Hi guys,

Yesterday I have employed a little strategy to change images which I have found it works pretty well at least on my casino by appealing to rec players short term memory.

Setting:

Local casino in Athens, Greece. Game is NL 1/2 which is the second biggest game at the casino. Usually there is one table of 2/5 where there is a pissing contest by a few competent players at the casino. I have observed the game many times and mostly the players there exchange their money every night until a fish shows up. There are also 5-6 tables of 1/2 where the game is soft. Thats where I play most of the times.


Table lineup: I arrived at 6:30 AM and sat on a new table.
Seat 1: Guy on his 50s buys for 60
Seat 2: Me, I buy in for 300. I am on my mid 30s perceived as TAG in general.
Seat 3: Rec regular buys for 350
Seat 4: Old man coffee buy for 200
Seat 5: middle aged gambler buys for 300
Seat 6: Old man coffee buys for 200
Seat 7: Rec reg player buys for a 400. He is around 45 with glasses and hoody.Its actually very funny to watch him.
Seat 8: Competent reg buys for 300
Seat 9, 10 Rec fish

Since most of the players dont know me I want to be perceived as bluffer at the beggining.
A few hands into the session I am on the button and get for limps in front of me including seat 1. I raise it to 15 with K6h as a bluff. Everybody folds except seat 1. Flop comes A 6 5 rainbow with the Ah. Seat 1 leads for 9 and I instantly move all in with the intention to make him fold an ace (0% probability) and show the bluff, suckout and show or lose and show. Off course he makes the call with A7 I lose and show the hand.
I got a few remarks on the table on how bluffy I am etc etc.

So from now I go back to my normal game of playing value hands and bet for value.

A few hands later I am getting dealt TT on the hijack. Seat 7 makes it 4, 2 more call and I make it 20. Seat 3 on the CO cold calls instantly. seat 7 calls from UTG.
Pot is 71, Flop comes T 4 2 rainbow
Is checked to me and I bet 50. CO calls and UTG folds.
Turn is 7 that completes rainbow and I bet 85 leaving around 140 behind to shove on the river. CO tanks and calls. Pot is now 341. River is a K and I shove and get an instant call by villain. I table my set to win the pot. Later I overheard him saying to a friend of his that he called down with AK.

From that moment on my perceived image changed completely. For a good two hours 90% of my CBs were succesful.

Then I double barreled seat 3 on a Js 3s 3h Tc with 69s and he open folded AJo and I showed the semi bluff.
Again my perceived image changed to a bluffer again and got called down with second pair a few times on small pots.
Until I tabled another set of deuces that got called by top pair on a J high board

Do you find any merit in this or its all in my head? :-)

PS. There is another hand on this session which I have played badly I think (but won) which I am going to post it on another thread.

Essentially you are willing to piss away 2 hrs of hard work by getting it in bad vs a short stack just so you can create a loose table image? This is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever read. It's really flawed from top to bottom. Showing bluffs actually makes it more difficult to play, not easier. Players at this level don't like to fold regardless of your image.

Worse thread I have read in awhile. Please, if your beginner at poker look away. Rest of us can laugh as you just dumped 150BB.

Totally unnecessary (at these stakes) to bluff for table image purposes.

All you need to do to obtain an 'active' image is to make thin value bets, and take stabs at pots that seem to have missed your opponents.

Triple barrel bluffing is basically never a good idea at these stakes, unless you have a soul read on someone.

You're just spewing money away unnecessarily. Perhaps in the 2nd hand you may not get those preflop calls to build the pot but it is not optimal.

The K6 hand is terrible. You bluffed even though your opinion was he wouldn't fold an ace? Why not at least bluff in a situation that gives you a higher chance of success?

Another problem is you say you succeeded in gaining a bluffy image, but it didn't even last for very long. So why spew away 60 for an image that won't last?

Wait a second. Are you saying you benefitted from having a tight image? Then why waste 60 on the K6 hand trying to get a bluffy image?

It sounds like you're saying you can beat these guys with a bluffy image and with a tight image. Why bother trying to change your image then?

I sometimes do things like put a short stack of 40-50 all in with a straight flush draw, with some money in pot where I think they have a good value hand. Flipping a small amount where there's some money like 11-12$ in the pot, and have some small fold equity(even if it's 5%) can generate a little bit of action image.

But I would never raise k6 and bluff like that.

Your line only works against weak players. Similar line i prefer is
Overbet with value hands like middle pair or TPBK when scare card comes on the river. If called u have some showdown value. If villain folds, show your value bluff. When you have hidden nuts, overbet again but dont show. You might lose value in that spot when villain folds. But if any player suspects you to be making plays, you will get shoved way lighter when you make same overbet in future hands with strong hands.
And remember not to bluff stacks btw 30bb-75bb. If you wanna bluff, grow some balls and attack deep stacks.

If called you have no showdown value.



Op- as others have said it is completely unnecessary to go out of your way to create an image. Especially when it's costing you money. You would have gotten called down anyway. It has been debated endlessly, and I will hold to my very strong opinion that showing your hand is never a good idea (except at showdown with the best of it).

Yes, there is merit to this. It's very high variance, and risky. The first time I saw something like this was at the Continental in Las Vegas, circa 1989. This game was 1/3 LHE. Player brings a full rack of whites to the table (a huge buy for this level). He proceeds to make very wild, bluffy plays.

I noticed he did this from no position earlier than the CO; otherwise, he'd just fold or play a legit hand. I used the time to collect as many of those loose chips as I could. Once his rack was empty, he bought in for another, and I knew what was coming next. He didn't surprise me when his game got very solid. If he was going to win any more chips off me, well, he was going to have to beat a real hand. No one else noticed, they kept on calling with marginal and trashy hands only to be looking at TPTK or better. When the game broke, he walked with three full racks and stacks.

Granted, that was taking a very big chance. It's not easy winning $200+ when all you can bet is $3.00 a crack, but he did it. If you want to embrace the variance, go for it. Do understand that this really increases your RoR, and be prepared for the worst.

It's not something I'd recommend. I don't like showing bluffs as I think there's as much to be made from robbing nut scared rabbits repeatedly and for much less RoR. You won't win so many big pots, but I let those take care of themselves. Little pots are far more common than hoggers that take you five minutes to organize and stack up. You can do almost as well, not by reckless bluffing, but by opening up your value range. Get in those thin value bets. Your typical rec-fish doesn't understand betting for value, and will actually think your thin value bets are bluffy when they really aren't.

Read the title and raising K6 preflop as a bluff and stopped. Why are you deciding preflop to bluff?

Its really just pissing away money for the sake of pissing away money against these players. Table image is largely irrelevant at 1/2 games simply because you are going to be making enough money off of 1/2 players bad fundamental errors that you never need to give yourself a table image.