Most players don’t bluff often enough. Part of the problem is that bluffing consistently requires a certain leap of faith that can be hard to muster. It can be especially hard to muster if you’ve been enduring a bad run.
Home How to Bluff with Flush Draws Like a 3-Time Bracelet Winner Not all flush draws are the same. This may seem like an obvious point, but it is one that draws attention to a more fundamental concept: different flush draw spots demand different strategies. Your hand does have some value, making this only a semi-bluff. Ideally your opponent will fold and you will take the pot. But if you do get called there's the chance that you'll make the nuts on the turn. Semi-bluffs are a crucial part of poker, but be warned: if you semi-bluff every time you have a big draw you'll be as transparent as glass.
But another part of the problem is that players don’t know which sort of hands to bluff with. It doesn’t help that the sort of hands you should bluff with on the river are different from the sort of hands you should bluff on the flop.
Your opponent bets and you are considering a bluff-raise. What type of hand should you choose?
On The River
On the river, you’re looking for two things: a lack of bluff-catching value and blockers.
A hand lacks bluff-catching value if you could call with it and still lose to a bluff. Top pair, for instance, has full bluff-catching value on most boards, because it would be rare that someone would try to bluff with a hand that beats top pair.
Bottom pair or ace-high, however, often have marginal bluff-catching value. Sometimes players will bluff with a medium-sized pair. If you call with one of these marginal hands, you could still lose even if you catch your opponent bluffing.
More important, however, is that your hand has blockers. It’s okay to bluff with a few hands that have bluff-catching value as long as they have premium blockers.
What are blockers?
Blockers are cards you hold that would be significant if your opponent were able to hold them. But, obviously, your opponent can’t hold the card if it’s in your hand.
When you contemplate a bluff-raise on the river, you want your opponent to hold one of two types of hands: bluffs or weak value hands.
Your best bluffing hands, therefore, will contain cards that maximize the chance your opponent has one of these two types of hands at the expense of the third type — strong and nut hands.
For example, say the board is J 8 2 10 3. Your opponent checks the flop, and you check it back. He bets the turn, and you call. He bets the river, and you want to bluff-raise.
If he’s value betting, he may have a straight such as Q-9 or 9-7. He may also have a set such as 8-8 or 10-10. Or he may just have a jack, like K-J.
If he’s bluffing, he may have a busted spade-flush draw. Or he may have overcards such as K-Q. He could also have a hand like 4-4 or just two random cards.
A card such as the K is a poor blocker in this scenario. No strong value hands contain this card. It appears only in bluffing hands and weak value hands. So if the K is in your hand, it suggests you have a poor bluffing hand. Because you hold the card, your opponent can’t have it. But you’d like your opponent to have it, since it’s a card that marks your opponent with a vulnerable hand.
The 9, however, is a great blocker. Both Q-9 and 9-7 are made with this card. Furthermore, this card isn’t particularly likely to appear in weak value hands or bluffs. So if you hold this card, it increases the chance that your opponent has one of your target hands.
If you hold two nines — 9 9, for example — it’s likely you have a great bluffing hand. Because your cards block the straight so well, it significantly increases the chance that your opponent is betting a hand he might consider folding to a raise.
Note that 9-9 has some bluff-catching value. But hands like A-10, K-10, Q-J, and A-8 act just as well as bluff-catchers without the blockers. So you can bluff-catch with your hands that lack blockers, and bluff-raise with 9-9 — the hand with powerful blockers.
On The Flop
On the flop, you’re looking for something completely different. Blockers are still a factor. But much more important is equity. Because the pot isn’t lost yet if your flop bluff-raise gets called, you want a hand that can suck out.
But you don’t want just any hand that can suck out. You want a hand that has almost as much equity against your opponent’s betting range as it has against your opponent’s raise-calling range.
This is a tricky concept, so I’ll break it down. Your opponent bets one set of hands on the flop. He’s got strong hands and weak hands and strong draws and weak draws and total air. Any of these types of hands he might bet on the flop. So if the flop is J 9 6, when your opponent bets, he could have 9-9, A-J, J-8, or 10-9, or two spades, or 7-5, or A-2, or 7-2.
Say you have A-K on this flop. Against your opponent’s betting range, you’re doing OK. Not great, mind you, but if you call the flop and end up at showdown, sometimes you’ll beat a hand like A-2 or 7-2 or a busted flush or straight draw, or you’ll outdraw a jack or nine.
Therefore, A-K has decent equity if you call with it.
If you raise it, however, then you have to play against your opponent’s raise-calling range. Now you’re up against 9-9 and A-J and two spades, but likely not 10-9, 7-5, A-2, or 7-2. A-K wins a much smaller percentage of the time against this stronger range.
Compare this to a hand like 5 4 on the J 9 6 flop. If you call the flop with 5 4, your only legitimate chance to win a showdown is if you catch a spade.
But this is nearly equally true against the raising range. A flush beats 9-9 or A-J the same as it beats 7-2 and 10-9.
Winning Poker Strategy
Therefore, a hand like 5 4 has equity if your bluff-raise is called — and it doesn’t have much additional equity if you just call the flop rather than bluff. These two characteristics make it the sort of hand you want to bluff the flop with.
For flop bluffs, you’re looking for hands that go big or go home. These are the hands that gain the most value when you bluff with them.
I would not, therefore, bluff A K on a J 9 6 flop. It has two problems as a bluffing hand. First, it blocks hands I would otherwise hope my opponent has. When I hold the two best flush draw cards, it increases the chance my opponent has a set or two pair. Second, A K has too much value as just a call. It doesn’t just go big or go home. It goes big — or it goes top pair and wins that way. Or it wins a showdown with ace-high unimproved.
Final Thoughts
On the river, I want to bluff hands with blockers to the strongest hands. It helps if these hands have relatively little bluff-catching value. On the flop, I want to bluff hands with equity if called that wouldn’t have much more equity if I chose not to bluff with them. Go big or go home.
No one said this game was simple. ♠
Ed’s brand new book, Poker’s 1%: The One Big Secret That Keeps Elite Players On Top, is on sale now at edmillerpoker.com. Find Ed on Facebook at facebook.com/edmillerauthor and on Twitter @EdMillerPoker.
The Upswing Poker Lab is a poker training course taught by Doug Polk and Ryan Fee. The Lab is updated regularly with in-depth learning modules, theory videos, and a wealth of information to make you a better poker player.
Is there anything more satisfying than bluffing? I love bluffing.
Bluffing is life in poker, but not all players feel the same about bluffing. For some, “bluff” is a narrow term of derision, used to describe opponents who bluff too often or always at the wrong time. And this is understandable – we’ve all seen a ludicrous river bet that was destined to get called. What was he thinking with that bluff?!
It’s true that some players bluff too much. But there are also players who think that their opponents — or they themselves — bluff often, but in reality they do not bluff often enough. And sometimes these players’ bluffs are really nothing of the kind.
Here’s the thing about bluffing… without it, you must have a strong hand to win the pot – the strongest hand, in fact. But how often does that actually happen? Most hands miss the flop, and a very strong hand preflop can become very weak as the hand progresses. In short, without bluffing, poker would not just be boring, it would arguably be unbeatable. Your opponents will be quick to exploit a playing style that is too heavily based on making strong hands; one that is not well-rounded with bluffing when it’s appropriate.
So, how much should you bluff? Let’s start with a general rule:
Bluff more early in the hand, and less on later streets.
The reasoning behind this rule is simple. In terms of equity versus an opponent’s calling range, your ‘bluffing’ range is at its strongest preflop, and that equity diminishes as the hand progresses.
For example, preflop, suited connectors could have 30–40 percent equity against most of the hands your opponent will continue with. Consequently, you can play more of these ‘weaker’ hands relative to the number of strong hands that you would typically raise for value. But as you get closer to the river, your bluffing range will have less and less equity against the hands your opponent will continue with, thus you should be bluffing with them less on later streets.
This reasoning culminates on the river.
First, if, on the river you decide to bet, you must know whether you are doing so as a bluff or for value. Generally, if your hand has any equity against the hands your opponent could call you with, then you should not be bluffing. In other words, if you think your opponent could call with some worse hands, then bluffing on the river is probably a bad play.
Second, if you find yourself bluffing on the river it’s important to account for the pot odds you’ll be giving your opponent.
Suppose you’ve bet $100 into a pot of $100, giving your opponent 2:1 to call (your opponent has to call $100 to win $200). This means that you need to be bluffing one in three times, otherwise your opponent could make a profitable adjustment by over-folding or over-calling. The idea is that the range of hands you bet is profitable because your value-bet to bluff ratio is in exact proportion to the pot odds your opponent is being offered (two value bets for every one bluff). As a result, your play is un-exploitable by your opponent – it does not matter whether your opponent calls or folds.
Obviously, this is all to say very little about which hands, exactly, you might want to bluff with at any particular time. Bluffing requires forethought; it cannot simply be a matter of betting with no equity when it feels right. You should plan every hand from preflop onward, thinking carefully about how the hand could develop, making adjustments on each street.
To take an easy example, suppose you bet a flop of Q J 2. Here, you could have a number of hands that are bluffs (or, ‘semibluffs’, if you like), which can improve to value hands on later streets. Backdoor flush draws, straight draws with K-10 or 10-9, or even A-10 are therefore hands that are reasonable to bet as bluffs on this flop. Of course, when they don’t improve, some of these hands will be reasonable bluffs on the turn and river, depending on your opponent’s perceived range.
More often, however, it’s not so easy to decide which hands to bluff with. A flop of, say, K 7 2 requires a bit more thought, and perhaps more ambition if you decide to continue with a bluff. Hands like ace-high or backdoor flush draws seem reasonable to bet as bluffs, but have less potential to improve than those mentioned in the previous example, and possibly no showdown value by the river. So, you should proceed carefully, keeping in mind the general rule with which we began (bluff more early on, less on later streets).
One particular scenario that some players struggle with involves checking the flop and then betting the turn. As a rule, if you can have some value hands in a scenario then you should also have some bluffs. But to infer which hands to include as bluffs, you have to consider which hands you would check or bet the flop with, and then bet the turn. For instance, on our K 7 2 board, could you have checked back the flop with a king? Or could you have had air on the flop and then bet the turn when your hand didn’t improve? Or perhaps you have a hand like pocket tens, and are now value betting on the turn.
Video Poker Strategy Charts
Every scenario is different, but when bluffing is a live option you must do some careful thinking, and apply the general rules about bet sizing and equity we’ve been discussing. Nevertheless, by far the most common mistake players make is submitting to a fear of bluffing. Even when the math is on their side players don’t bluff enough. They don’t put their opponents in tough situations and thus they leave money on the table. Don’t be afraid to bluff! When done properly, bluffing is profitable and part of a well-rounded playing style.
Sign up for the Upswing Poker Lab today for step-by-step instructions and examples to master both the fundamental theories and situational exploits to greatly increase your skill and earnings.