How often do you bluff on a board...that most likely didn't hit your opponent. Where you are most likely behind and don't have that many outs.


For example....opponent is a typical tag(26/18/2.3/39), open Raises from Co,(he steals 25% of the time from Co). You have j9s in BB and call. Flop and turn comes 2648 rainbow. There is a 72% chance that your opponent has nothing on this board. He continuation bets 96% flop and 75% turn. If you are going to C/r is best to do it on the flop or turn? Do you just give up if reraised?

Is this a play that you would make often or just do every once in awhile?

Also, let's say you C/r flop and a K comes on the turn, do you bet again? If he calls turn and blank falls on the river, do you just give up?

If I'm playing well the answer will be 100% of the time.
Edit: Unless he's going to call me down with a lot of hands that didn't hit the board.

The bold part answers your question. His range is weaker on the flop. Attack him when he's at his weakest. (You could argue that it's not that simple. Even though the villain's range is tighter on the turn we are compensated by that that he's putting more money in the pot allowing us to win larger pots than the flop check/raise strategy. Of course we also have to account for the money we are risking. We're also investing more in the turn/check raise strategy and to keep the analysis simple I will assume this "negative" roughly cancels out the "positive" of taking down a larger pot.) Cliff notes: Check/raise flop.

Warning. You are about to be exposed to a major cop-out response: You should execute this play whenever it is correct to do so. The frequency of this play is largely dependent on your opponent's range and how tenacious he is. For example, If you know this guy is not folding King high then you should probably leave him alone when you have no pair no draw.

If it is correct to check/raise the flop on nothing, then it will generally be correct to bet the turn no matter what the card is.

This is without a doubt the toughest part of this strategy. Playing the river well. There are certain boards you should 3barrel on, and there are certain ones you shouldn't. Example: Flop comes K72. You check/raise the flop and he calls. You bet blank turn, and he calls. You should not bluff the river. He's just too likely to be showing down here.

Second example: Flop comes out 842. You check/raise. Turn is a Ten that also puts a flushdraw on the board. The river is a blank that doesn't bring the flush, say another 2. You should bluff. There's enough straight draws and FD's in the villain's range to barrel off I think.

Truthfully, I don't think 2 6 4 8 is a good board to bluff on at all. It's very drawy, and there are way too many semibluffs in your range. It makes it correct for the villain to call you down with something like k-hi.

I'd rather bluff at J73. And I do that pretty often. If you c/r the flop, you always bet the turn. Villain is never folding to flop c/r. The whole point of it is to generate fold equity on the turn when he misses.

Good post ILOVEPOKER929.

Thanks Cats and ILP....I really appreciate your responses.

Please advise your thoughts on what you do if you raise and get reraised on the flop.

If I check/raise with a hand like J9 on a Q63 board and my opponent 3bets, I usually just fold right away. It kinda sux cuz if our opponent knows how to hand read at all he'll know what just happened. He might even type "lol nice try" in the chat box. Sometimes the party's over and there's just no way to save face.

If we check/raise a low board like 632 and we have say T8, then I would call a 3bet figuring that my overs draw will be live often enough to make the call.

You have to bluff some drawy boards, otherwise you just run into the same problem you're trying to avoid in the first place: I'll know that dry boards mean you're more likely to be bluffing, whereas drawy boards I know that you only raise with pairs because you expect to be called down. In fact, I know some TAGs think this way and don't bother semi-bluffing on drawy boards. I'm not saying you should semi-bluff every time or every board, but it should be in your range against thinking opponents. I think improper semi-bluffing is generally a leak for most TAGs.

I do semibluff drawy boards in order to balance my range. I think it's a leak, though, to make pure bluffs on these boards. I can't really see any advantage in it.