Poker Bluff Strategy
Poker Strategy Bluff in Poker. Poker Bluffing Techniques And Tips To Improve Your Bluffing Success. Posted on Jul 31, 2012 Updated on Sep 7, 2018 by Tim Glocks. Bluff Catching Strategy and Tips. Bluffing is an essential part of poker, and we all love pulling a good bluff and winning a pot with pure air.Being on the other side of that coin, though, isn’t nearly as entertaining.
You’re sitting in the hijack at a 6-max No-Limit Hold’em poker cash table, playing online poker for real money at Ignition. Here come your hole cards: Eight-Four suited, both Hearts. Not exactly a premium hand – but you’re feeling spicy, so you open anyway. The big blind calls, and the flop comes King-Five-Three with two Hearts and a Club. You continuation bet, the big blind calls. Turn is a Nine of Clubs. You bet again, the big blind calls. River is a Six of Clubs. You’ve got absolutely nothing – but you go all-in! And your opponent folds in the game!
Congratulations: You just ran a sick poker bluff. There’s nothing quite like getting your opponent to fold and surrender all those chips when you’ve got a trash hand. In fact, if you want to be a winning poker player in the long run, you have to put moves like this in your arsenal. But as always, there’s a time to bluff and a time to just muck your cards in the game. This guide will show you what bluffing is all about, and how to develop poker bluffing strategies that will pay out handsomely in the long run.
What Is a Poker Bluff?
The word bluff is a familiar everyday term in the English language but it first came to us from the Netherlands. Its use can be traced back to 1791, and probably comes from the Dutch word bluffen, which means “to brag” or “to deceive.” The word bluffen was later applied to card games where players with a weak hand can trick their opponents into folding; in fact, brag itself was a British version of one of these games, a precursor of modern poker that was played in the 1700s.
There are multiple ways to deceive your opponents in a poker game. For example, you can slowplay a strong hand and fool your opponent into thinking you’re weak but that’s not a bluff – it’s the opposite. Bluffing is specifically when you bet or raise with a weak hand, hoping to get your opponent to fold a stronger hand. And there are many different kinds of bluffs you can run at the poker table.
What Is a Pure Bluff?
Bluffs can be categorized by the players' strength, much like the standard poker hand ranking list from High Card to Royal Flush. The weakest of all bluffs is a pure bluff, also known as the naked bluff. This is when you bet or raise with a hand that doesn’t have any outs, meaning it can’t draw to a made hand that can beat your opponent in the game.
Of course, if you’re already on the river and you haven’t made your hand (like in the above example), then every bluff can be considered a pure bluff but even then, some bluffs are stronger than others – as we’ll explain shortly.
What is a Semi-Bluff?
Once a player is bluffing a poker hand actually has some equity behind it, you’re moving into semi-bluff territory. This is a hand that is probably weaker than your opponent’s but if they don’t fold, you still have a chance of drawing to a better made hand by the river. Classic hands to semi-bluff include open-ended straight draws, where you have four consecutive cards to a straight (preferably your two hole cards, plus two on the board), and flush draws, where you have four cards of the same suit.
There’s some debate over whether weaker draws like gutshots (where you have four outs instead of eight or nine) and backdoor draws (where you only have three of the five cards you need) can be considered semi-bluffs. The same goes for combo draws like straight flush draws where you have 14 outs or more, and your hand probably has more equity than the other poker players, even if they happen to be ahead at the moment. Don’t worry about this debate too much – it’s just words. The important thing to grasp is the concept that you have two ways to win with a semi-bluff:
- Get the other players to fold; or failing that
- Make the better hand by the river
When Should I Bluff?
Now it’s time to employ a little strategy. If you play real money poker and you never bluff, your opponents will eventually get wise and stop paying you off when you bet or raise. Poker wizards have done the math, and they’ve proven what the old-school rounders always knew: A healthy balance of bluffs and value bets will deliver the biggest rewards.
Picking and choosing the right times to bluff is the tricky part. If you’re relatively new at this game, one of the best poker tips we can give you is to bluff sparingly. Treat this weapon with great care because bluffing can cost you dearly if you don’t do it correctly. Let’s start with pre-flop play, because that’s easy – don’t bluff. Use a linear range, opening your strongest hands from early position, then widening your range as you move around the table. Do this with your 3-bets and 4-bets as well.
Once you reach the flop, stick with the stronger semi-bluffs when you’re ready to get tricky. An open-ended straight draw gives you eight outs, and a flush draw gives you nine outs; if your opponent doesn’t fold, your chances of completing by the river with either of these hands are about 1-in-3. You won’t be playing Game-Theory Optimal (GTO) poker by any means with this strategy, but as a beginner, minimizing mistakes should be your focus.
Double-Barreling and Triple-Barreling
So let’s say you’ve got a flush draw on the flop and you decide to bluff. The other player calls. Now, what do you do on the turn? A second bet might get your opponent to fold – this is called a double-barrel, as in the barrel of a gun. Or they might call again, or even raise you on the turn. It’s a sticky situation.
Again, if you’re a poker beginner, we recommend you keep it simple and try not to think about too many things at once. For now, focus on the turn card itself. If it’s a blank, i.e. a card that doesn’t connect well with the rest of the board (or complete your flush), go ahead and double-barrel. Remember, the whole idea behind the bluff is that you want your opponent to think that you have a made hand. If the turn card does connect with the board, abandon ship for now and check instead – unless you make your flush. Then go ahead and bet for value; you could slowplay but that’s for more advanced players in the poker game.
If you bluff both the flop and the turn and you still can’t get the other players to fold, you could fire that third barrel on the river if you don’t make your flush, just like the scenario we brought up at the start of this guide. We encourage you to pump the brakes and check instead if you’re a beginner. By the time you get to the river, the pot should be pretty big, and making big mistakes in big pots is a great way to drain your bankroll. Save that triple-barrel bluff for when you’ve got some more experience under your belt.
Bluffing 102
Okay, now it’s finally time to take the training wheels off. You’ve played poker for a little while, you’ve gotten comfortable with semi-bluffs, and you have some sense of what you’re getting yourself into. Let’s take a deeper dive into the art of bluffing. There are tons of good spots for intermediate players to run more speculative bluffs; the key is to target opponents who have wide ranges and are more likely to fold.
The simple check-raise bluff on the flop with a gutshot or backdoor combo draw (three cards to a straight flush) is the easiest of these to pull off. If you call a late-position open from the big blind, you can often get your opponent to fold by check-raising, since their chances of connecting with the board are relatively small. If they do continue, a double-barrel or even a triple-barrel will have more chance of success against their weaker range. Plus, you still have outs to make a better poker hand.
Your bluff will have even more chance of success if you take blockers into account. In the above example, the board was King-Five-Three-Nine-Six. There are two ways the other players could have a straight here: Eight-Seven (making 98765), or Four-Deuce (making 65432) – although they’ll be more likely to call from the big blind with Eight-Seven. But wait: You have both an Eight and a Four in your hand. You are blocking the other poker players from holding some of the combinations that would have you beat. This could be a great spot to run a triple-barrel bluff.
It could be. If you’re a poker expert, you’re probably shaking your fist and saying something like “But the big blind has way more of those small cards in their range than the hijack. Plus, they’re more likely to hit that backdoor Club flush. Why were you opening Eight-Four suited in the first place?” Very good – you’ve been playing this poker game for a while, haven’t you? There’s a lot more to running a really sick bluff than what we’ve mentioned here thus far. But this is a great place to start if you want to get better at poker. Keep working on those bluffs, and we’ll see you at the tables.
Poker Bluffing Strategy
Bluffing is the part of poker that attracts the most attention and interest from those who are not really poker players themselves, but know what a bluff is. For poker aficionados, bluffing, of course, is also of great interest. Running a successful bluff may well be the difference between a mediocre session and a profitable one. Even so, knowing when not to bluff is also important. Many people say, “it pays to advertise,” which has an element of truth. However, many of us believe that bluffing at the right time will not only advertise, but enable you to make money while doing it. So here is when to not bluff.
Do not bluff a player who has a lot of money invested in the pot and only a small amount remaining in his stack. You need to know approximately how many chips each of your opponents have at all times. I am sure just about everyone has been lax at some time and failed to investigate, including me. This does not make a careless action okay. I will also say that you need to be aware of each player who has a live hand. Otherwise, you may wish to bluff Player A, but find out you have another opponent, perhaps one with a short stack that has an easy call. Worse yet, you may move all-in against a player who has considerably fewer chips than you do, but run into someone you did not know was even in the pot who has more chips than you.
On the flop or turn betting rounds, to maximize the chance of a successful bluff, the player you target not only needs to have enough money to call your wager, but should have enough money to worry about having to call a larger subsequent wager. We call the effect of this extra money “leverage,” because the effect of your wager is to add pressure beyond the amount of the wager itself.
The most important factor in deciding whether to bluff will be who your opponent is. A move that is a big favorite to work against Tight Teddy may have little or no chance of success against Caller Carl. We like to label people like Carl as “calling stations.” Find out early who the callers are at your table and try to avoid running a bluff against any one of them.
Habitual callers fall into a number of categories.
Players new to the game are eager to gain information about their opponents. Those with a lot of money want to see what you have and are willing to pay for the info. Others are simply curious as to what you have.
Another frequent caller is the aggressive player who has a lot of moves and a larcenous heart. He plays too many hands, so usually rates to have a weak hand. Thus, he resorts to a steal much of the time. He often treats others as if they are like-minded thieves. In a spot where he would have tried to steal the pot, he thinks you are probably trying to hijack him. So, when you do have nothing, it will usually be best to cut your losses against this suspicious player and not make a play for the pot when you think he probably has a made hand.
Poker is more complicated than using the strategy of simply playing according to whether the opponent usually calls or usually folds when confronted by a possible bluff. What has been happening during the session has a lot to do with whether to bluff. Human nature is for a person who is stuck in the game to want to make a comeback, and one way to win a pot is to bluff. If you are stuck, and have previously been caught bluffing that session, there is a good chance of getting called if you try another bluff. If I am losing, I am less likely to run a bluff.
By the same token, if your opponent is stuck, you are more likely to get called. It is surprising that, when a player is more likely to get called, he would bluff more often, but that is exactly what is likely to occur. A lot of the decisions on whether to bluff and whether to call a possible bluff are highly dependent on how each player is doing in the game.
Most bluffs are made on a hand that the player knows will give him no other way to win the pot. Accordingly, the player will be in the pot on a draw that did not come in. The most common draw at no-limit hold’em is a flush draw, since a flush beats a straight and is also slightly easier to make. (pot-limit Omaha is a much different game, since a 13-way straight draw is commonplace, a 17-way draw is not unusual, and a 20-way straight draw is possible. We are talking only hold’em in this article).
The presence of a two-flush on the flop, especially when the board is not paired, has a strong effect on the betting. A flush draw will often try to fake a strong made hand. If there are one or more cards still to come, a bet by a draw is called a semibluff. The player who bet or raised is hoping the opponent will fold, but has a way to win if called. Most semibluffs are made on the flop, since a draw is much stronger when there are still two cards to come. On the other hand, a strong bet on the turn has some deception to it that makes the wager more believable.
Poker Bluff Strategy Definition
A common bluff is a large bet after all the board cards have been dealt. However, this wager when there was a two-flush on the flop that never came in has quite a good chance of getting called. It is natural for an opponent of the bettor to think, “Why such a big bet now, rather than before the river card, when there was a chance to protect the hand?” The obvious answer is now you are probably bluffing. I would discourage you from making this type of bluff unless you know your opponent quite well and have a good reason to think that a bluff will work in this particular situation.
A good principle to follow when considering a bluff is to show reluctance when you know your opponent likely has a good hand. Yes, it is sometimes possible to make an opponent lay down two aces after the flop––but why try? Especially nowadays, when there are many super-aggressive players who like to put pressure on their opponents right from the start, why pick on a big pair as your target of choice? True, you can, on occasion, make an opponent lay down a good hand, but it is much easier to run a player out who has no hand at all. Percentage-wise, it is much harder to hold a good hand on a given occasion when you are raising preflop several times a round than when you are raising only about once every half-hour or so. Shoot at jeeps, not tanks. ♠
Bob Ciaffone’s new poker book, No-limit Holdem Poker, is now available. This is Bob’s fifth book on poker strategy. It can be ordered from Bob for $25 by emailing him at bobciaffone@gmail.com. Free shipping in the lower 48 states to Card Player readers. All books autographed. Bob Ciaffone is available for poker lessons.