One of your primary objectives as a poker player is to cause your opponents to make mistakes. You can do this by practicing the art of deception, and one of the primary tenets of that art is that you can use your opponents' knowledge and preconceptions against them. This is accomplished by doing the opposite of what they have come to expect.
Whether you know it by name or not, you are probably familiar with the
post oak bluff. Named after a small tree in the oak family whose lumber is amongst the cheapest to buy in Texas, a post oak bluff is a suspiciously small bet or raise made on the last round of betting in no-limit poker that is designed to convince an experienced opponent that you have a very powerful hand and are trying to extract some value for it. Generally, this move does not work against inexperienced players, because their desire to see your cards outweighs the chips they'll lose by calling your bluff.
These days, I find that this move also seems to fail against experienced players, because they usually read it as exactly what it is - a sneaky bluff. Therein lies an exploitable bit of knowledge. If you are up against an experienced opponent and are looking to get value for your hand in a tricky situation, make an apparent post oak bluff, and more often than not, you will get called. To illustrate my point, let's look at a hand from day two of the
World Poker Tour North American Poker Championships.
I had a loose image and was up against an experienced, aggressive young opponent. With the blinds at $500-$1,000, I raised it to $4,500 preflop and my opponent called. The flop came A
J
2
and we both checked. The turn was the Q
and I checked again. This time, my opponent bet $7,000 and I just called. The river paired the queen and my opponent led for $15,000. I went into the tank for a long time and finally minimum-raised to $30,000. My opponent leaped out of his chair, shook his head, and finally called me. I revealed A-K with the K
for the nut flush, and my opponent mucked.
My long pause before acting on the river was not some sort of theatrical performance; I was genuinely perplexed. I was sure that my opponent did not have a full house. I couldn't see him checking behind on a flop of that texture or betting the fourth spade on the turn with three of a kind. So, I knew I had the best hand. My challenge was to find a way to extract more chips from him. With that board, he would have difficulty calling almost any raise. Eventually, I realized that my opponent was aware that I had to know he wouldn't be able to call even a small raise. So, I made the smallest raise possible, hoping it would read as a post oak bluff. This situation represented the perfect opportunity for an experienced player to make a post oak bluff, and I was counting on the fact that my opponent knew that. Sure enough, it worked. I doubt that he would have called any other bet there. The minimum-raise was so suspicious that it couldn't help but read as a post oak bluff. In essence, I made a post oak value-bet.
In today's no-limit game, players tend to make very large value-bets - often overbetting the pot - hoping that their bet will look like a bluff and enable them to maximize their profits. In my experience, this is still a valid and effective strategy, but like any strategy, you can't simply apply it to every single situation. There are times when a large or even medium-sized bet on the end will cost you money. If you think you have the best hand but your experienced opponent is facing a very scary board, you may be better off using a post oak value-bet.
As time passes, knowledge and awareness of the post oak value-bet will become more and more common, until eventually the post oak bluff will start to work again. That's the beauty of poker; it's in a constant state of revolution. Today's value-bet is destined to become tomorrow's bluff, and vice versa. For now, consider adding the post oak value-bet to your arsenal and ditching the post oak bluff.
Marc "Myst" Karam is a Canadian poker pro who has won millions of dollars competing in major poker tournaments all around the world. Despite his tournament success, he makes his living primarily by playing online cash games on Eurolinx Poker at some of the highest stakes available.
