Bluffing in Pot-Limit Omaha - Part II

In my first column in the December 2006 issue, I looked at how bluffing on a paired board can be profitable, and in this column I will look at how position and the actual cards on the board can make bluffing very successful.



Conventional wisdom regarding position is that it's much easier to pick up pots by bluffing from late position, as players have often shown weakness by checking to you. However, in tricky games, they are often doing this so that they can check-raise or just smooth-call you with a very strong hand. Betting from early position indicates great strength, and can be done to bluff to pick up some big pots, as it is much more convincing than a bet from later position.

For the purposes of this example, you are playing in a $25-$50 pot-limit Omaha game with five opponents. Each opponent is playing $5,000. The player under the gun makes it $150 to play and everyone passes to the button, who makes it $450 to play. You decide to call from the small blind with the K Q Q J. The big blind folds and the player under the gun calls the extra $300, so the pot is $1,400. The flop comes 7 5 4. On this flop, you have little chance of winning unless you make some kind of move on it. The key to choosing which flops to bet out on is to think about what hands can call. In the case of a flop like this, very few will. There are not that many hands that will like this flop. You could assume that the following hands will call or raise you: 8-6-X-X, 6-3-X-X, 7-7-X-X, 5-5-X-X, 4-4-X-X, 7-5-X-X, 7-4-X-X.



Given the action preflop, it's very likely that both of your opponents have high cards and caught no part of this flop. If you bet out into two players, they will fold a very high percentage of the time in this situation. You have to bet enough so that they believe you have a hand and are not just on a cheap steal, so I would recommend a minimum of $900. I will use the figure of $900 in the calculation below.



Exactly how often your opponent would have to pass for this play to be profitable can be calculated as follows:



Total amount committed to the pot on a bluff ÷ the potential profit = X



X ÷ (X+1) x 100 = break-even percentage



So, for the example I have used, $900 ÷ $950 = 0.95



0.95 ÷ 1.95 × 100 = 49%



So, in the hand described, you would need to win more than 49 percent of the time for it to be worth making this kind of bluff. If you choose the correct hand to make this move, they will fold much more often than 49 percent of the time.



One thing you have to be very careful with is choosing which flops are good for this sort of move. A flop of 7 5 4, like I used in the example, is great to bluff on because there are no draws to higher straights (except a gutshot) or flush draws. Compare this to a flop of 7 6 4. This may look similar, but there are now many more hands that will play back at you; 10-9-8-X is now a massive draw, and other hands like 9-8-8-7 and 9-8-A-A also will probably call or raise.



Picking the right flops for this move is the most crucial factor in whether or not bluffing from early position will be successful. You also must make sure that you don't make this play against someone who won't fold A-A after the flop. And do not make this bluff too often, as players will pick up on what you are doing.



The last thing to look at is what you should do if your opponent calls or raises your bet on the flop. If he raises, you should fold, of course, as you have no hand, except a pair of queens. If he calls, the pot will be $3,200. Although the size of the pot looks tempting enough to fire another bullet, unless you hit a queen, you shouldn't put any more money into this pot. The key to this sort of bluff working in the long run is that you don't have to commit your whole stack to the pot.



Ben can be found playing at www.betfairpoker.com. He also writes a blog at www.milkybarkids.blogspot.com.