Bluffing and Moving Up

In my last column, I discussed how the relative strength of your hand-reading skills versus your opponents’ can help determine whether you’re ready to move up to higher-stakes games. The river betting round is the one that allows you to benefit most from sharp hand-reading, so it’s a good place to start when assessing your play.

My last column discussed river value-betting decisions. This column discusses the other side of the coin — river bluffing decisions.

If you’re reading hands well, you’ll often have a good idea of whether your opponent’s hand range is dominated by strong hands or weak ones. As you play, do you actively attack your opponent’s weak hand ranges, and do you attack your opponents better than they attack you?

Using the River Card to Bluff
Most no-limit hold’em players, bad and good, bluff with some regularity. Bad players tend to bluff by using a simple strategy, sometimes as simple as, “If you check the river, I’ll bet every time.” Better players allow their hand-reading skills to inform their bluffing.

The first bluffing skill is to use river scare cards to make more successful bluffs. If a river card will have damaged the strength of many of your opponent’s hands, it may be a good time to try a bluff. But a scare card isn’t just any old card that may look scary. For instance, let’s say that your opponent checks and calls from out of position on the flop and turn. The river brings the third flush card, and your opponent checks again. This is often not a good bluffing card, because of all of the hands with which your opponent would have checked and called on the flop and turn, a significant percentage will have been flush draws.

A true scare card is one that has one or more of the following properties:
• It is likely to have damaged the hand strength of many of the hands in your opponent’s range.
• It is likely to have improved many of the hands in the range your opponent could likely put you on.
• It is relatively unlikely to have improved many of the hands in your opponent’s range.

Here are some basic examples: If your opponent’s range is mostly one-pair hands, perhaps top and middle pairs with some unimproved pocket pairs, an overcard is likely a scare card, because it damages the strength of his hand. An overcard is a scare card particularly if you raised preflop and perhaps made a flop continuation-bet. The card not only damages your opponent’s hand range, but strengthens yours, because many of your unimproved overcard hands have now improved to top pair.

An overcard would be significantly less scary if, for instance, you had flat-called preflop and checked and called after the flop. In that scenario, you would be less likely to hold unimproved overcards, so an overcard would be less likely to improve your hand.

A total blank can also act as a scare card. For instance, if your opponent checks and calls you on a board of K 10 8 6 and a river 2 comes off, the river card will actually be fairly scary for your opponent’s range. Why? Because much of his range is made up of drawing hands, possibly also including a pair: 10-9, 7-7, the J 10, and so forth. This river card severely damages the strength of his range by missing nearly every possible hand he could hold.

This column isn’t meant to be a lesson on bluffing, but rather a diagnostic. Are you thinking about these things when you are contemplating your river bluffs? And are you actually pulling the trigger on these bluffs, or are you just thinking about them? How often do you check the river down, only to lose to a small pair? Review the hands you’ve played recently. Do you allow your out-of-position opponents to see a showdown often with small pocket pairs or flopped bottom pair? If so, you may not be bluffing accurately or using your hand-reading well enough, and you may not be ready to move up.

Picking Off Bluffs
As I said above, most no-limit players bluff sometimes. Some bluffs are essentially impossible to pick off because your opponent’s range is strong enough compared to the hand you hold that you can’t afford to call.

But other bluffs are clumsier, and you can pick them off by using a little hand-reading. Do you notice your opponents making clumsy river bluffs? Do you call them or rebluff them? And how do you perform in these situations?

One common situation for catching a bluff is when an opponent bets strongly on the flop, turn, and river, yet the turn and river cards both drastically affected the complexion of the hand. For instance, let’s say the flop comes K 9 5. The turn is the 7. The river is the 6. Your opponent bets strongly on all three streets.

It’s hard to imagine what hand your opponent could have that is strong on all three rounds. Obviously, on the river, any hand without an 8 in it isn’t that strong. Yet, an 8 would be a relatively unlikely card in a holding that is strong enough to pound the flop and turn. Whenever your opponent bets in a way that requires him to hold an unlikely or nearly perfect hand for the turn and river cards, he’s often bluffing.

Is your hand-reading sharp enough to sniff out clumsy bluffs that don’t leave your opponent with a credibly strong hand range? And, conversely, are your opponents making seemingly impossible calls against you when you’re bluffing? If you’re getting the best of the bluffing and bluff-catching situations in your game, you might be ready to move up.

Overall, I think a frank assessment of your hand-reading skills is more predictive of your potential success in moving up than your win rate is. And I think the river is the betting round where good hand-reading skills shine the most. So, if you are considering moving up, first review your river play. Do you see patterns or trends? Does it seem like you are outperforming your opponents? If so, and if your bankroll is in decent shape for the new level, consider taking your shot.

Ed’s brand-new book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, is available for purchase at smallstakesnolimitholdem.com. He is a featured coach at stoxpoker.com, and you can also check out his online poker advice column, notedpokerauthority.com.