Playing the Turn in Cash Games

Playing the Turn in Cash Games is different than playing flops in cash games simply because you can begin to see the line the player has taken on a particular hand. When you can think through progression of what they did before the flop, on the flop and are doing on the turn you can put a hand together much better. Being able to properly assess a turn bet is difficult because every good player will play hands differently. Sometimes the best way to look at a turn card is staring at your opponent because it will tell you if they have gotten their or if they have missed. The turn card is the key card in every hand played. The turn card a lot of the time decides if all of the poker bonus money is going in to a pot or not. In cash games the turn card can be a bigger bet or action card then the river most of the time. On the turn the hand has to be figured out. If you feel your opponent is on a draw then fire a big bet out to try and win the hand. If you feel like your opponent is ahead in the pot then there is no reason to try and make a call with a pocket pair or top pair with a weak kicker. However, if you are on a big draw like an open ended straight and flush draw the upper hand is in your favor if your opponent only has top pair.

You can shove a great deal of pressure right in their face, and try to win the pot right then and there. A lot of the time if your opponent has no way of improving their hand and just top pair they will lay it down. Other times though they can make the call and you will still have outs to win the pot. When you are putting your opponent to a decision for all their chips on the turn is when you are playing your best poker. If you can consistently float a flop then bet or raise a turn with a hand that is their or isn’t there you can take down some serious dead money in cash games. With how little players see the turns importance you should take two things out of playing the turn. One of them is to think if you have the best hand or not. If you do have the best hand then you should try and get the most for it. The second is counting things called bluff outs. If the board reads 89103 on the turn with 2 diamonds and you can put your opponent on AA then you have a lot of cards that can represent a hand that beats pocket aces on the river. Taking this into consideration there are straightening and flushing cards that can fall and allow you to win the hand by bluffing. Sometimes even if you are beat you can make your opponent have the tough decision by floating the turn and raising the river.