Poker Thoughts: Bluffing

Last night I got back home and played a short poker session. All the mess in my life has prevented me from playing as much as I would have liked lately so I enjoyed putting in a few hands yesterday.

From time to time I'll be discussing a few poker concepts on my blog and I've decided to start with 'bluffing'. Bluffing is a highly misunderstood and very often misused concept due mainly to all the poker shows and poker movies that people watch on TV. Poor players tend to bluff way too much and often pick terrible spots to bluff. I'll try to set the basic requirements for achieving a successful bluff and, then, show a hand I played yesterday where these requirements are met.

To bluff means to get someone to fold a better hand than yours. This obviously poses some difficulties because if your opponent has a made hand, the only way you can make him fold is by representing an even better hand, which can only be achieved by betting. For a bluff to be successful you must make this play against a tight opponent: loose players and fish in general do not like to fold hands so you should never attempt a bluff against this type of players. In a future post I'll discuss how to make money from loose players which is by 'value betting' (the counterpart of bluffing).

The second condition for achieving a successful bluff is to be able to represent a hand that is better than your opponent's hand. This means that you must be able to read your opponent and put him on a range of hands that is bluffable: in general, if you think your opponent has a set or better you should never try to bluff him regardless of how tight he is.

Summary of conditions for bluffing successfully:

1. Your opponent must be a solid, tight player. Opponents with VPIP below 20 and PFR below 16 are perfect candidates.

2. You must be able to put your opponent on a relatively narrow range of hands and the board must be such that your bluff is credible (there must be an obvious possibility of you having a better hand than your opponent's).

Here is a hand I played yesterday where the above conditions are met:

No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (6 handed)

SB ($93.92)

Hero (BB) ($95.75)

UTG ($119.95)

MP ($201.20)

Button ($89)


The Button is a tight player: VPIP: 18 / PFR: 12 / AF: 2. A preflop raise percentage of 12% means that this player raises 12% of his starting hands. However, since he is a competent player, he will raise a much wider range from the button, probably up to 20% of his hands (this includes any pocket pair, connectors higher than T9s and any Ax except for A8o and lower or A3s and lower.

Preflop: Hero is BB with 8, 7

2 folds, Button raises to $3, 1 fold, Hero calls $2

Button raises (as expected) and here I think about putting in a 3-bet and taking the pot right there. However, I decide to just call and see what happens, knowing that he could have pretty much anything.


Flop: ($6.50) 3, 6, A (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $5, Hero raises to $15, Button calls $10

Button makes a standard continuation bet of $5 into a $6.5 pot. This is a good pot for c-betting since the flop contains a high card and two low cards without too many draws (only a flush draw). Since I expect a c-bet from my opponent on this flop pretty much 100% of the time regardless of his cards, decided to put in a decent raise of $15. At this point he will only continue with the hand if he has an ace or a flush draw.

Button calls my $10 raise and I put him either on an ace or a flush draw. However, there are a lot more hands that contain Ax than two spades so I put him on an ace with any kicker.


Turn: ($36.50) J (2 players)

Hero checks, Button checks

The turn is an irrelevant Jack of clubs. I check, representing a flush draw and he checks behind. His check clearly means weakness: if he had a strong ace (AK, AQ, AJ or even AT) he would have bet in order to protect his hand from a possible space on the river. His check indicates that he does not want to play a big pot with his hand. I'm hoping for a spade on the river so I can represent a flush.


River: ($36.50) 6 (2 players)

Hero bets $36.50, 1 fold

The perfect card comes. The 6s pairs the board and completes the flush draw so now I can represent my flush (even trips would not be out of the question since I could have anything after calling his raise preflop from the BB). I bet pot and my opponent folds after thinking for a while. I'm pretty sure he had Ax (note that a donkey would have not folded any ace on this spot so you need to be aware of who you are bluffing)


Total pot: $36.50 Rake: $1.80