Bluffing in Limit Hold'em: Mission Impossible?

"No one can bluff in limit hold'em." How many times have you heard that? Do you believe it?

While there may be a few limit hold'em games in which bluffing is too unlikely to work to even try, in general, bluffing can still increase your profits and separate you from the field. After all, if you win only the pots you are entitled to, and so does everyone else, how can you make money? In soft games, you profit from others chasing with weak hands and draws, but in better company, you need some other dimensions to your game. Bluffing should be one of them.

In this first part of a somewhat comprehensive overview, we begin exploring some basic ideas about bluffing in limit hold'em. Subsequent columns will complete this overview, and investigate street-by-street opportunities to see which opportunities may be available and which situations are unfavorable.

The basic ideas include:

• The two-edged sword
• Bluffing as advertising
• Risk Reward
• Picture painting
• Balancing your play
• Being prepared
• Knowing your image
• Psychological factors (embarrassment, discouragement)

The two-edged sword: The object of bluffing is to win a pot with a hand that is not the best. By getting your opponent to fold a better hand, you acquire an entire pot that you would not win any other way. Of course, you have to risk something to win the pot, since your opponent will not auto-fold. You must bet or raise to convince him not to continue, and this costs money when it does not work.

Bluffing serves another purpose, however. Another source of profit is getting calls from opponents when you do have the best hand. Opponents who have seen you bluffing will be unsure if you are doing so this time. Their doubts in the form of calls with second-best hands also comprise a significant part of your profit.

In some games, opponents are quite skeptical, and you will accrue those profitable calls with little or no effort. In others, your opponents will be pretty trusting, and you will not get loose calls; clearly, this makes bluffing a wonderful option. As in all things poker, determining which opponents lean one way and which the other will provide guidance into whom and how often to bluff.

Bluffing as advertising: As soon as some players realize that bluffing helps non-bluffing profits, they start bluffing too much. They bluff as "advertising." They hope that by showing a bunch of bluffs, they will get a lot of calls when they have a hand. Realistically, you do not need to do this, as long as you remember to bluff only when you think you have a chance to win the pot. (Remember that if you are in a game in which you always get called and therefore have no expectation of winning a bluff, you are already getting paid off). You will get called on enough of your real bluff attempts, thus demonstrating that you do bluff, that you never need to create useless bluffs just to show that you are trying. Every bluff you make should represent in your mind a realistic attempt to win the pot. Never bluff for advertising.

Risk Reward: One of the reasons bluffing gets a bad rap in limit hold'em is that it does not work very often. Normally, the pot has quite a few bets, and potential callers realize that they are getting pretty good odds to catch a bluff. So, call they do. The other side of that coin, though, is that you do not need to be successful very often to show a profit. If there are 10 bets in the pot on the river and you take a shot at it with nothing, winning only 11 percent of the time would still show a profit. So, yes, bluffs seldom work, but they do not need to in order for you to make money trying them.

Picture painting: For your bluffs to be successful, your opponents have to believe them. You must play the hand you are bluffing exactly the same as you would play the hand you are representing. Let's look at a simple example. You hold the A K and open-raise from middle position. The big blind calls. The flop is K 5 4. He checks, you bet, he calls. The turn is the 8. Again, check, bet, call. On the river, the 10 hits, he checks, you bet, he folds. Granted, it's not a very interesting hand. But let's say instead that you have raised with the Q J and get the same caller and same flop. Just as before, after the flop, he checks, you bet, and he calls. Now, the 8 on the turn does not help you. You decide that there is a good chance that you are behind, and take the free card, which is a reasonable play. The 10 comes and he checks again. Should you bluff? Probably not, because:

• The pot is small, so you need to be successful a large portion of the time to show a profit.
• You have aroused his suspicions by checking the turn.
• Many of the hands he will fold here, you would beat anyway (the J 9, for example).
• He had an opportunity to bluff the river and did not, increasing the odds that he has a little something and will call.

While your check on the turn was a fine way to play the hand, it was not a good play if you were planning to bluff. To represent A-K, for example, you needed to play the hand the way that you played the A-K when you held it. Yet, how many times have you seen a player with the Q-J go into a huddle on the river, finally make a bet, and then get called by ace high or pocket threes?

While this might have been a reasonable opportunity for a value-bet if you had, say, 9-9, it was an awful bluff attempt.

As you play, you must always be aware of not only what you have, but of which other hands you would have played like this and which you would have played differently. Even better, you must think ahead, planning how you will react when various new cards hit the board, and which of your holdings those reactions will be consistent with. If you can play a few bluffs exactly as you would play real hands, and your opponents buy into your deception, you will have painted the right picture and will win extra money.

Next issue, we will complete this look at basics. Future columns will cover the street-by-street details.

Barry Tanenbaum is the author of Advanced Limit Hold'em Strategy, and collaborator on Limit Hold'em: Winning
Short-Handed Strategies, both available at www.CardPlayer.com. Barry offers private lessons tailored to the individual student. Please see his website, www.barrytanenbaum.com, or write to him at [email protected].