Know What You’re Folding

Broadly speaking, there are two types of bluffs: those designed to make your opponent(s) fold very weak hands, mostly those that missed the board entirely, and those designed to fold out made hands by representing an even stronger holding. Having a plan for what you want to accomplish with your bluff will help you to determine how to size your bets, how many barrels to fire, and so on.

Bluffing Weak Hands

The most common bluffing situations occur when no one is likely to have a good hand. The first player to bet in these spots usually collects a small pot with minimal risk, and those small victories add up.

Although you may not think of it in these terms, this is essentially what you’re doing when you raise with something like a suited connector preflop or when you make a continuation bet on the flop. You are betting into extremely wide ranges – literally random hands, in the case of a preflop raise – with the knowledge that playable cards are not easy to come by. Against opponents who don’t widen their ranges appropriately by occasionally playing back at you with a preflop reraise or flop float, these bluffs are wildly profitable.

Part of what makes them so profitable is that you don’t have to risk a lot relative to the pot. Since you aren’t trying to make anyone fold a strong hand, you don’t need to worry much about pot odds. Straightforward opponents will fold without thinking twice if they have nothing.

Similarly, against straightforward opponents, you won’t need to fire multiple barrels to get them out when they miss. Betting the flop will let you know whether they have a hand. If they call, you can be done with your bluff, or you can transition into bigger bets on future streets designed to fold out pairs – more on that in a moment.

It’s best to make this play when you yourself have nothing. If you have a pair, then there’s much less value in making your opponents fold their missed hands, since you’re ahead anyway. Depending on how vulnerable your hand is, though, you may wish to bet anyway just to fold hands that might make a higher pair or bluff you out on a later street.

As described, these bluffs are most commonly made preflop and on the flop, though you may find some use for them on later streets as well. For example, if a lot of draws miss on the river in a heads-up pot, there’s a fair chance your opponent doesn’t have a pair. If you yourself have a very weak hand that can’t even beat busted draws, then a small bet, sometimes as little as a third or even a fifth of the pot, can be enough to fold out hands that will look weak in your opponent’s eyes but would actually beat you at showdown. Given how little you risk with a small bet, you don’t need to get many folds to show a profit.

There are two reasons why you might make this play on the turn. One would be if there was no bet on the flop. This is much like a continuation bet; since no one has shown any strength, you’re betting that that nobody got a piece of the board.

The other reason would be if your opponent is a habitual floater. Some players, familiar with the continuation bet, love to call the flop just to see if you’ll give up on the turn. These players will see the turn with a weak range, so another smallish bet can be effective against them. It’s important to understand that this is a player-dependent move and shouldn’t be tried against just anyone, as most people who like their hands enough to call a flop bet won’t fold to a small one on the turn.

Bluffing Strong Hands

This type of bluff requires some finesse and usually a bigger investment, which means that it should be employed more sparingly. To make it work, you have to know what you want your opponent to fold, then you have to tell a convincing story about how you have something better.

What counts as convincing will, of course, vary depending on your opponent, but the most important element is how much money you put into the pot. Most players are understandably reluctant to fold good hands to small bets.

Because you’re going to put a lot of money into the pot, it’s much better to make this play with a a flush draw, straight draw, or even overcards to the board so that you’ve got a shot at winning even if your opponent doesn’t fold. This goes hand-in-hand with the fact that you can’t expect to get away with this too often. Most of the time you should give it up when your opponent tells you he got a piece of the flop, but when you have a lot of equity you can take the opportunity to put pressure on him and give him a tough decision.

The key to making this play work is being able to represent a credible threat. This could be because you took a strong preflop action, such as raising from early position or three-betting. In that case, you can fire multiple barrels to represent an overpair against opponents who are capable of folding top pair.

If a scary card falls on the turn or river, you might choose to represent that. It could be a third flush card or an overcard to the board, especially an ace. In these cases, it’s important that your play up to this point in the hand be consistent with the hand you’re trying to represent.

This play is more successful if you have reason to believe that, based on how he has played so far, your opponent is not likely to have the hand you’re representing. The last thing you want to do is bluff a card that just improved his hand!

Putting It All Together

You’re playing a nine-handed live no-limit hold’em game with $5-$10 blinds. You raise to $40 with J 10 in first position, a player in middle position calls, and the button calls. Your read on both of these players is that they like to see a lot of flops but they don’t play big pots without big hands – such players are common in higher stakes live games.

With $135 in the pot, you see a Q 7 2 flop. This is a good spot to bet a little over half the pot, perhaps $80, mostly just to fold out misses and perhaps weak pairs such as pocket sixes. It’s a dry flop, and given how wide both of your opponents’ ranges are preflop, they’re going to miss it quite often.

The other nice thing about bluffing with your hand is that you have a lot of backdoor draws. Even if you are called on the flop, you can easily turn a good draw, which sets you up to run a bigger semibluff on a later street.

The first player folds, but the button calls. Though you would have preferred folds, this isn’t a terrible outcome, because the button doesn’t have to have an especially strong hand to call. Unlike the middle position player, he was closing the action and didn’t have to worry about anyone waking up with a hand behind him. You shouldn’t automatically bluff the turn because of this, but you should file it away as one vote in favor of a second barrel.

The turn is the K, giving you an open-ended straight draw and a scare card to represent. Unless he has exactly K-Q, the button isn’t likely to have a king, so you don’t have to worry about him holding the hand you’re representing. You bet $200 into the $295 pot, and he folds.

That’s what I mean about transitioning from a bluff aimed at folding out weak hands to one aimed at folding out pairs. Knowing exactly what you want to accomplish by bluffing saves you money both because you’ll bet smaller when your goals are less ambitious and because you won’t waste money on half-hearted attempts when you’re trying to fold out stronger hands. ♠

Andrew Brokos is a professional poker player, writer and coach. He blogs about poker strategy on ThinkingPoker.net and is co-host of the Thinking Poker Podcast. Andrew is also interested in education reform and founded an after-school debate program for urban youth.