Bluffing

I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about bluffing recently. There have been periods of time throughout my career where I have played overly tight, only putting money in the pot with the most premium hands, and other times where I have been the most active person at the table by far, raising and reraising preflop and firing countless multi-street bluffs. Currently, I decided that whenever a situation arises that looks ripe for bluffing, unless I have a good reason not to, I am going to take it. It should be clear that the main purposes of bluffing are to allow you to get paid off when you have a premium hand and to also to allow you to win pots you would otherwise lose when both you and your opponent have marginal hands. It is usually not a good idea to try to bluff your opponent off the second nuts.

Although most reasonably good players can see spots where their opponent’s range is fairly weak, they typically do not do anything about it because they are scared of losing their chips on a play they would consider bad after the fact if it fails. While it is always nice to be able to reasonably represent a dynamic range of hands that crush your opponent’s holding, it is not necessary if your opponent will simply look at his two hole cards and make a decision based on his absolute hand strength. The first thing you must do in order start adding bluffs to your range is to simply take advantage of the countless situations that arise.

In order to decide which situations to bluff and which to avoid, you must have some idea about how your opponent will react if you raise. If you think your opponent will fold all but his most premium hands if you raise, raising is an excellent idea, assuming your opponent’s range is not made of entirely nut hands and hands you crush.

Notice if you have a hand such as 10 9 on J 9 5 3 2 and you think your opponent has either a flush or a busted draw based on his betting line, raising doesn’t make much sense because he will always call with a flush and always fold when he has a busted draw. However, if your opponent would bet with any flush, jack, nine, or busted draw, raising has a decent amount of merit because your opponent, depending on his tendencies, may fold everything besides a flush. In general, on the river, as your opponent’s bet/folding range gets wider, you should raise with a wider range of hands that loses to most of your opponent’s bet/folding range until your opponent adjusts. If your opponent is only betting with hands that are very strong or very weak, you should call with your mediocre hands.

You also must be well aware of how your opponent views you. If you have been super tight, you should look for as many bluffing opportunities as possible in the near future. If you have been playing lots of hands in an aggressive manner, you should try to show up with a strong hand next time someone wants to put a lot of money in the pot unless you think they will try to run you over. When I have been overly aggressive and facing no resistance, I always worry that someone will get way out of line because they think they will be able to get away with it. More often than not, they simply picked up a strong hand and are playing it in a straightforward manner.

I was recently playing a tournament where I was raising and reraising with a wide range. I was also firing multiple flop, turn, and river bets, both with strong and weak hands. I was by far the most active player at the table. I eventually picked up A-Q from third position and raised to two big blinds, which is my standard raise size. A 40-year-old man who had not put a chip in the pot over the last hour reraised to six big blinds out of his 40 big blind stack. Everyone folded back to me. In the past, this is a spot where I would either go all-in or reraise with the intention of getting all-in, assuming my opponent must be taking advantage of my likely loose range. I have decided that it is usually ideal to fold in these spots, assuming you think your opponent will almost never get out of line. So, I made the “easy” fold and my opponent was nice enough to show his A-K.

That being said, my opponent should be reraising with many more hands, perhaps as wide as 100 percent of hands, given his tight image and the fact that I will fold hands as strong as A-Q. Even if I had a hand such as 9-9, I would likely call preflop and fold unless I flopped a set or overpair. While my opponent would have to get way out of his comfort zone in order to make a play at the most aggressive player at the table, it would have paid off nicely. No one ever said you have to be comfortable at the poker table. ♠

Jonathan Little, 2-time World Poker Tour champion has won more than $6 million in tournaments since 2006. He is sponsored by 3bet.com, Instapoker and BlueSharkOptics and teaches poker at FloatTheTurn.com and www.JonathanLittleSecrets.com. Follow him on Twitter @ JonathanLittle.