Picking Off Bluffs

Your no-limit hold’em opponents bluff. I know that it may shock you, but it’s true. Are you just going to let them get away with it, or are you going to do something about it?

If you don’t have a good plan for dealing with your opponents’ bluffs, you may want to just let them get away with them. While nearly all players bluff sometimes, most of them don’t bluff so often that you can call randomly to keep them honest. If you don’t pick your spots with some thought, you probably should just concede the occasional bluff.

But I’m not satisfied with that answer, so I’m going to help you to develop a plan. Your opponents aren’t going to get away with it! At least sometimes they won’t.

Here’s the first principle for picking off bluffs: Your opponents will not bluff, by and large, with hands that have showdown value. They will bluff only with hands that they think have no chance to win a showdown. In other words, your opponents might try to bluff with the 9 7 on a K 8 6 2 A board, but they likely won’t try to bluff with the 9 7 on a K 8 6 2 9 board. Most players would try to check the latter hand to showdown.

Suspect bluffs when your opponent could have a wide array of worthless hands, and avoid calling when he has few such possible hands. Here are a few example hands in which we can use this technique to pick off possible bluffs (or to avoid a bad call).

It’s a $2-$5 no-limit hold’em game with $500 effective stacks for most players. Everyone folds to you, four off the button. You have the A K and make it $25 to go. The loose player on the button calls, and the blinds fold.

The flop comes J 9 3. You bet $35, and he calls. There’s now $127 in the pot.

The turn is the 4. You check, and your opponent checks.

The river is the 4. You check, and your opponent bets $100.

You can consider calling here. I wouldn’t recommend calling automatically against all players, but this hand satisfies the “wide array of worthless hands” criterion. How?

Your opponent is loose, and he therefore could easily have seen the flop with hands like Q-8, 10-7, the 5 2, and so forth. The flop, J-9-3 with two hearts, makes possible many draws: flush draws and straight draws around the J-9. When he calls the flop, he will very often have one of these draws. If he held a strong hand like 3-3, J-9, or A-J, he may have raised the flop. Even if he would have flat-called to trap, strong hands are uncommon, by their nature. So, the flop call indicates, most likely, a drawing hand of some sort (of which there are many), or a medium-strength pair like J-6, 9-7, or 5-5.

Your opponent’s turn check confirms that he almost certainly does not hold a strong hand. Weak pairs and drawing hands are both still in the mix.

The river card improves almost none of the hands with which your opponent would have called the flop. Only fluke hands like the 7 4 have now gotten there. So, he still has the weak pairs and the drawing hands, most of which are now worthless. Applying our principle of bluff-catching, he would likely check hands like 9-7 or 5-5 to showdown. So, his relatively large river bet could easily be a bluff.

Here’s another hand. You’re on the button with the A Q. Someone limps in, and you make it $25 to go. The big blind calls, and so does the limper.

The flop comes 10 5 5. Everyone checks to you; you bet $45 into the $77 pot, and only the big blind calls.

The turn is the 9. The big blind checks, and you check. The pot is $167.

The river is the J. Your opponent bets $100.

In this case, you should fold. Your opponent can have few worthless hands, and therefore the bet is not likely to be a bluff.

He called on the flop from out of position with a player behind him. The flop is rainbow and paired, offering no draws whatsoever. His likely calling hands are trip fives, a 10, a pocket pair, or perhaps two big cards like A-K or K-J. By the river, hands like K-Q and Q-J have overtaken you, and you’re still behind the pairs and trips. You beat almost nothing. The bet is not likely to be a bluff, and there’s no reason to try to keep anyone honest here.

The preceding examples represent two ends of the bluff-catching spectrum. In the first hand, many bluffs were possible. In the second, there were almost none. Many pots play in between, and whether to call or not becomes a judgement call based on opponent tendencies.

For example, a player limps in for $5 from one off the button. The small blind calls, and you make it $30 to go from the big blind with the K Q. Only the limper calls.

The flop comes 9 7 6. You bet $50, and your opponent calls.

The turn is the Q. You bet $140 into the $165 pot, and your opponent calls.

The river is the A. You check, and your opponent moves all in for $310 into the $445 pot.

This is, naturally, a very difficult situation. The ace is a legitimate scare card, as ace-high flush draws and hands such as A-9 and A-8 beat you. But many players wouldn’t play an ace this way. Possible deviations would be that they might fold the turn with a weakish draw like A-8, or they might not move all in on the river with a hand like the A J. So, while the ace is definitely a threat, many players would rarely play an ace in precisely this way, unless they lucked into a freakish two pair like the A Q.

If the ace is not an entirely credible threat, what are you afraid of on the river? On the turn, you appear to have the best hand. The ace completes neither the flop flush draw nor the straight draw.

This bet could well be a bluff. Many draws on the flop have bricked out, and your opponent could be using the scary ace as leverage. But the bet could also represent a big hand that didn’t drop the hammer until now. There’s no single right answer here. I’d call against some players and fold against others.

But no matter what you do in the last example, you aren’t acting randomly. You can use the first principle of picking off bluffs to conclude that this is a possible bluffing situation, and therefore that calling might be a good play.

If you follow the principle, you won’t be right every time. But, you’ll be playing with a plan, and if you get good at it, you’ll soon be making some excellent calls that you wouldn’t have thought of making before.

Ed’s latest 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.