3 Times You Should Bet Big on the Turn (And 3 Times You Shouldn’t)

Sizing your bets optimally on the turn can help you win more money when you are ahead and lose less when you are behind. Knowing when to choose one size over the other is thus important for maximizing your win-rate.

There are many ways to reach the turn (in position vs out of position, single raised pots vs 3-bet pots vs 4-bet pots, after checking on the flop vs betting on the flop, etc.) and I can’t cover them all in just one article. For this reason, in this one, I am going to break down 3 spots where you should bet big with an overbet, and 3 spots where you shouldn’t after c-betting in position on the flop in a single-raised pot.

Let’s get into it!

When You Should Go Big

Spot #1 – When the turn is a blank

After your opponent only calls your flop c-bet, you can eliminate the vast majority of his flopped two-pairs as they will have check-raised. This puts them at a very large nut disadvantage on a lot of turn cards.

Usually, this happens when the turn doesn’t complete many draws in the caller’s range. That is because you retain all of your flopped two-pair+ hands and add a few more lucky hitters on the turn while your opponent’s two-pair+ region mostly hinges on what it hits on the turn.

Now, why does nut advantage incentivize this type of bet sizing strategy? Math.

More specifically, it has to do with the fact that you can bet larger and your opponent is still mathematically forced to continue with a bunch of weak hands to remain unexploitable. This makes it very profitable for the top of your range to go for very large sizes and still get called by weak hands.

Quick example here. You open-raised on the Button and got called by the Big Blind. You c-bet the Qc 9c 6d flop, and the Big Blind calls. The turn comes the 4h. The Big Blind checks, and here’s what the optimal strategy looks like in Upswing’s Lucid Poker solver:

Pure overbet or check.

Spot #2 – When there was a high card flop and then an overcard came on the turn

This is similar to the previous one. What happens when you c-bet on the flop and your opponent is out of position is that they will fold the vast majority of their overcard-type hands while you c-bet with a large part of them.

This creates a highly asymmetric top pair distribution in your favor when an overcard hits on the turn. Not only that, but those top pairs almost have the equity of two-pair. That is because the Big Blind will have check-raised the vast majority (if not all) of his two-pairs on the flop and he’s mainly capped at second pair now.

Let’s take a look at a spot like this. Again looking at playing from the Button against the Big Blind. You c-bet and got called on a Qh 8h 4d flop. The turn was the Kd and here’s what the optimal strategy looks like:

Again, an overbet-heavy strategy, where all the new top pairs flock to. For context, you have a top pair 13.6% of the time in this spot, while your opponent only has one 5.8% of the time.

You have almost 2.5x more top pairs than him. You also have double his two-pair+ region. This is why the optimal strategy is so aggressive. You want to extract the maximum value while he’s mathematically forced to defend with many weaker hands.

Spot #3 – When the turn pairs the board but you have many straights+ in your range

This typically happens when there was a straight on the flop. Yes, the turn does make a bunch trips for him, but he’s capped at that hand strength, while you can have straights and full houses in your range.

The concept still applies, just in a different form. The idea remains the same, you have significantly more of the strongest possible hands in that situation relative to your opponent. The absolute hand strength doesn’t matter.

From a conceptual standpoint, it could be that he’s capped at third pair and you have a bunch of second pairs. Then those second pairs would become overbets for value. It could also be that your opponent is capped at flushes in a hypothetical scenario.

If you have full houses, then you overbet. At the end of the day, it’s all about the equity differential between the hand classes.

Next, I am going to cover 3 spots where you shouldn’t go big.

Let’s dive in!

When You Shouldn’t Go Big

Spot #1 – When the turn completes a flush

So, if you’ve been following along, you will remember that the out of position caller is capping his flop calling range even in theory (although you will see more slowplaying going on there than in practice).

However, what calling doesn’t cap is the amount of flush draws that the defender continues with by calling. This has a big impact on their range composition on flush-closing turns.

If both yourself and the opponent can have the effective nuts in roughly equal amounts, it means that you cannot bet a very large size without running into those very strong hands often. That is not necessarily a bad thing but the problem is that you don’t want to value bet with only those super strong hands.

The tier of hands immediately below them also want to extract value before the river makes the hand too weak to value bet with.

Here’s an example. Same Button vs Big Blind scenario, flop is Qs 9s 6d. You bet 75%, he calls. The turn is the 4s. Here’s what the optimal strategy looks like first:

I want you to focus on the right hand side for a second. If you look at the made hands section, you will see that for this 75% pot size, we should be value betting with hands as weak as top pair for value and protection.

If we force the solver to only use the overbet size, 135% pot in this case, here’s what happens:

Barely any two-pairs can value bet at this size, so we end up shrinking our value range greatly. Mostly sets and flushes.

From these two images, if we look at the bottom left corners, we will see that we started off with an EV of 7.05bb/hand for the Button, and when we handcuff it to only use 135%, it dropped to 6.88bb/hand. That’s a 17bb/100 win-rate loss that comes directly from capping our value extraction.

Spot #2 – When the turn completes straights

Usually, one straight completing is not enough. That is because one straight usually represents a very small amount of combos from the overall range, which is not enough to make overbetting run into too many super strong hands.

Quick example. Same Qs 9s 6d flop, with a 5h turn this time. We see the solver using 150% pot exclusively:

That being said, if the turn completes an offsuit draw, then the story changes as there are many more combos that are now straights, somewhere in the range of 4x more. In this case, we see the solver tuning down the sizing significantly, mostly going for 75% pot again:

It all has to do with how often you’d end up facing a very strong hand when overbetting. The higher the proportion of those hands in villain’s range, the smaller your bet sizing should be. This allows you to keep value betting thinner, extract value and deny equity at the same time.

Spot #3 – When there was a low flop and then an overcard came on the turn

Final spot on this list. In the first section of this article, we saw that when an overcard came on the turn, we should overbet. The difference then was that the flop already contained a high card. For reference, here’s that model again:

Now, if we take a different flop, 9h 7h 4d in this case, where your 75% pot c-bet got called, and the turn brought the Kc, here’s what the GTO approach looks like:

Pure 75% pot or check back.

Now, why might that be?

It’s not because we have fewer top pairs or better, on the contrary.

It’s a combination of two things: there are more two-pairs in Big Blind’s range and we have hands that are value-worthy yet vulnerable.

Firstly, there are more two-pairs in Big Blind’s range because in theory he will be protecting his check-calling range more when the board is low, to force the Button to play more conservatively on the turn and river, and thus allow himself to realize more equity. This drives down the Button’s ability to value bet very large, even when the turn is great for his range, as he’ll run into two-pairs too often.

Secondly, the Button has a bunch of hands that are pretty strong, but not overbet strong, for which checking is somewhat costly. This is because these hands can be outdrawn by the folding range at a significant enough frequency.

I am talking about hands such as QQ, JJ, TT, and A9. These hands make up more than 10% of your range.

These two variables work synergistically to create a game theory optimal solution that is made out of only 75% pot sized bets. This allows you to maximize your win-rate across your entire value region.

Wrapping Up

Understanding the concepts behind these six spots will help you unmask the mechanics of bet sizing when it comes to double barreling on the turn.

If you liked this article, let me know in the comments down below and I will cover a different turn branch in another article.

Till next time, good luck, grinders!

To learn more about how to play 3-bet pots in your cash games, read: Mastering Preflop 3-Bets: Value, Bluffs, and Exploits.