A turbine blade for use in an industrial gas turbine engine, especially for the first stage turbine blade, in which the blade includes a squealer tip with a pressure side tip rail extending all the way top the trailing edge of the tip and a suction side tip rail with a cut back adjacent to the trailing edge to form a cooling air flow path from the squealer pocket and up and over the cut back in the suction side tip rail. The floor of the squealer pocket includes a series of skewed trip strips in the location of the cut back in the tip end, the trip strips being skewed in a direction to direct the cooling air toward the cut back. Rows of film cooling holes extend along the pressure and suction sides of the blade just below the tip rails to provide cooling for the tip rails. Tip cooling holes are located on the squealer pocket floor upstream from the trip strips and along the tip rail walls to provide cooling within the pocket. The skew trip strips begin just upstream from the cut back and extend along the pocket toward the tip end, extending substantially from the pressure side tip rail to the suction side tip rail.