I'm faced with with situation relatively often. Lets just say we think a large part of villains range is a draw, and we're on the turn with $200 in the pot. We have position. Villain Bets $100 on the turn, and we have like $350 in total or so. We're not folding with our read, so our options are:

-to call the turn, and call blank rivers
-shove the turn ourselves, leaving villain to call $250, which pretty much means he has to fold his draw

A lot of advice here is usually to go the route of calling turn and calling blank rivers but why? If villain barrels the turn with a draw, its bad for him to be shoved on and having to fold with allllmost enough equity to call. Whereas if I flat and a blank falls, villain could barrel, but he could also give himself a chance to let himself off the hook by checking river, after getting to see a full run out.

What are some good reasons for the call - call route?

Depends on the fold equity and what our hand is. If you have anything like Ace high or a pair, just click the call call if they barrel rivers. Otherwise put them all-in and make em pay for the draw.

Then from there we need to figure out will he continue barreling on river?


A lot of people want to call for good reasons, they fold a lot of draws and 2nd if they barrel the river a lot and you have them on draws, you can call sooooo much and profit so much money. Derp.


If they don't barrel rivers and you have them on draws, you can even do some bet-inducing river bet super small vs some and watch them spazz.

Honestly, just post some hand examples and let's get it.

Calling down has become more popular because the game has become more aggro, and villains have more air in their range and continue to barrel off when they miss at a high rate.

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It depends on the game. In a normal NLHE game, you'd likely bet the pot on the turn so that you can more accurately bet the river. Or, you may even jam the turn, if as you say, villain is on a draw.

1/2 games are looser and most players play too many hands and chase draws. To exploit this, you'd just call them with your made hand in position. The math against their draw is relentless.

That's not correct. To exploit someone who chases too many draws, you dont call their turn bet with a made hand. You raise the turn (in the example given, shove the turn) and make them REALLY pay to chase their draw. The only time you should be calling their turn bet is if the villain is known to bluff a lot on the river.

However, in my experience at 1/2, people chase draws with an incorrect price a lot more than people make big river bluffs, so when playing 1/2 I always shove the turn here if I put them on a draw.

At 2/5 people bluff more but IMO they still dont make big bluffs on the river with a draw often enough for me not to raise the turn most of the time. I need a specific read on the villain to not raise the turn.

Most of the time I'll call and check the river, if I know for certain that they're on a draw, mostly because I like to play the streets, rather than jam pots and leave the plays to dumb luck.

It's also highly both villain AND stack dependent. If the SPR is low I'll probably jam turn regardless of villain, but would prefer to play out 5th street. Some villains will semi-bluff their draws, but not call pushes, even when they're getting close to even money on their odds. Others will bet with the intention to GII. Others still will barrel when they miss. If stacks are deep and I know my opponent has a propensity to bet their whiffed draws, for example, I'll check-call, but sometimes check-raise, just so I can see some cheap showdowns with them.

Fair enough, yes. Thanks for clarifying.

The thing is we never play against range consisting only of draws. There are always some strong hands in his range, when you raise the effect easily can be that draws fold and you pay to valuerange.
Thats why we should raise only hands that beat significant part of V's value range and bluffcatch weaker made hands.
Ofc when V is not able to fold draw we can raise wider, but today many players should know that they just dont have odds/implied to call turn raise OOP with draw.