Facing Turn Bets and Check-Raises
Calling, raising and letting go on the fourth street
Turn bets and raises in PLO5 are, on average, stronger than in 4-card PLO. Players who are still learning the game rarely run multi-street bluffs, and the hands that put serious money in on the turn usually contain the nuts or a strong redraw. Your job when facing turn aggression is to separate hands that can profitably continue from hands that only look strong.
Facing a turn bet
- Count your nut outs, not all your outs. A straight draw on a two-tone board, or a flush draw that is not to the nuts, has fewer real outs than it seems.
- Think about the river. Calling a pot-sized turn bet with a hand that often faces a shove on bad rivers costs more than the call itself. If many rivers will force you to fold, the turn call is worse than its immediate pot odds suggest.
- Sets without redraws on draw-heavy boards are often calls rather than raises, and sometimes folds in multiway pots. A bottom set facing bets from two players on a board where straights and flushes are possible is in trouble.
Facing a turn check-raise
A turn check-raise is one of the strongest actions in the game. Think about what you are actually beating:
- Non-nut flushes lose a large share of their value: the check-raiser frequently holds the higher flush or a full house draw.
- Bare two pair and bare sets on boards with completed draws are mostly bluff-catchers.
- Nut hands with redraws (for example the nut straight plus a flush draw) are the hands you want when the money goes in.
Some players check-raise the turn with a straight plus a weak flush draw because they correctly expect many flush draws to bet the turn for them. If you hold a flush draw yourself, especially the nut flush draw, your situation is better than if you hold a bare overpair: you block his semi-bluffs and have outs against his straight.
When a raise is mostly value
In the current player pool, turn raises (as opposed to bets) are heavily weighted towards value. Typical bluff raises — for example a hand that turned a blocker and an extra draw — are rare. As a default, give turn raises credit unless you have specific information about a player's aggression.
Example: an unexpected turn raise
Imagine you 3-bet out of position, check a paired flop, bet half pot on a blank turn with an overpair and a good backdoor, and face a raise. Your range at this point is strong, because you checked many medium hands on the flop and are betting the turn for value. Your opponent needs a very strong hand to raise — or a hand with multiple components, such as a pair that blocks your value hands plus a draw. A raise with a single irrelevant blocker is a mistake you can exploit by calling down with your strong bluff-catchers.
Folding is a skill
Many PLO5 losses come from calling turn and river bets with hands that were "too good to fold". If you have learned to raise the threshold for building pots, apply the same discipline to calling big turn bets. Good folds on the turn save more money than hero calls on the river win.
Continue with Bluff-Catching on the River for the final street.