One thing that Ed Miller says is how most 1/2 and 2/5 players do not bluff enough. In terms of a GTO strategy, this would be correct. However, if most players are also calling too much, then how often is bluffing really profitable?

It seems to me like most of our money would then be made from good value bets and not paying people off, since we know they do not bluff enough.

In general, I do not think players pay attention enough for a GTO strategy to be optimal. Sure there are reg grinders at the 2/5 level and in with these players maybe we need to be more balanced and deceptive.

But in general, I do not think sophisticated bluffs make much sense. We would have to really know we have adequate fold equity and even then its just a guess. I think an abc style probably still wins 90% of the money and knowing when to bluff properly, mix is deception, might add another 10%.

Its even hard to say how often cbetting is successful since I have seen players call cbets with A high, bottom pair, etc. I think we really have to think about the player type and the board textures and even then its a guess.

But on a deeper level, Miller says that a 1/2 or 2/5 player might may a small money bluff for $25 or $50 they will not make a big money bluff for all their chips. But my question would be: why would they have too?

With so many other good spots to get value, why risk 100bb on a pure bluff? Especially since players call too much and especially since there are spots where are are more sure.

Frankly, this advice has messed me up. Maybe I'm just horrible at picking my spots but when they work I wonder if it was really a good spot or if I just got lucky because they guy was on scared money or had the only hand he could not call with. It's like I am either a genius or idiot.

I know solid winning players who pretty much never bluff at 2/5. Would their win rate increase if they used properly timed bluffs? Yes I am sure and they would also get paid off more, etc. But in general, I just don't see how running bluff is profitable. Players just don't play attention enough to make balancing ranges important even against regs. They are still mostly rec players who play for fun, not to play leveling wars.

I would like to hear from others regarding this topic and how they feel about this advice.

I think first you have to define what a bluff is

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Getting a better hand to fold???

MamaRolex wrote a good post in another thread about the elements of a good bluff. I don't agree with all of it, but I do agree that you have to tell a good story that the villain can understand that causes him to decide it isn't worth chasing you down.

At low stakes, the story often has to be pretty basic. Flush draws that hit is one example of a very simple story that almost everyone understands. You call pf, then call a bet on the flop with two cards of the same suit. On the turn, the third card of that suit appears. You make a big bet. Even the dimmest player can see you are saying you hit the flush. Trying to convince someone you really did 3bet with 65s and you caught the straight is going to be hard to pull off. Just because 65s is in your 3bet range doesn't mean your villains are going to believe it.

Now you can add things in your favor. If you noticed that he emptied his wallet on the last rebuy, his buddies have been by to see what is going on and it is around 9 pm, he's not going to call because he doesn't want to sit around for the next 4 hours waiting for them to finish up. Your bluff has an excellent chance of succeeding. On the other hand, if drinks stopped coming 30 minutes ago, his buddies are telling him they are ready to leave and he's up big (or he's doubling up or leaving with nothing), your bluff is going to have a harder time of succeeding.

In the end, I think Miller is right. Even Harrington wrote in HOH that he made one bluff every 1.5 hours. That's only about 1 per 35 to 45 hands. Most low stakes players today don't bluff big nearly that often.

While I'm sure he's not advocating becoming a maniac, I can think of at least three categories of possible bluff targets:

Scared Money
Rookies trying to play well
Other Good Players

With the second category, I can tell you that when I first started reading poker literature, I seemed to take more pride in making the hero lay down than anything else. I saw too many shadows behind trees.

With the latter category it necessarily involves having a plausible story to sell.

In today's games if you are not willing to bluff when it is reasonably possible that your opponent doesn't have a hand he is willing to call with, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. If you make it a habit, you might shift to a losing player in the tighter games in LV.

What I can tell you is this:
Bluffing has got to be situational and has to be planned in advance with a credible story. Also when you play 76s or AXs or any other speculative hand you make sure that you steal some pots and not just fold every time you miss. If playing 76s speculative, missing and folding every time you gonna be -EV for that hand. we don't make enough hands and enough money to show profit by playing fit or fold. So, some smart bluffing has got to be done in the form of stealing small pots here and there in order to avoid getting into the red.

How could you possibly know this?

I can think of several scenarios where playing fit/fold can be +EV

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Title "Ed Miller's Advice" but pretty sure you didn't post his "advice" rather a correct observation of his.

not with 76s - that's his point

Yeah I'm pretty sure under certain conditions 67s played fit/fold can be profitable

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As a caveat: I'm assuming strong draws fall Into the fit category

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A lot of players play looser for smaller bets than they do for bigger bets. These players can easily be bluffed, especially after the flop. Also, and this is a point Ed has made, loose players will have weaker ranges after the flop.


First, I see this type of reasoning all the time on here and it's a clear leak. Passing up good profitable spots because there are other, more profitable spots costs you money. Why not take advantage of both situations?

Second, if players are calling c-bets with ace high and bottom pair, then what type of ranges do you think they have on the turn and river? Are they really going to call a big river bet with ace high?

Third, where are you playing? Seems like you must be playing in really loose games.

I'm pretty sure he isn't talking about balancing ranges when he talks about bluffing at 1-2 and 2-5. When he recommends bluffing in certain spots he does it because he expects his opponents to fold much of the time. And he expects them to fold a lot to bigger bets.

Most importantly at all, Ed is giving this type of advice for games that aren't super loose. He is talking about how to play in games against opponents who will fold. If your opponents are super loose then he recommends betting for value a lot.

In general if you play GTO you will win, even in the small stakes games. However, your win rate won't be very big and you can do much better. GTO is great against savvy opponents who are thinking players and understand the game at a fairly high level. That's not most of the low stakes players. Your best bet there is to exploit their mistakes. If they fold too much, bluff more. If they call too much (most common) take them to value town.

Any scenario that you may think about a fit and fold +EV strategy is totally destroyed if villain 2bets or 3bets heavy against you. You cannot possibly play fit/fold by calling 2/3bet going to the flop. Folding on the flop or going to the river is suicidal, Also suicidal is constantly being forced to play in 2/3bet pots unless you figure a way to get AA,KK and AK.

76 or 44 has +EV in a 3bet pot ONLY if you can take down big stacks and the 3bet is less then 13% of effective. As long the 3bet is at that level and you call it, you will run out of stack very very soon. The bigger the 3bet is the less hands you got to play and the sooner you run out of stack if your strategy is fit/fold. This goes for most the speculative hands. That's why 3bet in position is so powerful because forces villains to either fold preflop of grinds out stacks.

Fit or fold is not the way to play, but the inventors of that concept had something hidden in their message that most players don't see through the smokescreen. I see every day villains playing fit/fold and all run out of money unless one gets lucky on the flop else stack gets decimated in no time.

Ahahahahahahahaha


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I'd be less sure about this. I know you can figure it out, so don't answer. How frequently will 76s make 2 pair or better on the flop? If you don't immediately know the answer, you probably don't know how profitable you can be playing 76s fit or fold.

Hint: If you do know the answer, you'd know you can't play 76s profitably fit or fold in a 100BB buyin game.

Two points:

1) Ed Miller's observation that 1/2 and 2/5 players don't bluff enough doesn't mean you should necessarily bluff more, merely that there are opportunities to exploit our non-bluffy opponents. Here's a clue, the exploit involves folding.

2) Ed Miller's observation that players at 1/2 and 2/5 have wide and weak ranges in various different spots tells us how we can find profitable bluffing opportunities even against loose opponents. E.g like someone says above, if players are floating flop cbet very wide then you know a turn bluff can be potentially profitable.


Our comrade Mamarolex is absolutely spot on and honestly I haven't read such good advice since I finished reading everything Ed Miller has written on poker. Ed and Mamarolex are both strongly opposed to fit or fold for the same very good reasons.

Personally I play quite fit or fold at the moment because I'm on a short roll and buying in short. It means I play ludicrously tight because I know fit or fold won't work without very strong ranges. I only get away with it because my game is so loose and the players so bad. Soft loose games can flatter your fit or fold strategy and convince you that you are a skilfull player. Just try playing online at any reasonable stakes and you will see what I mean.

Bluffing at 1/2 and 2/5 isn't about winning a bulk of our WR from bluffs. It's how you make a 5bb WR change into a 7bb WR. Value bets are going to make a large chunk of your WR, but there are many times we can steal pots that add up to significant amounts of BBs

Ed Miller also wrote an entire book about "playing the player", meaning that everything is situational.

If you're up against a station, don't bluff

If you're up against a overly tight player, bluff liberally

There is no 1 strategy to rule them all.

When I sit down at any table, my main goal for the 1st hour or so is to start figuring out a specific strategy to beat every single person at the table.

The players that are stations, I'm trying to figure out their calling thresholds for their TPNK/MP/BP hands and I'm going to pound hem when I make TPTK/TPMK type hands

The players that overly fold good hands (and they'll show how tight they are because God forbid they lay down a good made hand without showing the table how "smart" they are), I'm pushing them off scary boards

The pseudo grinder with the Beats on and sunglasses playing 1/2 that read bet/folding is great, I'm raising every flop that doesn't hit his range that he cbets on when I have crap

Etc, etc, etc

If you're not bluffing, you're not a winning player, imho.

Not bluffing means you try to hit flops, wait for the nuts to stack fish, etc.

Fit of fold has a -EV of approx. 33%. So you lose on average 2/3rds of the time you play fit or fold.

The only hands fit or fold is possibly profitable in is set mines when you have at least 20-1 stack odds, AND he has a good chance of putting it in. Low to med SC's are the most over rated and over played hands in the world imo. So if you are not bluffing, that equates to playing fit or fold, or raising pre and folding when you don't hit.

Good winning players take initiative in just about every hand he plays - he is the guy you need to deal with (either he raises or 3bets pre) and he is also a very good hand reader. He doesn't just blindly bluff if he misses flops, or cbets with air without a plan for the rest of the hand. He continues to either bet (bluff) or sometimes he gives up depending on the number of players, their hand rages, fop texture and many other variables. But he never goes to the casino only to hope and pray he's gonna "run good". He knows he's not going to flop any hands for the most part. So the answer is yes a good player must bluff to be a winning player.

you are correct about that, people call a cbet light knowing the cbet is the most FOS bet in poker. My grandmother even knows when someone cbets, they probably missed the flop with AK.

If you're throwing out one cbet hoping and praying everyone folds, just save the bet and check/fold. You need to have a plan for three streets, NEVER one cbet alone.

this is a great post. Very reminiscent of Bobby Hoff in his interview at the end of Harrington on Cash Games, "As long as the cards stay ice cold, I'll do just fine."

I played for years thinking that plan A was to make a hand and if I didn't I would go to plan B and try to get them to fold. Ed Miller taught me that plan A is to make them fold, surrendering even minimal equity, and plan B is winning money when value hands collide. It changed my game for the better, and makes me a much smaller fish in tighter LV games. All you need is a few fit or fold players who call a little too much, and position.

^^^^^^
This some players are easy to bluff some are unbluffable no matter what you do, hard part is working out who is who

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Another way to think of it is:

If you never bluff why should anyone ever call without a hand that beats you?

Not bluffing leaves money on the table in profitable bluffing spots AND impedes your ability to extract value when you have it.

Is that his tourney book, cuz I can't say I recall that in his cash book (HOC). I also highly doubt that we encounter a credible story that often; making a credible looking bluff that makes sense every 1.5 hours seems to be forcing things, I'd think it would be closer to encountering a good spot once a session?

GcluelessbluffingnoobG