Texas Holdem Bluff Strategy

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Basic Strategy:Tips : Position : Starting Hands : Bluffing : Betting : Money Management

Every poker player loves to bluff. There really is nothing quite as thrilling as pushing your opponent off a hand that they should have won with a well-timed bluff.

Unfortunately, the bluff is a move that is all to often overused and abused by beginner players, which in turn costs them a lot of money. Use this bluffing strategy to help you master the art of bluffing in Texas Hold'em.

  • Most of us don’t like to risk huge amounts of money on a bluff, at least, not until we train ourselves to. True, there are some of us who appear to have the “gambling gene” and love to risk money on a bluff, but for many of us, triple barrel bluffing is not a tool we use frequently, if ever.
  • It’s important to understand the value of a bluff before making the call. One of the concepts that is popular in Texas Hold’em is bluffing. This is an essential part of a game in which chance can be taken advantage of to make your opponents’ think your hand is way better than it actually is.
  • Continuing a 10-part series of 'hold'em tips' for new players, we discuss 'bluff catching' & what criteria need to be present in order to call down bluffs.

Why should you bluff in poker?

Texas

It's probably not like you need another reason to try and pull off a bluff as a newer player to the game, but I'm going to give you one anyway.

Bluffing allows you to take down pots that you would not normally have won, whilst adding some sort of 'unpredictability' factor into your play. Therefore if your opponents find it difficult to tell whether you are weak or strong in a hand, it is going to help you win money in the long run.

The less your opponents know about your game in Texas Hold'em, the better.

Bluffing Strategy: Texas Hold’em Poker Ahh, bluffing in no-limit Texas hold’emthe most incorrectly used and down-right abused facet of most players’ poker game. We’re sorry if we’ve offended you 15 words into this guide, but we’re here to speak the truth.

How to pull off a successful bluff in poker.

If I could tell you how to successfully bluff every time in poker through this one short article, then I would be the most sought-after guy in the world of poker. Having the ability to spot prime opportunities to bluff comes from experience at the table, rather than from a set of specific rules that you might read somewhere. However, this does not mean that I can't give you the groundwork for a good bluffing game...

To pull of a successful bluff, your play needs to fill two criteria:

  1. Your last action in the hand should have been strong.
  2. Your opponent's last action in the hand should have been weak.

In a way, this basically says that the story of the hand needs to line up correctly, otherwise your bluff will fall apart. If your opponent has been playing weakly and you have been playing strongly, it makes perfect sense to suggest that a further strong play (i.e. a bluff) is likely to win the pot.

Conversely, it is almost suicidal to attempt to bluff an opponent off their hand when they have been playing strongly and you have been playing weakly, because it simply does not line up with the way the rest of the hand has been played. The more believable your bluff is, the greater the chance it has of working.

Having position over your opponent increases the likelihood of your bluff being successful, as you will be able to see whether or not they are weak (by checking) before you decide whether or not to bluff.

How often should you bluff?

Let me start off by saying that you do not need to bluff nearly as much as you might think. Bluffing is a great weapon, but only if it is used at the right time and in the right situations. If you use it too often, your bluffs are going to lose a lot of credibility and you will end up getting caught out and losing chips.

As with a number of other plays in poker, you want the bluffing opportunity to come looking for you, rather than going all out to look for the times you can bluff. The chances are that if you are forcing out a bluff, it's going to be an unprofitable play. Just because you are playing poker, it does not mean that you are obliged to bluff at some point during the session, so keep focused.

When should you bluff?

You should bluff when you are confident that your opponent will fold. A bit of a vague answer I know, but it really is the simple and most effective answer to the question. However, I will give you a few more bluffing tips to help you along.

It is better to bluff at smaller pots than it is at larger ones.

Bluffing at smaller pots is a lot less risky, and therefore is not so detrimental when things do not work out how you planned. This is an especially good tip if you are a new player, as it allows you to get to grips with bluffing without putting too much of your money at risk.

Bluffing on the flop can be very effective.

About two thirds of the the time your opponent is going to completely miss the flop. On top of this, even if they do hit the flop a little, the chances are that they are going to fold if they come up against too much resistance. It is a lot easier to fold and save money rather than risking a lot with a mediocre hand. So if you were the raiser before the flop, a continuation bet can prove to be a very effective play

Avoid bluffing the river.

This is not to say that bluffing on the river is always wrong, but a lot of the time a river bluff is a poorly executed play. Players will usually bluff on the river in a last desperate attempt to win the hand, regardless of how they have played up to that point.

This makes the river bluff look completely out of place, and is very easy to spot if you are an experienced player. So as a general rule of thumb, avoid bluffing on the river unless you are completely sure about what you are doing.

Randomly bluffing on the river is one of the biggest leaks in an amateur player's game.

Poker bluffing strategy overview.

As much as you might love to bluff, you have to learn to put a leash on your bluffing tendencies to keep them under control. It's not easy to snap out of the bluffing lifestyle, but if you want to become a winning poker player, it is something that you are going to have to suck up and get on with.

The next time you have the burning urge to bluff, close your eyes and click fold, then see what happens. It won't hurt as much as you think, and you will have probably saved yourself a nice bit of money. Bluffing can work incredibly well in the right situations, but there really is no need to focus your game around this play. Bluffing is a tool, not a game plan.

Go back to the sublime Texas Hold'em guide.

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Comments


Most of us don’t like to risk huge amounts of money on a bluff, at least, not until we train ourselves to. True, there are some of us who appear to have the “gambling gene” and love to risk money on a bluff, but for many of us, triple barrel bluffing is not a tool we use frequently, if ever.
BluffThis is not to say it can’t be a strong tool,Texas Holdem Bluff Strategyin fact it can be very powerful. Even holdings as strong as top-pair-top-kicker can give us a really hard time when facing a 3-barrel from an average unknown. The truth is, most players are simply never bluffing like this, and usually not value-betting worse than our holding either.
Dealing with a 3-barrel is a topic for another day – right now we are interested in how we can reverse the scenario and be the one putting pressure on our opponents.

Bluffing is Correct

Before we go into any specifics, it’s useful to know that triple barrel bluffing is a theoretically correct part of poker strategy.
How frequently we should bluff is usually related to the bet-sizing we use. In general the larger we bet on the river, the more frequently it is correct to bluff. It’s very simple to calculate theoretical value:bluff ratio by simply looking at the pot-odds our opponent is getting on the river.
So assuming we bet pot-size on the river our opponent will be getting 2:1 or 33% on a call. He needs to be good 33% of the time, so we should be bluffing about 33%. Assuming we bluff less than this he is theoretically able to fold all of his bluff-catchers, while if we bluff more than this he can call all his bluffcatchers. Betting exactly 33%, keeps him indifferent to calling or folding.
The majority of opponents will be bluffing more like 5-10% when they fire the third barrel. This means we can exploit them by making big laydowns and giving them huge credit when they triple.

5 Pointers for Triple Barrel Bluffs


So how do we know when it’s a good situation to fire that third barrel? There are 5 things we should be looking out for.

1. Opponent folds too much to River Cbets

Admittedly we are not going to have the luxury of having a big sample size of hands on river situations for the most part. In some cases we will pick up enough of a sample to recognize that our opponent is folding too much on the river. Assuming we make a 2/3rds pot sized bet, if our opponent is folding over 40% of the time, we are actually generating automatic profit. By the time our opponent is folding over 60% to river cbets we should typically be firing any air holding we reach the river with.

Texas Holdem Bluffing Strategy

2. No Showdown Value

The best hands for river bluffs are those which have zero shot of ever winning at showdown. If a hand has even a small chance of winning at showdown then the EV of checking will be above zero. This means that our bluff doesn’t just need to be profitable in order to be correct. The EV of our bluff needs to be higher than the EV of checking in order for it to be the best choice.The more showdown value we have, the higher the EV of a check, and the less likely our holding is to be a consideration for a 3-barrel bluff.
Depending on our opponent, even some relatively strong hands may have a higher expectation as a bluff than a check. This is why we occasionally see professional players turning hands as strong as top pair into a bluff. From an exploitative point of view we can bluff anything so long as we feel the EV of bluffing is higher than that of checking.
From a theoretical point of view though, it would be incorrect to bluff with everything, because then we’d be bluffing the river too frequently, which is something an adept opponent might be able to exploit. So seeing as we can’t fire every time as a bluff when following a balanced strategy, it makes sense to check the hands that have the highest expectation as checks, and then bluff the hands that have a low or zero expectation as checks.

3. Blockers

In many cases blockers are over-rated. Many situations are simply not close enough that the blockers actually make a difference. The stronger our opponent is the more relevant this particular facet of our 3-barrel bluffing strategy becomes.

Texas Holdem Bluff Strategy Game

The idea is that we can learn a little about the potential fold-equity we have by considering our own holdings. Imagine we are triple barrel bluffing on a board texture where a heart draw completed on the river. It’s usually beneficial if we hold something like the Ace of Hearts. Naturally when we bluff on a texture where a flush completes we are a little concerned our opponent is going to snap call and turn over the flush. By holding one of those flush cards ourselves, especially the Ace, we reduce the likelihood our opponent has that flush.Texas holdem bluff strategy game We can say that we have “good blockers” and expect to generate more fold equity as a result.
It works in the opposite way too. If we imagine a board runout where a heart flush-draw was possible, but the turn and river bricked off – do we prefer to hold a heart in our hand or not? In this case we prefer not to hold the heart. It means our opponent will have a larger amount of busted heart draws in his range which he can be folding the river with.

4. Capped Range

3barreling as a bluff is always more profitable when we can infer that our opponent might be capped. By “capped” we mean that there is a limit to how strong he can be as a result of the line he has taken. For example our opponent decides to call us down on a...
T9542 texture.
He is usually capped. This is because if he has any holding 2pair or stronger he is likely to raise one of our cbets. It’s dangerous for him to give us free cards on such a drawy runout assuming he is holding a monster. As such he is usually capped to Tx holdings (i.e Tx is his strongest hand), and his range also contains a number of busted straight and flush draws. Bluffing will often be extra profitable in this scenario.

5. Barrel the Turn with Equity

Bluffing the river with the right range can be a delicate balance. If we get to the river with a bad range in the first place: there will often be nothing we can do to fully rectify the situation.
It’s important that we are selective about the type of hands we semi-bluff the turn with.
If we bluff the turn too frequently, our river range will be too wide and we will be forced to bluff too frequently (or check/fold a bunch of weak holdings).
If we never bluff the turn and only value-bet, our river range will be far too strong, and a good opponent will simply be able to fold any mid-strength holding every single time we 3-barrel.

Putting it Together

The best recommendation is to simply put ourselves in a position where we try out some three-barrel bluffs. It can be daunting at first, but it shouldn’t be a big deal to us if we end up losing money, so long as we learn something in the process. This is essentially one of the ways poker players “pay” for their education. They make mistakes which cost them money, but then learn from these mistakes, resulting in a stronger strategy which makes back the lost money and more.
Another tactic we can use when trying out a new line for the first time, is to simply take that line for value, so we feel the pressure a little less. Sometimes when we three barrel for value we don’t really take note of the times we get folds. Our goal when scouting the possibility of improving of our 3-barrel bluff game is to watch our opponents intently, even when we are firing 3-barrels for value. We should see how many folds we get, in which situations and against which opponents!
Thank you for reading and let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

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