Bluffing in poker, the overrated concept?

If you talk to any non-poker player about bluffing in poker, they will tend to exaggerate the importance of it. Usually this is because poker literature and Hollywood make the concept more important than it really is. Don’t get me wrong here, bluff poker certainly has its uses and no more so than in no-limit hold’em, where a well-timed bet can and will take the pot.

But novice poker players and non-pokers alike don’t understand that the true poker experience is achieved by skillfully balancing many individual concepts, of which bluffing happens to be one. Poker bluffing is of no more importance than areas such as table selection, bankroll management, position usage, good value betting, understanding math and any other factors that combine to make a good player. poker.

However, it is important that you bluff in poker and that you do it well. The bottom line is that if no one bluffed in poker, each player would rely on their card strength to win a pot. Basically, this would turn No Limit Hold’em into nothing more than a card possession contest where the player with the best hand would win the pot every time.

However, most of the time, players won’t have a worthwhile hand or at least won’t have a hand that can take any pressure. The easy part is betting or raising when you don’t have a hand; an absolute beginner can do that. The hard part is selecting the right moments to bluff and also the right players.

We’ll take a look at a couple of examples here to highlight both the good and bad timing in the art of bluffing. This first example has us playing a $2-$4 no limit game and the cut goes up to $14 and the button calls. Both players have stacks of $500. The small blind folds and we have 8s-6s in the big blind. This would be a good place to bluff a raise. The one that originally raised is likely to be rising in a very wide range from the break point.

The caller on the button knows this and has called with a speculative hand to try to use his position to his advantage after the flop. Position is a huge weapon in poker and the button is trying to get over the cut after the flop. If they had a real hand, they would probably have three bets. So here a three-bet from the big blind is based on the seemingly weak call of the button and the wide range of raises from the big blind.

Poker is a game of incomplete information, so we can’t be sure that the cut or button doesn’t have a powerful hand. But we are using probability and our opponent’s actions to guide our bluff. We are also using the stack sizes of our opponents, so if the original raiser had a very small stack, then the probability that they would go all-in would be too large and this would negate the play.

Let’s look at another example of a poker bluff in action, only this time, the bluff is at a bad time. The UTG player raises to $14 in our NL400 game and the UTG+1 three bets to $50. He folds to us and we raise again with the same 8s-6s to $200, the UTG player folds, but all three bettors go all-in and we fold and lose $200. There was a big difference here compared to the first example. The original raise came not from the cut-off but from the UTG position and players have much stronger ranges when opening from this seat.

Despite knowing this, the player to his left raised again, indicating a very powerful hand. So bluffing in this situation was bad poker and we should have simply folded. I’m going to look at another example here of a successful bluff before I continue. You’re in the big blind again and he folds to the button that opens raises to $14 in our NL400 game.

This player has open-raised every time he’s folded, which now equates to half a dozen times in total. We reraise from the big blind to $55 and the button calls. The flop is J-7-4 and we bet three quarters of the pot on the flop and they fold. You may have noticed that I haven’t even mentioned our cards in this example. That was deliberate because in this case we didn’t even look at them. We simply launch a bluff attempt based on the button’s play pattern and then follow it up with a bet on the flop.

This brings me to another vital concept of bluffing and that is commitment. Quite often, poker bluffs involve betting on multiple streets. As you progress through the levels, single lane bluffs will become less effective because your stronger opponents will match you much lighter than players at lower levels will. An example might go something like this; we raise from the cut-off with the 9s-8s and the button calls us.

The flop comes 10d-3d-2s and we continuation bet the pot that calls. The turn card comes and it’s the 7h which gives us nothing more than a straight draw and our opponent, who actually called us with the A-7, has now picked up a pair on the turn and calls again (obviously not we know if they have matched).

The river card is a king and we bet the pot at the end and our opponent thinks for a moment and folds. Betting on multiple streets takes nerve and is not something you can do on a budget, as it greatly increases variance, but it is an essential part of poker bluffing.