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Raising on the Turn when I'm not sure whether I'm Ahead March 15, 2005

Sometimes, you will be in there on the turn in Holdem with a made hand that has little chance of improving and you are playing it for what it's worth but your opponent is the aggressor. You have already made up your mind that you're going to call him down but you don't want to challenge him because you are not quite convinced that you've got him beat.

The standard rule in poker is: Always make your opponent pay the max when you're the favorite. So it would seem that when you surmise that you're ahead but you think there's a 20% chance that you're not, you should raise here in order to charge your opponent the max to try to draw out on you. In the worst case scenario, if you get reraised, you can reevaluate the situation and fold if you become convinced that he does have you beat. However, this advice is theoretical only. In practice, you must take into consideration the possibility that your opponent has garbage and is quite a long-shot against you. If you raise him on the turn, he might fold and you have thus lost the river bet and you don't want him to fold because the pot is not big enough to justify him going for the long shot. You're better off if he stays in to see the river and then bets out on the river as a bluff so that you make another bet off of him, even though this strategy will occasionally cost you the pot.

I had a hand like this last week. I was in the blind with K6o and saw a flop of K53 in an unraised pot. I bet out and got raised by a relatively decent player. It was pretty obvious that he doesn't have a set because he would be slow-playing that and two pair was quite unlikely given that these cards are not usually played together. If I was beat here, I would be beat by a bigger king but it just didn't feel that he had a bigger king. Yet, my hand wasn't strong enough to reraise, so I decided to just check and call him down. The turn was a blank and the river was a 4. I called him down and he turned over 76!! It was funny, very funny.

I'm already used to these kind of beats, so what I'm thinking at this point is not "how the f did he beat me with that garbage"; rather, I'm thinking "did I play the hand right? did I lose because I misplayed the hand by not challenging him on the flop or the turn?" After all, this was a relatively good player and I know that he doesn't usually play gutshots. In fact, I am quite convinced that he would not have usually called a bet on the turn with that hand. What allowed him to stay in to the river and catch the miracle 4 to win is his bluffing attempt. On the flop he was trying for a free card or to shake me off my hand hoping that I was weak and on the turn he figured he'd try the bluff again, as players very often call on the flop and fold on the turn. If I had bet out or check-raised him on the turn, I think there's an excellent chance that he would have folded. So what am I supposed to do here, go for the check-call hoping to snap off a bluff or go for the charge-him-the-max strategy and make it too expensive for him to go for the gutshot?

You might not be surprised about my answer: I should have raised him on turn!! but here's why. If I had known that he was holding a gutshot draw, I would have been raising him for all I got. The only reason why I consider the "let him bluff his money off" strategy is that I am aware of the small chance that he does have the better hand so I use that to tip the scale into the check-call strategy. Raising him when I know that I'm up against a gutshot is not just instinct; it's correct poker! Since he has four outs on the turn, he will make his hand 8.7% os the time (4/46). Now there is not enough money in an unraised pot, heads up after the flop, to justify calling a raise on turn. However, there is no guarantee that my opponent will not mistakenly call my raise and neither is there a guarantee that he will bet the river when he misses. In order for it to be correct for me to just call the turn when I KNOW that I'm up against a gutshot draw, I also have to KNOW that my opponent will -correctly- lay the hand down for a raise on the turn AND he will always bet the river even when he misses. If he is going to call my raise anyway, or if he won't bet the river when he misses, then I am essentially giving him a free river and that is a huge mistake. Therefore, since I figured that I was ahead on the turn, I should have raised and forced him to lay his hand down, which -I assess- he most likely would have done.

Here are the four universal rules in poker, summarized in the table below:

In theory, my ruling that I misplayed the hand is in violation of rule #4. Yet, since he might incorrectly call my raise on the turn and he might also correctly check on the river when he misses, I must therefore deviate from the general rule and a raise would have been correct!