Think of a game with one Joker in the deck. The only way to win with this card in your hand will be to successfully bluff; if you showdown the Joker, you lose.

The game could be any of your choice, with special considerations for community card games like holdem and omaha, where the joker doesn't count against you unless it's one of your hidden cards. In draw poker, you'd be able to discard the Joker without penalty. Etc. All cards must be shown at showdown.

Do you ever bluff with the Joker in your hidden cards?

When would you and why?

How would this affect the rest of your strategy, if at all?

Does this even have anything to do with bluffing range construction in normal poker?

In a Holdem game, no*. Your preflop hand ranges ought to be tight enough that you'd be folding any Joker hand. An asterisk for when you see a river for free from the big blind.

In a stud game, sure, why not? Any time I've got a nonzero bluffing percentage, which should be always, I'll be bluffing some of the time when I pick up the joker on seventh street. Ditto in a draw game when you pick it up on your last draw.

This would imply that you're never bluffing with the Joker in hand on the flop or turn, no?

Any more than I'd ever be bluffing with 72o.

I think in community card games at sufficient stack depths 3b/4b bluff ranges would benefit more from A-Joker and K-Joker type hands due to card removal and having 0 equity.

Having the Joker on board in community card games will certainly effect ranges, but I would think that would tend towards value heavy ranges. It would certainly effect my checking range quite a bit.

In all games I think you'd run into the issue of having to bluff what would have been the best hand at showdown had you not drawn or otherwise had the Joker in your hand. I think that really only affects what your bluffing range looks like not necessarily your ratio.

I'm not sure betting the Joker in the draw/stud games is a good idea, since it does not remove cards that weaken our opponent's range or ranges, other than the example I gave above where you most likely had the best hand.

I don't think it's relevant to discussing bluffing ranges, but interesting.

Edit: Edited the first paragraph for clarity.

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To make the joker playable, you'd probably need to do something similar to putting the 2-7 on, i.e. win an ante from each player when you can show it as a bluff. Otherwise, it's literally at the absolute bottom of your range in equity and you could always find better bluffs, either with more equity or blockers.

Generally speaking, no.

Bluffing with the joker gives you zero chance of winning. Since you are going to fold some non-joker hands, it's better to bluff with them and have some small chance of winning a showdown.

You might construct a game so loose that you either play for value or bluff all non-joker hands, so you need the jokers for bluffs. But no standard form of poker requires that much bluffing frequency.

I'm no expert at theory but wouldn't going to showdown with the joker give you 0 chance of winning? At least with a bluff you would give your opponent the opportunity to fold.

I think in multistreet betting some strategy would include bluffing the joker after the final draw especially when you likely had an easy valuebet after the final draw but now drew the joker on the final draw. I mean you could literally go from 100% lock on the hand to 0% in a single draw. Surely betting the river in that scenario hoping for a fold would be more beneficial than giving up on the pot? Especially if your opponent was on a draw. I think the interesting thing about the joker is that you can simultaneously have a hand at the very bottom of your range AND have tge opportunity to possess many blockers to your opponents range.

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Thinking about this some more my value betting hands logic is obviously wrong. If I expected to get called on the river it would be a terrible idea to bluff the Joker.


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IF you feel you must always bluff when you have no chance of winning at the river you are probably bluffing too much. Bluffing should be used when you feel the board texture will give you enough fold equity where the chance of your opponent folding > bet/pot.

If the players in this game play rationally, they are just mucking the joker preflop.

I believe this to be true, with the exception of playing in the big blind, or when playing the bring in for stud games.

With those two exceptions in mind, I ask:

Is it then ever correct, whether playing with a loser card or not, to construct our bluffing range from the absolute bottom of our range, or should we construct our bluffing range with hands that satisfy these conditions?:

1) make better hands fold

2) maximize equity when called

If you are doing pure bluffs, e.g. on the river when your opponent's call range is known, your bluffing range consists of everything that doesn't beat your opponent's worst calling hand. If you need to bluff with X hands and your bluffing range has Y > X hands, your theoretical optimum play is to randomly bet 100X/Y % of the time with every hand in your bluffing range, from one rank below his min-call to complete stink.

This is correct, but what about on the flop or turn?

This is probably very true. I just meant that there could be scenarios were we're bluffing the Joker. But it makes sense that there are other hands that make more sense to use from our bluffing range.

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Maybe a better example comes from stud games. There are certainly situations on early streets where your average hand is far ahead of anything your opponent could hold. For instance, in heads-up Razz, the best K-showing hand (A2/K) is behind an average 8 or better, and between two players of any skill at all a K-versus-8 is an automatic bringin-complete-fold. This is unlikely to change (for wheel cards at the very least) with the addition of the joker; but in order for this to be true, the situation has to be quite lopsided.

So, say you open OTB, BB calls with top70% range, flop is AAA. Let's say your value betting range ends at K2 (if you disagree, just pick another combo... I'm thinking FL). Will the next hand you bet be QJ (most likely to maximise equity when called) or 32s (most likely to make better hands fold)?

Nice bump.

I'd cbet that board 100%, but if I wanted to make the opponent indifferent on the flop, then here's my answer to your question:

It's neither, actually because QJ wouldn't satisfy the condition of making better hands fold. I think the call/fold threshold for the big blind would be something like 87s/86s with backdoor flushdraws and JT/J9 for offsuit hands. This would lead me to build my bluffing range with hands that are slightly worse than the Jacks that I'm hoping to fold out, because it'll be the hands like T7s- with a backdoor flushdraw that can really make a number of better hands fold. So T7s with a backdoor flushdraw is my first pick in the bluffing range draft.

But like I said I cbet that board 100% with any range because it's going to be really hard on your opponent when all he can do is check and call a lot, check raising rarely, if ever, which puts him in a bad spot on the turn if he's not allowing us our immediate profit; he's gonna pay in this spot, and if he doesn't, then my bluffs benefit.

A quick check with equilab shows a reasonable 70% calling range will have to call even lighter than I previously suggested for the AAA flop unless the blind wants to allow us an immediate profit on the flop. How would you like to be in the big blinds shoes knowing that you must either fold a lot, allowing an immediate profit for the button, or start peeling 86s with a backdoor flushdraw, J8o, and at least a handful of other, even worse combos in order to make your opponent indifferent, which I don't think you can in this spot in the big blinds shoes. I'm gonna cbet 100% and either you'll fold too much or you'll pay off my good hands. Take your pick.

I had to check this wasn't from 2011 or something
Not that I have any correct answers about, but T7 seems to take a bit of both worlds. Whether the best or worst, it's up for debate.

I mean, if you assume villain will fold J8-, your bet will fold very few better hands. Also, when called, it's pretty often either dominated directly or faces 2 overs, so even hitting a pair might not do the trick (of winning the hand)... so it doesn't do very well in maximizing equity when called, either.

On a static board, you should be betting polarized (let's bend the rules of the game a bit... flop is AAAA and there's one card to come, 2 betting rounds left). I'd find it counterintuitive (not claiming it's impossible, though) if on the dryest flop of actual holdem you'd be betting top of your range, checking the next part, then do some betting, check the very bottom (I'm obv talking equity here, as EV is still beyond our capability). AAA is still a special case where the equity of the hand pretty much directly corresponds to its showdown value, unlike the good old T98s flop.

In this case, the equity is all showdown equity, as you said. This reduces holdem to a static game and thus static game rules apply.

I'd still rather bluff T7s with a backdoor flushdraw on the AAA flop though because, while the board is very dry, a full house with the turned 7 or T is much stronger than the full house turned with a 3 or 2, and a backdoor flush will win often in this spot.

If the opponent folds the hands that I originally assumed, then that's ~9% of his range that's been successfully bluffed out by T7s. Then there's all the worse hands the opponent folds, which do count on the + side for me.

Hitting a pair of sevens against the opponent's perceived calling range gave me ~74% equity, which seems to argue against your claims of domination. That's a solid edge.

This may be an overly tight calling range that I've given the big blind, which could argue for the top of our bluffing range having less absolute showdown value, but even then 54s with a backdoor flushdraw should be chosen before 32s without a backdoor flushdraw because of the strength of the semibluff.

This is all fun but it's kind of a mood point because all of those hands will make it into my 100% cbet range because my opponent will have a tough time calling down enough to make me want to give up on my weaker bluffs on the flop.

To add a little bit for clarification:

Against someone who folds too much, it's easy to bet 100% in this spot, and I think it's correct to do so. However, as we add more calls to our opponent's range, our fold equity goes down. Since a bluffs profitability is directly connected to it's draw equity and fold equity, I think that as our opponent calls more, it should be intuitive that we give up on the weaker bluffs first, because these have the lowest draw equity, which when combined with the low fold equity, result in the checking of these weak semibluffs. If the opponent is calling too much for our weaker semibluffs to be profitable, then our weaker semibluffs will fail where our stronger semibluffs will profit thanks to the combined draw equity and fold equity.

I agree. I think that if betting the joker is profitable, then any two cards will be a profitable bluff.

I don't know wtf I was rambling about domination... there's trips on board already, so our kicker problems are pretty small.

They also have the lowest showdown equity, should the hand check down. Your T7 or QJ can still win unimproved, while 32 can't. Not sure intuition cuts it as proof here.