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July 20 — You shouldn’t make a habit of trying to bluff recreational players off what they perceive to be big hands #crushlivepoker

One of the biggest mistakes that I see aspiring professionals or serious players that are playing for profit make is trying to move recreational players off of what those players perceive to be strong hands. You see, there are a lot of casual players that come to the casino only a few times a month. They may have fought through traffic, especially where I play in Los Angeles, to make their trip to the card room and most are not interested in folding what they perceive to be good holdings. This is not to say that they might not play tight preflop. In fact, it could be quite the opposite. I see a lot of guys who feel a bit overmatched in today’s playing circles really tighten up and play far fewer hands preflop than they ever have before. However, this causes a situation where they are in so few hands that post-flop they really have trouble folding even if they know that they should be beat.

Let us take a look at a nitty player, one that might only play 15-20 percent of his hands preflop and may only raise two or three percent of those hands. This represents raising a range of maybe A-K and Q-Q+ and a calling range of all pocket pairs, A-J+, and K-Q. If he is driving the hand as the aggressor and really does have A-K, Q-Q, K-K, and A-A, those types of players are going to have real trouble releasing those hands post-flop if they have top pair top kicker, an overpair, or, God forbid, if they make a set. This is why you want to get in there with preflop holdings with good implied odds against their raises, just as long as the stacks are deep enough to warrant it. If a guy has K-K and raises to $40 in a $5-$10 game and we call with 5 4 in position, if the board comes out, say, 7 5 4, do you think that player is every really going to go anywhere? In my experience, this is one of the biggest flaws of the recreational player. Smart, good players should be taking value lines against them almost 100 percent of the time, except in very rare circumstances. So if you see a guy make a bet on a board like this and a good player raises him followed up by a turn and river bet, you can almost guarantee that the good player will have a hand that beats their probable overpair.

I can point to a perfect example of this concept from a situation I observed recently. A very tight recreational player opened to $50 from under the gun and a good pro called him on the button with $1,800 effective stacks. The flop came out 8 7 2 and the raiser fired out $100, almost a full pot size bet. I was observing this hand quite closely and knew right away that the raiser’s sizing almost guaranteed that he had a hand like Q-Q+ or, at minimum, A K. The pro called quickly on the button, which I found a little interesting. You see, if I was in that spot on the button and flopped better than one pair, I would almost always be raising on the flop to get more money in the pot, as I would never expect the raiser to fold given his strength. So when the pro called, I thought that he must have had some sort of draw. The turn brought the 3 and this time the raiser bet $250. At this point, I knew now that the raiser 100 percent had an overpair, as he would have slowed down with the nut flush draw. After the pro called again, the river brought out one of the most draw completing cards in the deck, the J.

The raiser checked. With the pot being $800, the pro made a huge bet of $600. At this point, I was convinced that the button must have made a flush or held 10-9 for the straight, as bluffing this amateur, tight player, would be lunacy. Sure enough, the raiser did not take too much time with it, called and quickly flipped over A A. The pro sheepishly mucked and another player asked to see the button’s hand, which was revealed to be 6 5.

Overall, did the pro have the right idea with what cards that he could use to represent? It appeared as though his plan was to bluff the most obvious (and perhaps most scary) draw that would come in, while certain cards that may have looked harmless to the rec player would have completed his actual straight draw. So the idea was not bad, expect for the fact that the pro neglected to remember that he was playing the wrong type of player to bluff. This particular opponent did not come to lay down aces post-flop no matter how the board had run out. Keep this in mind when you are planning on trying to run a big bluff on a player that does not play many hands preflop, but has trouble releasing when he should post-flop.

July 22 — You can put a lot of pressure on your opponents when you double barrel vs more than one player #crushlivepoker

One of the most frequent situations that comes up in no-limit hold’em is understanding when to bet as a bluff after being the preflop raiser. I wrote an article about six months ago in Card Player discussing what I call the C-Bet Bluffing Matrix. The C-Bet Bluffing Matrix gives you a guide to the different variables that are most important when evaluating whether or not a particular situation is a good spot to make a continuation-bet bluff.

I feel as poker competition becomes tougher, even in live games, players are starting to pick up on the right types of board textures and situations to make good continuation-bet bluffs. It used be some people would just “monkey” bet with no regard to the variables of the hand. But now people have caught up a bit. However, I still think people lack the courage, guts, or understanding to double barrel as a bluff on the turn, which can be another very profitable spot.

Most of us look at a good bluffing situation when the pot is short-handed or heads-up. And it makes sense; the fewer people in the hand, the easier it is that you can make a bluff that wins the pot because there is less of a chance someone has a hand. However, there are certain spots when you can really leverage the fact that the hand is multi-way, making it look like your hand is very strong. I got into one of these spots in a recent hand at the $5-$10 Commerce $500-$1,500 capped no-limit game. Over two weak limpers with $1,000 effective stacks, I raised to $45 with A-J offsuit. The small blind, a small winning professional called, as did one of the limpers. The flop came out Q 10 3. Both players checked to me and, with what I thought was a good, winning image, I decided to make a continuation-bet bluff of $100 with my gutshot Broadway draw. The small blind thought for a bit and called, which did not make me too happy, as I had thought he was pocket pair-heavy preflop and would have likely folded, as did the limper. The turn brought out the 5, and both players checked to me again. On the surface, this may look like a situation where you would prefer to have only one opponent if you were going to fire again. But this situation was a great example of me leveraging the multi-way nature of the pot by putting the pressure on the small blind. If he had a hand like A-10, Q-J, or K-Q, it would be really difficult for him to call that second barrel.

We both knew that the overcalling limper would have to worry him and if I did fire again, he not only would have to count on having the best hand versus me, but the other player as well. So with about $350 in the pot, I decided to bet $250 to really ramp up the pressure. The small blind thought for about a minute and ended up making a painful looking fold. The limper after him then quickly folded behind and the small blind became very disgusted. He said something to the limper like, “If I knew you were going to fold, I definitely would have called.” And the thing is, I totally believed his statement. In this particular case, I may have been less likely to bluff the small blind if we were heads up if I thought that he was very top-pair heavy. But knowing that he had to deal with the multi-way nature of the pot really allowed me to win the hand, as he was squeezed in between.

So the next time you get into a situation where you have continuation-bet bluffed on the flop and you get called in multiple spots, remember, you do not always have to shut down your bluff line on the turn. The key is to evaluate who has the stronger hand—the player who is next to act to call or last to call—and if you think the next to act player has the stronger hand, you can really force the issue making yourself look very strong to all of the players in the hand. ♠

Follow Bart for daily strategy tips on Twitter @CrushLivePoker and @BartHanson. Check out his poker training site exclusively made for live cash game play at CrushLivePoker.com where he produces weekly podcasts and live training videos.