This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Fran Ferlan.
Bluffing is definitely one of the most exciting aspects of poker. So much so
that it almost became synonymous with the whole game itself.
And it’s no wonder.
Nothing can quite get your juices flowing like successfully pushing your
opponent out of a huge pot while holding complete air. It’s fun, exciting, and
it makes you feel like a pro.
In fact, a lot of people think this is exactly what makes someone a pro in the
first place: their uncanny ability to look their opponents in the eye and
pulling off a huge bluff without so much as breaking a sweat or raising their
heartbeat.
It has become almost mythologized to some extent, partially thanks to
Hollywood and its tendency to take certain aspects of an experience and
romanticize it, while conveniently leaving out the boring parts.
Alas, there is a lot more to poker than bluffing, contrary to the popular
misguided belief. It is indeed an integral part of the game, but it’s just a
part of the whole, and it’s not what actually separates the pros from the rest
of us mere mortals.
In fact, professional poker players know that the majority of their money will
actually come from the very opposite of bluffing, and that is value betting,
i.e. betting with strong hands hoping to get action from second best
hands.
The biggest money making hands are often played very straightforwardly. This
means professional poker sessions can seem even outright boring for your
average recreational player: Wait for a good hand and get paid.
Is that really the whole story? Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the skill?
Where’s the competitive drama?
When you play poker professionally, you rely on poker as your main source of
income. This means you don’t play it for the same reason most people play. You
play to make money.
In that regard, it’s no different than any other job, except you aren’t
guaranteed a paycheck at the end of the month. So you don’t have the luxury of
pulling off all kinds of daring bluffs if it can jeopardize your bottom line.
This doesn’t mean not bluffing at all, of course. If bluffing was taken out of
the equation, it would be a fundamentally different game, and would more
closely resemble chess than a card game.
So how often should you bluff in poker? Is there some sort of perfect ratio
between bluffs and value bets? As is usually the case in poker, the only
correct answer is it depends.
Poker is an incredibly dynamic game, and you never play the same hand
twice.
There’s so many variables to take into account, and the answer can’t be as
simple as saying: you should bluff 20% or 40% of the time in this and that
spot, period.
The better answer is that your bluffing frequency will be situational, i.e.
you should bluff more in certain situations, and less in others.
1. Keep it Simple And You Win
The first thing to consider is what type of opponent you’re up against. If
you’re playing lower stakes and face a lot of loose recreational players, you
really shouldn’t bluff often, or even at all.
A lot of players make the mistake of trying to “outplay” their opponents,
going for all kinds of deceptive lines and advanced plays, light 4-betting,
triple-barrel bluffing, check-raising the river with a busted draw and so
on.
This is known as the fancy play syndrome (FPS) and can be absolutely
detrimental to your results. It means deviating from the standard play and
getting creative as opposed to just playing your hand straightforwardly.
Just to be clear, making a standard play and playing straightforwardly 100% of
the time is only going to get you so far in poker.
This is something that I touch on in my latest video about making $50 per day from poker.
Basically, if you aren’t willing to mix it up from time to time, you winrate
will reach a plateau pretty quickly, as your more observant opponents will
soon find ways to adapt to your play and start exploiting you.
However, if you’re playing lower stakes, most players just don’t pay that much
attention.
In fact, the majority of the player pool at these stakes will fall neatly
in these two categories:
They will either be recreational players who will play way too many hands,
call down too much and make all kinds of crazy mistakes, or regulars who will
play ABC poker, i.e. playing straightforwardly and rarely getting out of
line.
It’s important to differentiate them as quickly as possible in order to adapt
to their playing style most effectively.
Let’s start with the recreational players.
While your typical fish will be the one who plays too many hands and calls too
much instead of raising (i.e. loose and passive), it would be a huge mistake
to assume they all play that way.
What makes fish a fish is not the number of hands they play, but the number
and severity of the mistakes they make, and playing too many hands is only one
of the possible mistakes (albeit one of the most common ones).
The reason why this is important is because no two players are exactly alike,
so assuming all fish play the same and playing against them the same way can
be a huge mistake.
There is more than one type of fish, so you should adapt your strategy and
your bluffing frequencies to them individually.
For the purposes of this article, we’ll break them down in three categories:
- Calling stations
- Tagfish
- Maniacs
By the way, for a complete breakdown of every single poker player type (all 9) and the optimal strategies to beat each one of them, check out Modern Small Stakes.
2. Don’t Bluff The Calling Stations
A calling station is the quintessential fish, the easiest one to recognize and
exploit. Playing against these kinds of players should be your bread and
butter.
This is the type of player you should rarely bluff, if ever. They are called
calling stations for a reason.
When playing against them, you have close to 0% fold equity, so you should bet
into them for value, and value only.
There is a caveat here, however. There is a variant of a calling station that
likes to see a lot of flops, but gives up a lot when they don’t connect with
the board in some way (which would be most of the time).
They are a fit-or-fold type of player, the one that will often play an absurd
number of hands preflop, but give up quickly when they don’t connect with the
flop.
Bear in mind that the looser someone’s preflop range is, the harder it is to
actually hit the flop in some meaningful way.
Most hands miss most flop (about 2 out of 3 times), so when you dilute your
preflop range a lot, you’re bound to miss even more often.
So when you see someone playing a lot of hands preflop, but giving up easily
postflop, you can actually bluff them profitably, but give up if they show
some interest in the pot or fight back.
The way to go about it would be isolating them preflop with a big raise when
they limp into the pot (which would be most of the time), and simply fire off
a standard continuation bet on the flop when they check to you.
You should c-bet dry boards, since there’s less chance that they hit the flop
in any way.
Also, you can go for a smaller c-bet size, because that way you’re risking
less money, and if they fold approximately 2 out of 3 times, regardless of the
c-bet size, there’s no sense in risking more than necessary.
If you hit the flop, on the other hand, you can go for a bigger value bet
size, and they’ll be none the wiser, since the only thing that interests them
is their hand and their hand only.
They won’t be overly concerned with your bet sizes, and they sure won’t notice
the difference between your light c-bets and your value bets.
This is something that is discussed in much more detail in Crushing the Microstakes.
Example Bluffing Hand
Effective stack size: 100 BB
You are dealt A♣J♣ in the CO.
A loose passive fish limps in UTG.
You raise to 4x. Fish calls.
Pot: 9.5 BB
Flop: T♥4♣2♦
Fish checks.
You: ???
You should bet 3.5 BB.
C-betting here isn’t necessarily a bluff at all, as your hand is actually
ahead of the villain’s range a significant amount of time.
Remember, bluffing means trying to get your opponent to fold a hand that’s
better than yours, and that’s not the case here.
However, it can’t be said that you’re betting purely for value either, as your
hand didn’t connect with the flop.
So, now what? Should you just check behind instead?
You shouldn’t. You have the initiative and a significant amount of equity with
two overcards, and a backdoor straight and flush draw.
Your opponent, on the other hand, could have missed completely, and since the
board is quite dry, you can c-bet profitably, considering villain’s extremely
wide preflop range.
Sure, they can and will continue with a lot of nonsense, but not all is lost
if they do, as you can still improve on later streets.
Also, fish tend to be pretty inelastic, meaning the bet size doesn’t affect
their calling frequency. If they connect with the board, they continue, and if
they don’t, they give up, regardless of the bet size.
That’s why going for a smaller size c-bet is the best way to go. You can win
the pot easily without risking too much, and not inflating the pot size too
much if they do decide to continue.
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3. Bluff Easy Targets as Often as Possible
Next up, we have the Tagfish. While they will play a reasonable amount of
hands, that’s about as far as their poker proficiency goes.
By the way, if you don't know what a "Tagfish" is in poker, BlackRain79 already has the most comprehensive guide ever written to crushing this particular player type.
Basically though, Tagfish have figured out that playing half of all hands is ill-advised, but they didn’t
figure out the other part of a winning poker strategy yet, and that is playing
aggressively.
Most of them think they are playing TAG strategy, while in reality they are
weak and timid postflop, and will give up a lot if you give them any trouble.
They will only play extremely strong hands aggressively, and if they start
raising you postflop, especially on big money streets (turn and river), they
are pretty much guaranteed to have a monster hand.
This is the type of player you should bluff the most. BlackRain79 has discussed this in many videos such as this one:
You won’t be able to
extract a lot of value from them with your strong hands, because they will
simply give up too often. This is where getting out of line can benefit you
the most.
You should hammer in on them every chance you get, especially if you have
position on them. You should 3-bet them light and double/triple barrel them
postflop every chance you get.
The reason you can get away with this against them is twofold:
First of all,
making a strong hand in poker is relatively rare, so your opponents will miss
the board as often as you, and secondly, this type of player simply won’t have
the heart to call you down, even if they think you’re bluffing.
They will just let you have it this time, and wait for a better spot.
In today’s games, it’s not enough just to sit down at a table next to a huge
whale, wait around for the nuts all day and take all the money they seem so
eager to give away.
There simply aren't as many of these whales to go around, and even if there
are, you aren’t the only one to get wise and try to take their money. So are
all the other regs.
So you have to be willing to go after all the smaller fish as well. You should
diversify your targets and ideally learn to take money from all the players,
not just the fish.
And to do so you will have to bluff more, because as we’ve said, really strong
hands simply don’t come around as often to rely on those alone.
Example Bluffing Hand
Effective stack size: 100 BB.
You are dealt A♥4♥ in the SB.
Tight and passive villain open-raises on the BU to 2.5 BB.
You 3-bet to 10 BB. Villain calls.
Pot: 21 BB
Flop: T♠5♦2♦
You Bet 10 BB. Villain calls.
Pot: 41 BB
Turn: 8♥
You bet 20 BB. Villain calls.
Pot: 81 BB
River: K♣
You: ???
You should shove all in.
This is a high risk play, but if you are able to pull it off just once in a
session, it can do wonders for your winrate, as most players just wouldn’t
have the nerve to do it.
It won't work 100% of the time, of course, but even if you do get called, it
will be great for your table image.
If you aren’t comfortable getting your whole stack in the middle with complete
air, it’s totally understandable, and it isn’t something you should try to do
too often, anyway.
But you should at least try to look for spots to do it on certain board
runouts and against certain types of players, as is the case in the example
above. Let’s break it down street by street.
Villain open-raises on the button, and you 3-bet light with a great
speculative hand. Villain calls, so you expect he has something playable at
least, though you can’t narrow down his range too much at this point.
You flop a gutshot straight draw on a board that doesn’t particularly favour
the villain's calling range, so you fire off a standard half-pot c-bet.
Villain calls, so you narrow down his range to Tx hands, flush draws, middle
pocket pairs etc.
Turn doesn’t change much, except it puts a couple of possible straight draws
on the board.
You still believe you can push your opponent out of the pot based on your
previous history, so you decide to double barrel, as you still have some outs
left (namely Aces and Threes).
Unfortunately, you don’t improve on the river, and you’re left with a busted
draw. In this spot, most players will just check and hope the villain does the
same and maybe even win at showdown with Ace-high, or check-fold to villain’s
bet.
This is certainly the safest course of action. But let’s consider the
alternative.
By shoving all-in, you’re putting tremendous pressure on your opponent, and
are giving yourself the most fold equity against him.
The King is a scare card, and if they hold a Tx hand, for example, it will be
really hard for him to hero call such a large bet.
Considering his passive actions, you put him on a mediocre or a drawing hand,
and the river didn’t complete any straight or flush draws he could have.
On the other hand, your actions signify incredible strength. You went for a
3-bet preflop, then barreled every street.
In other words, this is the "story" you are telling as BlackRain79 discusses in much more detail in The Micro Stakes Playbook.
Therefore, the villain might conclude that you are either way ahead or way behind (i.e.
you either have a monster hand or a complete bluff), but when in doubt, he’ll
err on the side of caution.
Again, this kind of play can only be employed against weak and timid
opponents. Doing so against calling stations is a recipe for disaster, so use
your judgment.
Also, if the villain snaps you with a set, don’t beat yourself too much about
it.
If you make your decisions from an informed perspective and think through
villain’s range, but it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world.
Poker is about risk management, and you should be willing to risk being wrong
sometimes. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
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4. Don’t Try to Outbluff The Maniacs
One last type of fish to consider is the one that can be most frustrating to
play against, the dreaded aggrofish or maniac.
It might be tempting to try and bluff these players and show them you won’t be
pushed around. After all, they have so much garbage in their range a large
majority of the time, so if I raise or reraise them, they have to fold, right?
Wrong.
The problem with this kind of logic is you’re trying to apply reason to a
behaviour that is completely unreasonable.
Fighting back against mindless aggression can be warranted in some situations, but it can also backfire disastrously.
Don’t get sucked into the madness, however infuriating it might be to fold for the umpteenth time in a row, even though you know the guy is bluffing.
Don’t get sucked into the madness, however infuriating it might be to fold for the umpteenth time in a row, even though you know the guy is bluffing.
Just a disclaimer, though. I’m not saying not to call down these guys with
marginal holdings if you suspect they’re full of it. You can and should do
that.
In fact, this is the best way to play against them. You just have to back your
judgment and call them down with less than ideal holdings, such as top pair
weak kicker, second pair and so on.
You shouldn’t just wait around for Aces and hope to trap them, because by the
time you actually have a good hand, they might spew off their chips to someone
else already.
What you shouldn’t do is try to fight back against them just to show them
who’s boss. It’s like fighting fire with fire.
If you fight back with complete air and they call you down with something
ludicrous like third pair or two pair on a wet board, you’re going to look
silly and they’ll look like a genius, which will make you even more frustrated
and down the tilt rabbit hole we go.
Don’t let them get the best of you. It’s like boxing. You will have to endure
getting jabbed a few times, but eventually, you’ll get the opportunity for the
knockout punch.
Don’t just go flailing about hoping to outpunch someone who’s already coming
after you. Bide your time, and when the opportunity arises, take a deep breath
and call them down.
Check out BlackRain79's 15 proven ways to beat the micro stakes for much more on this.
5. Bluff The Predictable Regs as Well
What about bluffing the regulars?
This is where things get a little trickier, because not only will you be up
against opposition who will be aggressive themselves, but they will also pick
up on your bluffs if you don’t execute them properly.
Therefore, it’s important to recognize which players play closer to the
straightforward ABC style, as they will be the ideal candidates for you to
bluff more frequently.
Similar to the tagfish, they won’t get out of line too much, and won’t be
willing to call you down in a lot of marginal situations.
And as we all know, most situations in poker are marginal. Rarely is the case
that you can comfortably assume your hand is ahead 100% of the time.
And even though solid regs can be significant long term winners, most of them
aren’t world class experts by any means, especially at the lower stakes.
They play to win, and they are fully aware that winning poker at the lower
stakes is more about discipline than skill.
In practice, this usually means playing lower variance style, i.e. focusing on
minimizing the number of mistakes and not getting out of line too often. So
they won’t be particularly inclined to make some daring bluffs and/or hero
calls.
And this is where your opportunity lies.
You can get away with bluffing them more frequently, because they don’t want
to risk being wrong and jeopardize hours worth of their grinding.
You just have to be careful that if you do decide to bluff, you do so from an
informed standpoint, not just deciding it out of the blue in the middle of the
hand.
You have to make sure your bluff tells a believable story. You do so by
playing the hand in reverse, and asking yourself would you play your strong
value hands the same way you played your bluff.
If the answer is no, you’re better off not doing it.
Your more observant opponents will realize your story doesn’t add up, so you
have to make it look like a value bet.
This means your previous action, the bet size and the timing indicate you have
a strong hand. So consider using the same bet size you would use if you were
betting for value.
Here is a mental trick you can use: Imagine yourself actually holding a
monster hand, and then play it accordingly.
Bluffing is essentially acting, so you have to totally immerse yourself in the
role in order to pull it off believably. Otherwise, your opponents will see
right through it.
By the way, for much more, check out BlackRain79's 10 easy ways to tell if somebody is trying to bluff you.
Summary
Bluffing is arguably the most fun aspect of poker. There’s nothing quite like
that feeling of rush and excitement. The only thing better is actually winning
money.
So when you do bluff, you should approach it with a dose of rational
detachment, not just do it for the sake of it.
As to how often you should do it, it depends on what you want. If you want to
have fun, then the answer is as much as possible. If you want to make money,
less so.
Because the fact is that most of your winnings in your poker career won’t come
from pulling off some daring bluff, especially if you’re starting off at the
lower stakes.
Although, it will definitely play a key role as part of an advanced poker strategy as you move up the stakes.
But at the lower limits, bluffing too much is often just about one of the worst things you can do
for your winrate, especially if you’re playing online.
Online games are notably tighter than their live counterparts.
The reason for it is they play much faster, as you can put in an insane volume
over a shorter time with multitabling, so people tend to be more selective
with the hands they play, because they don’t have to wait around for them as
long.
What this means in practice is that there simply isn’t as much bluffing going
on. After all, why would you risk your money on marginal spots when there’s a
monster hand just waiting around the corner?
However, that’s not to say there’s no place for bluffing in online poker. If
you’re only ever betting for value and playing straightforwardly 100% of the
time, your winrate will reach a plateau quite quickly.
Even the fish will pick up on what you’re doing eventually.
Besides, strong value hands simply don’t come around as often, so if you’re
only relying on those to keep afloat, you’re in for a rough ride, especially
since the games are getting increasingly competitive by the day.
So how often should you bluff? It mostly depends on the type of the opponent
you’re up against.
If you’re playing against a table full of beginner poker players, first of
all, count your blessings, as these tables are so few and far in between in
today’s games, with the sole exception of the lowest stakes like NL2 and maybe
Nl5 if you’re lucky.
In those games, you can bluff close to never and just count your money.
If you are up against weak and timid opponents, you should hammer in on them
as often as possible and try to get them riled up and steaming.
That way, when you actually do have a monster hand, they’ll basically donate
their money to you. If you encounter wild and erratic opponents, don’t try to
outbluff them. It’s like fighting fire with fire.
Instead, just call them down wider than you normally would and let them hang
themselves with their maniacal ways.
And finally, against more solid regulars, your bluffing frequency will also
depend on which side of the spectrum they lean towards.
If they are on the nitty side of the spectrum, attack them as you would the
tight passive opponents, and if they are on the laggy side, call them down
wider.
It goes without saying that you should exercise caution, and remember that you
should never do anything, bluffing included, just because.
Know why you are doing what you are doing, and don’t be overly concerned with
how often you should do X, Y or Z.
Just focus on making the best possible decisions in every hand you play, and
if that means overbet jamming the river with complete air, by all means go for
it. Remember what they say, a pair of balls beats everything.
Lastly, for lots more advanced bluffing strategies make sure you grab a copy
of the
free BlackRain79 poker cheat sheet.
