A Bluff That Suits Your Style

Up to a certain level of experience, many no-limit hold’em players have the default battle plan of playing tight, waiting for premium hands, and betting only with the best of it. The motivation for this scheme is clear, especially in the turbulent waters of no-limit, where stacks can be lost in a heartbeat: The not-so-confident tyro wants his chips in play only in situations of extreme confidence. Alas, the downside of that plan also becomes clear pretty quickly: If you bet only with the best of it, your savvy foes will give you no action except when they, too, have big hands.

Learning to bluff, then, marks a necessary evolutionary step in a poker player’s career. Necessary, but a trifle unsettling, for the thought of bluffing makes many players uncomfortable. Bluffing, and getting caught at it, seems like a sin to some. Yet, it’s the only known antidote to letting our enemies get too comfortable with us, so it’s a tool that we all must use. In this column and the next, I’m going to present some specific templates for bluffing. If you’re one of the millions of poker players who don’t bluff with sufficient frequency, for either strategic or emotional reasons, you may find it useful to follow these scripts.

The main thing to consider when planning a bluff is your current image at the table. Are you perceived as tight? Loose? Strong? Larcenous? The type of bluff that you can successfully run is utterly dependent on your table image. Therefore when bluffing, to bastardize Shakespeare, “To thy known self be true.” Let’s take a look at some bluffing scripts now, and see what’s involved in making them work.

Name of Bluff: The Unbearable Tightness of Being
Your Image: You have a tight image. Your opponents have been trained by your infrequent calls and raises to believe that you know what a quality hand is (you do!), and that you never get involved without one (well … not never).

Your Target: You want to run this bluff against an opponent who knows you to be tight, and who has gotten into the habit of driving you off second-rate holdings with second-rate holdings of his own.

The Situation: Although you normally call raises only with big pairs or big paint, look for a chance to flat-call a preflop raise from a known frisky opponent, no matter what two cards you hold. Ideally, you want a single foe, and you want position. Remember, he reads you as tight, so when you call his raise, he’ll figure that you have a solid holding.

The Bluff: You’ll need a favorable flop for this, one that contains an ace or a king. If your opponent checks, you bet. If he bets, you raise. He knows that you’re tight, and therefore must have hit your hand. He’ll have no trouble folding, whatsoever. In fact, he’ll congratulate himself for not giving you action when you so obviously have a hand.

Nuance: Adjust the size of your bet or raise to make it look like a “Hoover” bet, a small bet designed to suck your opponent in. In this circumstance, the small bet has the best chance of fitting your tight image and convincing your opponent that you’ve hit your hand. As a bonus benefit, if he happens to have a real hand and hits you with a significant reraise, you can break off your bluff at minimum cost.

What Next: Go back to sleep. Wait for your usual premium hand, or wait for enough hands to pass that your tight image has been sufficiently reinforced to set up another bluff. Against certain opponents, you can run this bluff over and over again, all day long.

Caveat: You must follow through! This bluff is no good if you don’t have the courage to run it. Having set your opponent up for a bluff-bet or bluff-raise, you have to pull the trigger. Don’t call at all unless you intend to bet the flop you’re looking for. Otherwise, it’s just like a one-two punch, but without the two.

Name of Bluff: Loosey in the Sky (With Nothing)

Your Image: You have a loose image. If you’re the sort of player who gets involved in a lot of hands, your opponents won’t credit you with much of anything when you jump into the pot. That’s OK; their own perception of your looseness will cause them to fold like hotel towels.

Your Target: Aim this bluff at kosher, straightforward foes — so-called true-value players — those who know enough about hold’em to play the right kind of hands, but not necessarily enough to play all of their hands right.

The Situation: Having established the fact that you mess around with all sorts of strange holdings, set the hook by betting into, or calling a raise from, a true-value player. You know his hand: a big pair or big paint. He has the best of it going to the flop, but that doesn’t matter, because only a good flop will help his hand — but a wide variety of bad flops will help yours!

The Bluff: Like most flop-dependent bluffs, this one works only if the cards cooperate. If the flop comes with all high cards, you’re done with the hand, because your foe won’t credit you with having hit the flop, while you know that the flop helped him. But let’s suppose that the flop comes 9-8-7. You’ve trained your enemy to expect you to be in there with junk like 9-8 or 9-7, so when you bet out, how can he stick around? If all he has is a draw to overcards, he’ll go running. The only hand with which he can really call you is an overpair, but even then he won’t feel too good, for you could easily be semibluffing a straight draw or already have him beat with sloppy two pair.

Nuance: Loosey’s best friend is the coordinated medium-card flop — but not too coordinated. You’re better off, for example, betting into a two-flush than a three-flush on the board, because the three-flush could embolden your foe to stick around with a single suited overcard. Seek flops that don’t help a good hand at all, but could help the kind of trash that you’re reputed to play.

What Next: Keep on keeping on. If you can reliably put your foes on big hands but they can’t reliably put you on anything, they’re simply inviting you to bluff. Just don’t let them trap you; break off your bluff if you meet real resistance.

Caveat: Beware of a weak hit from a good hand. A flop like 10-6-3 or J-8-7 could spell big trouble for your bluff attempt, since your true-value foes could easily have called with A-10 suited or Q-J suited. Then, since they know you to be a lying sack of cheese, they’re likely to call when you bet, and beat you with the best hand.

I’ll be back in my next column with a couple more bluffing scripts. In the meantime, try running one of these bluffs, or one of your own devising. Money won, they say, is better than money earned, and money won with nothing is the best kind of money of all.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the poker novel Under the Gun. He resides in cyberspace at radarenterprizes.com. Photo: Gerard Brewer.