Student Ideas About Bluffing

I just took on another new student. His first question was about bluffing. Here are excerpts from his e-mail. (Our correspondence has been lightly edited for readability.)

“I have a question about bluffing. When in a live game, I find in general that I bluff a lot less often when I start at a table or get short-stacked. Online, however, I find that I bluff a lot more often. In fact, it often gets me into trouble. I try to bluff enough to get action on my strong hands, but find it difficult to always bluff successfully, and have even more difficulty in knowing when and how often to bluff. Any thoughts on this?”

Let’s look at each of the points he brought up, and what I said about each one.

My student said: “I bluff a lot less often when I start at a table”

I do not believe in trying to establish a certain image; I let the cards determine my plays and am very aware of the image I project. Most of the time, I don’t catch cards and soon look like a tight player. Until this happens, you are likely to get called by people who “want to see how you are playing.” The bottom line is that when you first arrive at a table, you are more likely to get caught when you bluff than after you have been there a while, so you are doing the right thing by bluffing less at the start.

My student said: “I bluff a lot less often when I get short-stacked.”

Short stacks get called a lot more often, for many reasons:

First, a short stack has little or no leverage. (In poker, the term leverage means applying the threat of a larger loss than the amount you have wagered, because you may wager more money.) It is very annoying to call on suspicion early in a hand, guess right, but lose anyway. This happens because the bettor kept firing and you could not see the whole hand through. There is an old saying that the threat is often greater than its execution. People often fold because they are concerned that calling will not be effective, since they cannot stand the potential threat of a follow-up wager. So, having a big stack against another big stack applies pressure far beyond the size of the actual bet. Having a small stack deprives a player of making a wager of leverage, so small stacks often call or get called.

Second, people are often getting the right price to call and try to draw out when you have only a small amount of money. They get pot-committed. This happens when the amount of money needed to call and get to a showdown is small. This type of call is sometimes good for you — but not when you’re bluffing!

Third, in a tournament, people are under pressure to play hands, and they realize that you are under pressure to play a hand. Running out of chips by just putting up the blinds and antes without ever trying to win a pot is poor tournament-poker planning. So, a small stack in a tournament will usually get called.

My student said: “I try to bluff enough to get action on my strong hands, but find it difficult to always bluff successfully, and have even more difficulty in knowing when and how often to bluff.”

My friend, your bluffing philosophy is wrong. You should bluff to try to win pots. Consciously bluffing to advertise so that you can get action on your stronger hands is going to cause you to bluff in low-percentage situations for bluffing. Let the advertising be a by-product, not a goal.

I’ll now expand on the preceding discussion. Many players like to enter a lot of pots early in a session, and bet aggressively while doing so. Naturally, such a player will get into a lot of tight spots. Hey, what’s the problem? Just keep betting until the opponent folds. If he did not have enough strength to raise, he probably will not be able to take a full blast of heat. (The preceding is the way that such a player reasons.)

There’s no question that sometimes this approach will work; that is, up to the point where opponents discover that just smooth-calling with a good hand will enable them to have you bet their hand for them. From that point on, you are going to have a lot of tough situations come up. Stubbornly continuing on the course of “fire until they fall back” is going to start looking more like the “Charge of the Light Brigade,” in which fixed bayonets were not very effective against grapeshot from cannons.

I admit that there are a few poker players who appear to be able to be successful with a bullying style, but let me tell you a couple of things about such players:

1. You have to be very good at reading opponents to use this style (so forget the Internet arena).

2. This full-steam-ahead style is more effective in tournament play, especially in events with a large buy-in. Otherwise, opponents will just sit back and pick you off when they catch something.

My new student is not really trying to use the style that I just described. Rather, he wants to start playing like this and then shift gears into “tight mode.” In theory, this will cause opponents to give him action when they hold light hands. In practice, however, things are often different. I call this the “start out stuck” theory.

I believe that a poker player who decides how he is going to play before he looks at his cards is doing things “bass ackwards.” You may have one idea, and the poker pixie another. It is better to play your cards normally and see what kind of image develops that day. If you catch a lot of cards, you will look like a loose gambling player, especially if very few of your hands are shown. You will likely get some action, so try to show them a real hand. If you hold trashy cards, like I often do, you will look like an Ebenezer Scrooge who hates to part with even a penny. Now that is a good setting for a bluff.

Bluffing is an important poker skill. If you habitually play with only a small stack of chips, you will have far fewer situations in which a bluff is likely to work. People call short stacks. Bluffing is much more effective with leverage, so a short stack will seldom bluff.

Even worse than the habitual short-stack player is the habitual hit-and-run player. (These two types are often one in the same player.) You know the kind. A small win is already spent in his mind, because he is short on money and needs to book a win to feel good about things. So, out the door he goes. He makes few gambling buddies and no big-money scores. He should get a job.

Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered (autographed to you) from Bob by e-mail: [email protected]. Free U.S. shipping to Card Player readers. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons at a reasonable rate. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert’s Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.