Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots

There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this piece: Principles of Turn Strategy and How to Analyze Turn Textures in Poker. If you’ve already read them and just need a quick refresher, here are the key concepts to keep in mind:

In this article, we will look at how these concepts apply in 3-bet pots. 3-bet pots differ from single-raised pots in two important ways:

Blank Flops

In light of the above principles, a 552r flop is great for the 3-bettor, who can barrel aggressively on most runouts without regard for the risk of running into trips. To be clear, it’s not that there is no risk, only that it is low enough to be outweighed by other factors.

Here is BTN’s strategy on all turn cards (grouped by rank) with 100bb starting stacks in a 3-bet pot against UTG after the 50% flop continuation bet got called on 5♠5♥2♣:

The presolved solution suggests a mix of 50% and 75% pot bets on most turns, setting up a river shove that is either slightly larger or slightly smaller than the turn bet, but this is an artifact of the simulation’s construction. Using the ‘Custom solutions’ feature which enables Automatic selection of the optimal bet sizing, the AI-solver lands on 67% pot as the optimal size on a generic turn like the 9♦. This sets up a 67% pot river shove, a perfect example of geometric pot growth:

We can see as well that virtually all hands Q9 and stronger bet again for value on this turn and that overcards make the best bluffing candidates, the exceptions being AK and AQ, which have less incentive to bluff because they may win unimproved.

Positions are not a big factor here. The 3-bettor’s strategy looks nearly identical when they are UTG1 rather than BTN:

Even a BB 3-bettor barrels at similar frequencies on similar cards, with the major difference being that because their 3-bet and continuation bet were a bit larger, their turn bets are a bit smaller to maintain geometric pot growth:

When you have the nuts advantage, spreading the betting across multiple streets applies maximum pressure.

We observe a similar effect when we look at BTN vs UTG with 40bb. The SPR is just above 1, but BTN virtually never shoves, preferring to maintain geometric growth with bets of 25–50% pot:

In my experience, many human players frequently shove in this spot, based on a few misunderstandings:

Speaking of position, we do actually see a bit of turn shoving when the 3-bettor is out of position. Here’s the BB vs UTG strategy with 40bb stacks:

Pot control is trickier from out of position, giving you slightly more incentive to shove the turn, but only slightly more.

The out of position player cannot guarantee a free river card by checking, nor will they have the option to check behind on unfavorable rivers. So, they have a bit more incentive to get all-in on the turn, but only a bit more. They have a substantial shoving range on just a few specific turns, all low cards that put a flush draw on the board. On these turns, they have some incentive to shove low flush draws, medium pairs, and AK without a flush draw (stronger flush draws prefer to induce additional action).

None of these are pure shoves, either, because they are also good candidates for check-raising all-in. This has the same benefits of ending the action before the river but entices an extra stab from some of UTG’s weakest hands before blowing them off their equity:

Medium Connected Flops

Although these boards favor the 3-bettor much less than blank flops, their turn barreling frequencies are not much lower. This is because the 3-bettor has already accounted for the relative unfavorability of the flop with a lower continuation betting frequency. When they do bet the flop, it’s with a range calibrated to facilitate effective turn barreling.

Here is BTN vs UTG with 40bb starting stacks on 8♦7♦6♣:

Despite the coordinated board, BTN does very little big betting or shoving on the turn. When they do bet big, it’s almost exclusively on double flush draw boards, where rivers are most dynamic.

Mostly they’re betting a geometric size, still treating their overpairs as the nuts and setting up river shoves. The exceptions are when a 9, Ten, or a diamond turns. These cards undermine BTN’s nuts advantage, compelling them to target a weaker part of UTG’s range with a smaller size.

As is usually the case when betting geometrically, BTN’s barreling range on most turns is polar. That means they mostly aren’t betting modest pairs or draws that are in danger of getting raised. Rather, they bet strong made hands, low-equity draws (overcards, gutshots), and combo draws so strong they can call a raise:

The major change with deeper stacks is larger bet sizes on the blankest turn cards to accommodate geometric growth of the pot. This is 100bb stacks, BTN vs UTG:

On turned overcards, favoring the 3-bettor, especially an offsuit King, they actually run out of bluffs and so barrel at smaller than geometric size, which also accommodates some thinner value/protection bets:

Going back to 40bb starting stacks. We can see that, on this more dynamic board, the out of position (BB) 3-bettor mostly abandons the 3-street geometric barreling plan and plays a shove-or-check strategy when stacks allow. The exceptions are, again, the overcards which most favor them, on which they want to make thinner bets:

With deeper stacks, shoving is mostly not an appealing option, so they do more checking (sometimes check-shoving, which offers a more favorable risk:reward ratio) and block-betting:

Conclusion

After the IP player aggresses preflop, and on the flop, and receives merely calls from their opponent, they will enjoy a significant nuts advantage on most turns. To make the most of this advantage, you should seek to get stacks in using similarly sized bets on the turn and river, even when the stacks are very shallow. Only when OOP, are you incentivized to shove the turn, and even then you should do so only on the most dynamic boards.

When not shoving, your turn barreling should be polar, especially if you are in position and so have the option of guaranteeing a free river by checking. With a low SPR, your opponent does not need a great hand to shove on you, and you don’t want to get blown off your draws and medium-equity hands.

Practice

Practice your c-betting and barreling skills in 3-bet pots with these GTO Wizard drills: