Limit Hold’em Strategy - The Turn Part III

In Parts I and II of our discussion of turn strategy in Limit Hold’em, we talked about how to play the turn in position. Specifically, we discussed situations where we have to decide to fold or call with a marginal hand, and where we have to decide whether or not to continue our bluff. In each case, we were in position, last to act. In Part III, I’m going to discuss turn play while out of position (you’re first to act). More specifically, I’m going to talk about the situations that arise after you have called a flop bet.

There’s an advanced move that I like to make once in a while that I call a “delayed donk bluff.” It’s a delayed bluff because I call the flop with the intention of bluffing later in the hand if I don’t hit. It’s a donk bluff because a “donk bet” is a bet when you’re out of position and don’t have the lead (you were not the last person to bet or raise on the previous betting round).

Let’s take an example hand that I observed when playing online poker at BetUS.com to clarify the situation that I’m talking about. You’re on the big blind and you have QJo. A late position player opens the action with a raise and you call. It’s heads up to the flop. The flop comes 865. You’ve missed completely, but you have two overcards, and it’s a flop that could scare a late position player, especially if he’s tight (if he is, he probably has high cards). You have a couple good options. You could check-raise, or check and call (even a bet out (donk bet) might be good here against some players). You should do each move some of the time, but I’ll often check and call, because it never looks like a bluff, while the check-raise definitely does.

I’m setting myself up to bluff later in the hand. This is the delay part of the delay donk bluff. You check and call. The turn card comes and you have to decide what to do: check and fold? Check and call? Check and raise? Or bet out, which is the plan that we have in the back of our mind? Let’s look at our best option depending on what card comes out on the turn:

1) A queen or jack. You could check-raise, but there are a few problems with this play. First, if our opponent didn’t hit the Q or J, and our flop call scared him, he’ll probably just check behind. If he also hit the queen or jack, he’s probably got a better kicker. Instead, you want to simply bet out. This is called a “donk bet” in poker slang. If he raises, we just call down the rest of the way.

2) A straight card (a 3,4,7,9,T). If our opponent does have high cards, any one of these should really scare him. We also have to think about what he thinks we have. He probably puts us on a draw because we just called on the flop. The only draw is a straight draw, so a straight card would scare him even more. If we do choose to bluff one of these cards, a check-raise definitely doesn’t make sense, as we expect our opponent to check behind. Instead, we should donk bet. This gives us balance in our strategy, because we also donk bet when we hit (see point 1) above). When a scare card comes, we complete our delayed donk bluff by donk betting the turn.