One thing a lot of people struggle with when they first start developing their poker game is picking the right opportunities to bluff. They tend to make somewhat haphazard decisions when it comes to bluffing – they either make the decision on a particular street that they think their opponent doesn’t have a strong hand and will fold to a bluff, or they decide at the beginning of the hand that they’re going to bluff no matter what. This, of course, is a simplistic and mostly unprofitable approach to bluffing.
The correct approach, of course, is to be more measured in how we choose which bluffing opportunities to take, and which to ignore. But that leads to difficult decisions, where we might be forced to decide between two ambiguous options, or where we believe bluffing might be slightly profitable but we’re not quite sure. In these instances, we need to have some kind of guidelines in place for how often we should be bluffing, and which hands we should do it with. It’s not enough to simply decide whether or not we should bluff with a specific hand at a specific time – we have to think more carefully about our entire range.
Sizing first, followed by ranges, followed by frequencies
One of the biggest mistakes people make is threefold. First, they turn the decision into a binary one by making it a case of ‘to bluff or not to bluff’, ignoring the long-term aspects of the game and failing to consider a moderated approach such as ‘bluff this hand 50% of the time’; second, they take this 100% bluffing frequency and apply it to a range of hands they think are appropriate; and finally, they decide on a betsizing. This approach is more or less entirely backwards.
Choosing a betsizing based on the makeup of our current range at a given point should be the first port of call. The reason is that our betsizing has an inherent impact on how frequently we can bluff – if we only bet very small, it’s unlikely our opponent will fold as often, and if we bet really big, they’ll fold more frequently. Which one of those two options we prefer should be determined by the other two factors – our betting range itself, and the frequency with which we bet each hand in that range. The more we want to bluff (e.g. bluffing all of our weak hands with 100% frequency), the bigger we may need to bet, in order to avoid giving our opponent a very profitable call; if our betting range includes very few bluffs (e.g. bluffing with a few select hands 100% of the time, or bluffing each of our weak hands a small fraction of the time), we may want to bet smaller. Either way, we need to know our sizing before we know how often to bluff, and with which hands.
When to stay balanced, and when to exploit
A concern that comes up for people once they arrive at a more complex understanding of postflop concepts is an awareness of the balance in their own ranges, and the ranges of their opponents. Players start to become conscious of the fact that there are certain spots in which it would be nonsensical to adopt a strategy of frequent bluffing, since their ranges simply don’t include enough value hands to justify it.
However, it’s one thing to know what balance is, and another to know when it’s important. In general, the main guideline is that the degree to which balance is important is directly proportional to our opponent’s skill level. The more skilled our opponent, the more likely it is that imbalances in our ranges will be exposed, while against weak opponents we will actually be able to gain from imbalances in our ranges, in exploiting our opponents’ own imbalances.
Equity, showdown value and blockers
Once we know our betsizing and our frequencies, and we decide whether balance is important in a particular situation, we then have to consider the three crucial factors that dictate which hands are best for bluffing: our equity, our showdown value, and our blocker value. Let’s look at each one individually.
Equity
Obviously, on the flop or the turn when there are future cards to come, we need to consider the amount of equity our hand has versus our opponent’s potential continuing range. Hands with better equity are better hands to bluff with, naturally, since they give us a higher chance of winning the hand at showdown once we get called. However, one thing people often ignore is the extent to which a weak hand with a lot of potential to improve can sometimes have more equity than a stronger hand which is tough to play, so we should always lean towards bluffing with a draw of some kind rather than turning a weak pair into a bluff unnecessarily.
Showdown value
This is where the next factor comes in. If we bluff with hands that are actually somewhere in the middle of our range (such as hands like middle-to-weak pairs that could win at showdown, or Ace high on a blank flop), then we risk having a betting range that is overly weak – we don’t have enough showdown-value hands to fill up our checking range, so every time we check, we have nothing of any value. Alternatively, we just bet everything, and then we’re betting so frequently we can’t possibly continue often enough versus a check-raise, so that’s not good either. We need to strike a balance between betting with a range of value hands and high-equity bluffs, and checking with showdown value, some traps, and some give-ups.
Blockers
Blockers are a crucial factor in determining the EV of a certain bluff, particularly on the river. Let’s say we know we should be bluffing on the river with a reasonable frequency, but we don’t know which hands we should bet, since there are no further cards to come. In this case, the highest-EV hands to bet are going to be the hands which contain blockers to our opponent’s most frequent calling or raising hands – for example, if one card in our hand is a card that would act as a kicker for some of our opponent’s strongest top-pairs (e.g. having a Queen on a King-high board), then that has the effect of reducing the frequency with which we get called, increasing our EV. This concept is crucial in many contexts and it warrants further explanation, so you can expect to see a full article on the subject here in future.
The difference between equity and EV
One final thing to remember is that many people tend to get very caught up thinking purely in terms of equity. They assume that their goal should be for their betting range to have the most equity versus their opponent’s, but if this were true, then we could simply bet only our nut hands and have 80%+ every time, not caring that our checking range might have less than 20%.
In reality, the goal is for each of our ranges to have the highest possible EV, and that means we have to choose a betting range that both gets value from our opponent and gives us maximum playability on future streets, as well as a checking range that preserves showdown value without leaving us especially vulnerable to pressure on those same future streets. This is a tricky balance to strike, but by keeping all factors in mind, we can come a little closer to picking our bluffing ranges effectively.