Learning The Art Of Bluffing

The first thing you need to learn in poker is to play your hand. But when you've completed your basic training, you're about to enter the stuff where poker gets really fascinating - learning how to play your opponent.

The first thing to realize is that bluffing is not about what you hold at all. When a pot can be won without a showdown, no hands are shown, and the hole cards get completely irrelevant. And this is a good and important observation to start out with. Because when you're an inexperienced player playing no foldem holdem you shouldn't bluff to begin with. You should focus on staying out of trouble, while gaining experience. Nevertheless if you are observant you will get some initial observations that will help you to develop some bluffing skills. To be specific, you should take out hand histories of all the hands you win without a showdown. In a lot of these hands you probably have a monster, and you would have loved to get called down. But unfortunately they all folded before it came to a showdown. Instead of whining about not getting the payday your hand deserved, you should realize that you would have won the pot with any two hole cards by performing the same betting sequence. You heard me correctly. Try and do the same betting sequence next time the situation occurs, and see how it goes. Remember that you don't have to succeed every time to make a profit from bluffing. And keep taking out hand histories, and make some thorough analysis of what caused your opponents to fold in each situation.

By doing this for a while you'll gradually improve your bluffing skills. Also you will find out which factors are affecting the likelihood of a bluff succeeding. I'll give my views on some of these below:

The Nature Of The Board

The nature of the board greatly affects the chance of a bluff succeeding. For instance a board presenting a lot of draws is usually not a good spot to bluff, as someone is bound to have some kind of a hand or a draw. Also the higher the cards, the more likely it is that someone has hit the flop, as people tend to play higher cards more frequently the low cards. But this might in turn provide a good bluffing opportunity against a small number of opponents, where you feel that your opponent is on a draw.

Successful bluffs have to be trustworthy. It's not enough to make your opponents feel that they're behind, you need to make them feel absolutely sure that they're drawing stone cold dead. This mean that you'll have to provide them with bogus data allowing them to figure out a brilliant but wrong conclusion to the problem posed, making them do a tough fold (for which they can congratulate themselves). How do you achieve this? Well here's another really important thought for you. You have to play out your bluffs the exact same way you'd play out your monsters. And you have to represent a specific hand when bluffing. If you always go for a check raise on the turn with your monsters, you should make some check-raise bluffs on the turn when a scare card arrives. Make sure that it is obvious what hand you hold (which you don't - but he don't know that). Make the puzzle your opponent has to solve as easy as possible - do you have this specific holding or not? Keep in mind that most people don't like to fold. They like to call. So if they have any doubt that they're beat, calling is what they will end up doing.

The Number Of Players Involved In The Pot

Time and again you hear people complain at the forum that you cannot win in these low limit games, where people hang on with any piece of the board. In my point of view, the thought that it should be harder to beat a table full of newbies then a table filled with world class players seem utterly absurd. But I'll happily admit that the skills required to beat a loose passive game are different from those needed to compete at a tough table.

But for starters the cards are the same and the rules of the game is the same regardless of the limit. What is different is the number of players involved in the pot, and the way those players think. But for now, lets assume that all players think exactly alike. Now we're left with a game where the only independent variable is the number of players in the pot. Two things happen as more players get involved in a pot. a) The likeliness of someone connecting with the flop in some way greatly increase as the number of players seeing the flop increase. b) More money goes into the pot, increasing the prize for the winner. Fact a) imply that you should rarely bluff against multiple opponents. When more then three players are involved it gets too hard for a bluff to succeed to make it worthwhile (unless other circumstances dictate that the spot is excellent for trying). Mind you that this has nothing to do with the players being bad players or calling stations or anything. It's just a simple fact that the probability of connecting to the flop increase as the number of hole cards in play increase. And this is the same whether the game is 0.5-1$ or 100-200$. Six players are six players (which is why the skills required to beat a no foldem game is by no means irrelevant at the higher limits - the multiway pots just doesn't occur as frequently as the higher limits). Fact b) yields another important insight. You should expect to win fewer but bigger pots. And I think this is where a lot of players get it wrong in a loose game. They are used to win more but smaller pots from playing tighter games, and therefore get involved in way too many pots, forgetting the object of the game is to win money - not pots. When it comes to bluffs this translates into the fact that your success rate will be much lower when bluffing at multiway pots, but it can nevertheless be profitable. With 10$ in a pot you only need to succeed 10% of the time with a 1$ river bluff to break even. This makes bluffing a completely different science.

Some time ago I was coaching a friend of mine while he played 0.5-1$ online. He played for an hour breaking even. Then I played on his account for an hour and made 25$ profit. While he never bluffed, I made three successful bluffs worth 18$!!! So it's a myth that loose games can't be bluffed. But it's a reality that your success rate should be low, which is still okay as the pot odds are way greater then in a tight game. Good bluffing opportunities don't occur that frequently in multiway pots, but given your work on collecting hand histories and analyzing what caused everybody to fold before showdown, you should be well equipped to spot a profitable bluffing situation when it occurs.

In a tight game, you have to bluff a lot more frequently at small pots, to get your fair share. But with fewer players involved your success rate is also bound to be way bigger.

Know Your Opponent And Know Yourself

Lets restate that a successful bluff renders the hole cards irrelevant. This again makes poker solely a game of the mind. All math is thrown overboard. What is left is you and your opponent. Your thought and his thoughts. What you think he think you think etc. The first thing you need to ask yourself is the level of thinking of your opponent. How do you get to know this? Well in my opinion the best way to get around it is to systematize your experiences. Especially you should make some good notes on your own play and the new insights you gain along the way. Because when you find an opponent who you read like an open book, it's usually because he thinks exactly like you did at an earlier state of your poker education.

The first question to ask yourself is: Does he think at all? Does he pay attention to your game? Does he even bother to think about what factors might explain your betting sequence? If not, don't bluff him. Just bet every hand you get for value, and let him pay you off.

If he does think, you got to find out something about how he thinks. Take a good look at what start hand he plays and how he plays his hands. Is he passive or is he aggressive. What does it take to make him fold his hand? The answers to these questions should give you some preliminary guidelines to how and how often you should try to bluff him.

One of my favorite types of opponent is the player who is not that experienced but has read a couple of books. He likes playing it by the book, and sometimes gets really pissed off when his opponents don't play like the book dictates, and beat him in the process. What this player often forgets is that I read the same books that he does. This allows me to read him like an open book at times. As he is not all that experienced a player, he's still a bit weak, and he likes to apply the newly found insights from the books (I hope that nobody gets personally offended by this, but I'm talking about myself two years ago as well), especially the slow play and the tough fold. Furthermore he doesn't like to make expensive bluffs, and therefore don't think that others (with the exception of the maniacs) are capable hereof. This makes him the perfect target for a scare card bluff on the turn or river. Had he not been able to realize the danger presented from a scare card, or been clever enough to realize that I would consider the scare card an excellent bluffing opportunity, he would have been harder to bluff here. But Mr. I-know-poker-cause-I-read-Sklansky is your perfect opponent for this type of play.

He's also the perfect prey for reversed bluffs. What is a reversed bluff? Well a normal bluff is representing a better hand then you actually hold. A reverse bluff is representing a weaker hand then the one you actually hold. For instance most players slow play their monsters, going for a check raise on the turn. And as all the books will tell you there are good reasons for playing this way. But say you hold A7 in the big blind and flop 77Q. What do you do? In my opinion this is a perfect spot for a reversed bluff if you have several players involved. People expect you to bluff a board like this. And most players would never bet a set here. They would wait till the turn, so they automatically rule out that you can hold a seven. If someone has the remaining seven he will probably raise you on the turn, in which case you'll pop him back. Someone with a queen with a good kicker also might play back at you here. If you slow play the hand you probably wont get much action anyway, as the possibility of a set is obvious to everyone. So get a feel for the line of thinking of your opponent, and then utilize this to make him play back at you when you're strong, and fear you when you are weak. How do I get to know the line of thinking of my opponents you ask? Well if you take good notes on your own game, you will know the thinking of players at a less advanced state then yourself. You were thinking like they did some time ago!!! Actually I sometimes get the feeling of playing against myself when I get involved in this war of the minds. And believe me - poker offers no greater pleasure then the feeling of holding the steer wheel inside the head of your opponent. This feeling of absolute control is priceless.

Table Image

Now that you know your opponents, you should also know another thing about them - How they look upon you. Do they consider you loose, tight, passive, aggressive weak or calling station? Whatever their view of you is, their opinion can be exploited by choosing the right bluffing frequency. Mind you that if they consider you loose the correct bluffing frequency might be close to never as you get no respect for your bets and raises. But on the positive side, this means that they will pay your good hands off generously.

The best table image for a bluffer is probably tight aggressive. You don't want to get caught often, or be seen involved in a lot of pots. You want them to fear you, so they tend to respect your moves. A good way to ruin your table image is to bluff too frequently and in the wrong spots. If people see you bet the flop all the time they simply start to ignore your flop bets altogether. Instead you should bluff less frequently but in spots where you can represent a specific hand in a pot worth winning. Keep in mind that it takes a lot of pots picked up on the flop to add up to the prize of a single bluff success on the river. So don't overdo it, and be specific when you do it.

The Size Of The Pot

The textbooks state that it is harder to force people to lay down their hands when the pot is big then when it's small. While this obviously is the case, you should still keep in mind, that your success rate can be way lower for the bluff to be a long term winning proposition, then what is the case for small pots. Maybe it's because I am a low limit player my heart, but I much prefer to bluff in the later streets when the pot is big then on the flop where the pot is tiny. And here's why: a) People expect you to stab at loose pots on the flop, and therefore don't give you proper respect. b) If you make a stab at a lot of pots you'll ruin your table image, making it harder for you to succeed with your bluffs. c) While your success ratio might be less in big pots then in small, the prize is much bigger as well. This means that for some bluffs you only have to succeed some 10% of the time to show a profit, depending on the pot size.

In any case you should be aware of the pot odds when you bluff, or when somebody bets into you on the river and you have a good but not great hand to show down. How often should you win the proposition to make an overall profit? You will find that in large pots it is never correct to fold for a single river bet, even when you feel fairly certain you're beat. Always try stop and think when facing a tough decision. Try to figure out what can explain your opponent's actions given all the knowledge you have on him. If in doubt fold if the prize is small and call him down if the pot is so big that you only have to win it once in a zillion times to make a profit.

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