually pretty easy.
Taking your own example of having 89 on K76, then I would pretty much always barrel the turn, because you still have at least some
equity and no showdown value, and usually people are going to fold some hands to a second barrel. Like maybe they called you on the flop with 65, but facing a big turn barrel they give up and let it go.
I would probably check back though, if the turn card completed a flushdraw, I did not have. The reason is, with 3 flushcards already on the board, two of your outs will bring a 1-liner to a flush, and you might be drawing dead already. And in general we want to avoid situations, where we put chips in the pot drawing dead. That should be pretty obvious.
I might also check back, if the turn came K76-K pairing top card, because quite often that will have made the opponent trips, especially if you dont have a K yourself making it more likely, he has one. And then he might check-raise you, which would really suck.
My general rule on the turn is to continue barreling with anything, that has equity, but give up with hands, that have not connected at all. I might C-bet K76 with almost any two cards (for a small size), but on K76-2 I wont fire again with a hand like say A5, unless it has a flushdraw.
On the river things are of course very black and white, since we either have the best hand, or we dont. With 9 high we probably dont, so that hand would be a good candidate to empty the clip and see, if our opponent is finally willing to fold.
But just because we dont have showdown value, we dont HAVE to always bluff. If we think, this particular opponent will just not fold, or if the river card is a complete brick, is it ok to just give up. For instance of K76-2-3 with no flushdraw bricking out, a lot of our opponents range, that gets to the river, will probably be KX, and KX probably still like that board a lot. Even 88-QQ might still like the board enough to call a last time, so in situations like this its ok to not have any bluffs.
An area, where a lot of people go wrong in micro and low stakes
online poker, is they get way to caught up in advanced theory and perfect balance. But in these games you dont need to prove to someone, that you are able to trippel barrel on K76-2-3, because usually you have new opponents every session, and even if you see the same people again, they are not paying that much attention to, what you do. Especially not if you are an MTT player.
Another general rule for river play is to avoid bluffing with hands, that actually have showdown value. Lets say the board ran out Kh7h6s-2c-3d, and you were barreling with AhQh. Then you still beat all the other busted draws like 98, 85 or worse hearts, so you should check back and hope to win at showdown. IF you want to have bluffs, then 98 and ideally with no heart is a better candidate, because then your opponent might have a hand like Ah8h, which he will fold to a third barrel on the river. If you are basically only targeting busted draws, that beat your own busted draw, then a small river bet of 30-40% pot will get the job done.
