If you play a style of betting the pot a lot, the turn is where you might be moving in a lot if you choose to continue the aggression. You often will also shut down if you read opponent to have a better hand. But if you are to bluff, it will probably have to be for close to all of your chips if you want to get opponent off a hand strong enough to call a flop. You should probably do so with outs.
If the flop was ten high there are a number of scarcards out there for opponent if he hit the ten that can come so even if you have aceking or bottom or middle pair or KQ your opponent doesn't know you don't have jack ten or AJ or QQ or a set or even QJ and you have outs if AT calls. When you have a made hand in this spot there are perhaps 5 outs your opponent if you keep him in so pushing WITH a strong hand makes sense as well. So there are many situations where you can put opponent on decision for all his chips whether that means an all in or a big enough bet where he thinks you are committed to the hand but you have such a low chance of winning you aren't at all, or you have a set so you are hoping he pushes.
That is the WHY you might want to shove, but now we have to decide if we can do so on a semibluff without losing a lot of chips on the decision, and if so how large the bet can be proportionally to the pot.
If you are going to bet big on the flop and shove all in on the turn, the equation changes.
This is because with the extra street we have to realize that our opponent can call on a draw and if we autoshove the turn we are giving opponent the ability to win a lot more when he hits his draw and risk nothing when he misses, plus when we are called we may be drawing dead or have fewer outs with one card to come and we have to deny our opponent the implied odds.
So if for example we have 8.25 big blinds in the pot, bet the pot and shove the turn, we have to realize that our opponent only needs to call 8.25 and can wait until he hits and win about 25 of our chips if the all in on the turn is for the pot, but it probably is going to be more like 50 or twice the pot on the turn.
So basically our bet will be 6 times what it was on the flop if we only bet twice the pot on the turn.
This means our opponent can fold 6 times, call on the 7th and we break even. In other words, IF our opponents has outs to a draw that would make us drawing dead, he only needs to hit that hand 1/7th of the time or 14.286% of the time. That's the equivilent of 7 outs with one card to come or more.
Although we have the issue that our opponent can just ONLY call when he has more odds than that, he also may call with medium strength hands or fold enough on the flop to offset the advantage, plus we have the possibility of actually having a hand occasionally, PLUS we have our own outs to hit a better hand such as a flush when opponent hits a straight or a full house when opponent hits flush oand we have two pair or a set.
Although 7+outs perhaps isn't common, and perhaps we can get away from shoving on the turn on some cards, it is possible. Also, we open up the door to a tricky counterplay of our opponent shove bluffing on the turn on some rare percentage of flops if we don't balance out our bluffs to be approximately even to our sets. This may mean playing less suited connectors and draws fast than we initially planned or playing fewer of them preflop so our made hand to draw ratio improves. Or it could mean playing top pair and overpair fast as well . I won't ge into balancing this just yet.
We are going to assume that our pot bet breaks even on our bluffs which means we can forget mostly about the 8.5 we put in on the flop. That is a dangerous assumption but it is okay for now as long as we know that.
So on the turn we will risk 50 to win 25. Since we break even on the flop, the decision on the turn can now be isolated.
Possible outcomes are:
1)Opponent folds on turn after missing. In this instance we win 25 big blinds.
2)Opponent can call flop and hit on turn and call. In this instance either we either
a)draw out and win 75 or we b)don't and we lose 50.
Opponent on a draw might miss on turn 80% of the time. Of the 20% remaining we might draw out 15% of the time or 3% overall. the remaining 17% opponent wins.
I believe if our all in ON the flop is going to break even vs made hands that it shouldn't matter if we shove the turn or flop aside from the fact that there will probably not be as much in the pot to win as there would if we were raised on the flop instead. This means we can't always shove the turn on a draw quite as often to break even or we must have smaller stacks to do so but other than that it doesn't change much. This is because our opponent won't know if we hit or not and they will either way be calling off on the turn when they have a hand so either they put in an additional 8.5. So either way we get all our chips in vs made hand and have two cards to hit.
What it does matter on are the one pair hands that improve from their pair to say two pair, the overpair that improves to a set and the straight draw that improves to a straigth and flush draw that improves toa flush.
Nevertheless, if opponent calls flop and folds turn we win 19.80 in expected value. 80% of the time we win 24.75. If you don't include the 8.25 we put in it's still 80% of 13.2. We draw out 3% of the time and win 74.75 3%. 3% of 74.75 is 2.2425. 17% of time opponent hits turn and stacks us off for a loss of 50. 17% of 50 is 8.5. Combined total is nearly 7 big blinds.
This is more profitable than checking down after the flop and possibly more profitable than making a small bet or checking and making the bet on the river.
What if we had larger starting stacks than 61.25 big blinds? If we had 25 more big blinds and moved in for 3x the pot checking down if we missed the turn would be slightly more profitable. You've seen me refer to checking down before so to clarify, I don't believe you will be able to check it down but you may be able to play a small pot and approximately win your equity in the hand. So if you are 30% to win a $100 pot, checking down yields $30.
Sometimes "checking down" means you will call a small bet in some situations or get opponent to call a bet so that overall you break even and earn an amount close to 30% of the pot. If pushing yields less than $30, in that case you are better off considering other options such as keeping pot small, inducing a bluff often enough and getting paid off often enough to gain chips when you're right while doing best to not put any more chips in when you are wrong.
Pushing the turn would only yield 3.43 vs the checking down and winning 15% of the current pot would yield 3.7125 assuming no river bets. Nevertheless, since it still IS profitable to shove the turn as long as you have an average of 7 outs on your shoves, and doing so allows you to get more action on your made hands as well as adds a greater probability of taking down pots on the flop and gaining uncontested pots left and right, AND it also prevents opponents from being able to push you off from seeing the river, you may be willing to push so the turn shove is break even on semibluffs. That would allow you to buy in with 111 big blinds and still shove the turn in that spot. In other words, shove the turn for up to roughly 4 times the pot.
Unfortunately, things aren't QUITE that easy since opponent could then call with made hands and we would be winning 25.5 when our turn shoves work where as if our opponent played back on us on the flop we'd have put in 16 and our opponent might raise to 32 so when our shove works we are getting alot more.
However, we can also shut down when we are not longer drawing to the nuts and on rare occasion just to prevent opponent from having a key read on us and trapping us so easily. I still believe we will be able to break even on our semibluff shoves even if opponents do opt to trap us on the turn more provided they also call us with draws and medium strengthed hands only to fold the turn PLUS occasionally we will have a better hand than the hand they THINK we are trapping them with and occasionally we will hit our draw.
It's not perfect since I haven't accounted for the result of EVERY variable and every playing style but it's a good start.
Improving Turn Shove Decisions
Your opponent with this turn shoving style can start trapping you only and start to prevent you from the luxury to semibluff the flop WHILE also being able to avoid your turn shove with made draws. He can stay out of the way on the flop, or call with a pair and if the turn card makes a draw he can fold to the shove. This makes your turn shoving style unprofitable if your opponent does it right. Because of this, it's important to examine HOW OFTEN you shove on the turn with a draw vs a made hand. The easiest way to balance this out is actually PREFLOP or at least it will be the easiest AT the table rather than determining to occasionally not shove in certain situations without being predictable. Getting the right ratio of all in semibluffs to made hands is the most difficult thing since it requires deep knowledge about opponent that you can't possibly know or even really approximate easily such as how often he'll trap or play back with nothing and how often he'll call an all in. We approximated if opponent called with any pair on the flop to a shove but that's not quite what I'm going for. I want to play a lot of draws where I can push on a bluff but if opponent adapts and never plays back on me but instead traps on the flop and calls me down on the turn and gets the money in with any pair then I certainly don't want a high percentage of my hands to end up as bluffs since I will probably not pick up 8.25 big blinds on the flop often enough to risk 65% of my stack (since the other 35% of the time I'll double up or better, from expected value perspective I'm not "risking" or losing the entire stack on average). If my opponent started calling with a pair I wouldn't make enough from the pots I pick up if all I had were semibluffs....So that's the next part of the equation to solve... How often with say 100 big blinds do I have to have a made hand to prevent opponent from exploiting me through traps?
What is the ratio of semibluffs to made hands I need to not lose money from this play? And then what are the cards that give me that ratio?
This then gives me a baseline for how I can play against the opponents who adapt the most. That way I know from there if opponents trap a lot I can play that way or even a higher ratio of sets to draws. If opponents play and do not trap I can semibluff more since they will have medium strength hands and draws which they will likely fold to all ins, and if they have a set I still have outs, where as i would be making a mistake if they only call me with a higher set to shove in with sets vs this opponent anyways, so I would only want premium pairs and lots of draws against them.
Nevertheless, the baseline is what we will solve for NEXT.
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