If I bet the 1xpot in a Hu pot what percentage of the time should I be value getting and what percentage of the time should I be bluffing?

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don't see an edit button but i meant value betting not value getting

There really isn't any 'should' in poker, the same exact spot but with a different opponent may change expectations.

To 'simply' look at the bluffing side, you would need a 50% success (fold) rate in order to break even when betting with air or the weakest parts of your range.

The issue is on the value side of this spot. A 'pot' bet is typically considered 'large' and would generally require your opponent to have also hit their range in order to call. Now you play the game of how strong you need to be to 'absorb' your opponent calling X% of the time.

The wider you expect an opponent to call the less you want to bluff. Conversely the tighter your opponent is, the more successful bluffing should be.

So if you have JT on AJ4 you are actually betting this for value against wider opponents, but you are technically bluffing against tighter ranges.

To get back to the basic point ... there is no 'should' in poker. You will find that bluffing is a very small part of poker, which may make it less attractive or fun for some Players. But in the long run you 'should' find that pure bluffing is becoming less frequent in poker. Yes, it's a powerful tool against weak ABC opponents but if you play good solid poker with strong holdings in position you should find that you are actually 'bluffing' with the best hand way more often than you think. GL

I generally agree with Answer20’s comments (except for saying bluffing is a very small part of poker) but I think OP may be asking for the GTO or theoretical value/bet ratio to make villain indifferent for calling or folding. So, I’ll address that question.

The quick answer: Value bet twice as often as bluffs for a pot size river bet -- but there are conditions.


Assume hero has only value hands of 100% equity or 0 equity bluff hands and villain only has bluff catchers. The “standard” rule for making your opponent indifferent to calling or folding on the river is based on the following hero EV equation for a villain call:

EV_v.call = V*(Pot + Bet) - (1-V)*Bet

where

V = frequency of a value bet into a pot of Pot when betting an amount = Bet

Since you want to set villain EV to 0, for that is his folding EV, hero EV has to be Pot. When this is done, you find:

V = (Pot+Bet) / (Pot + 2Bet)

So if Bet = Pot = 1, V = (1+1) / (1+2) = 2/3

Other cases:

Bet/Pot	V bet freq
0.25	0.83
0.50	0.75
0.75	0.70
1.0	0.67
1.5	0.63
2.0	0.60
3.5	0.56
5.0	0.55

The above applies if you can’t exploit villain. Also, value bets don’t always win and bluff bets don’t always lose so the above just gives you a starting strategy to be adjusted for the prevailing situation. For example, if villain folds too often, hero can bluff more or if villain calls too often, hero should decrease his bluffing frequency. This implies that villain has an optimal calling frequency, a related topic.

I think this was first popularized in the Mathematics of Poker book. You might always want to check out internet postings such as on Upswing and Run It Once for more detail and expansion.

To provide a tl;dr 2/3 value 1/3 bluff.

Assuming the bet is all-in, and we're talking about a simplified "toy game" version of poker, where one player's range is comprised of 'nuts or air' and the other's is bluffcatchers only, the ratio is as Ibis said. 2:1 in favour of value:bluffs. i.e. Bluff one third of the time.

what about in a real poker game? Also how do we get to having value more often then bluffs when we bet as its's hard to even have a VB hand. We'll get garbage a lot more then the nuts. So is it correct to bet often when you have a value hand and usually check when you have a weak hand with no showdown value?

On the flop, most of your range will consist of unmade hands, but you have a betting range and a checking range. Your bets will mostly be made with high equity hands, such as strong made hands (e.g. TPGK+) and draws. Your checks will mostly be with mid-strength made hands (e.g. middle pair) and air (that has little chance of improvement).
Since you don't bet 100% of your range on the flop (except in some circumstances), you get to the turn with a smaller number of combos, which will generally consist of roughly 50% high equity hands, and 50% low equity (e.g. a gutshot's equity drops to about 10% equity on the turn), but then you dispense with some of the weaker hands (either by not barreling, or bet-folding).
If you get your strategy correct, then you arrive on the river with a range comprised of 3 groups of hands: Value hands that want to bet and get called, hands with showdown value that will make money as check-backs but that can't get called by much worse if they bet, and weak hands that only make money as bluffs if you bet them and villain folds.
In most cases, you can't bluff with all your air hands, so you pick the hands with the lowest showdown value (e.g. 6-high) and/or the hands with the best blockers to villain's calling range (e.g. KT can bluff a missed OESD on QJxxx, as it blocks hands like KQ). You give up with some, but bet with a balanced range.
When you've worked out which combos are your value-bets on the river, and counted them up, you balance them by picking some airballs to bluff with. But the number of bluffs should usually be considerably lower than the number of value-bet combos. (Hence the 2:1 ratio). In most cases, you literally have to give up with some of your air, because otherwise you'll be "over-bluffing" and your opponent will just think "This guy's a maniac that never has anything, so I'll call with any pair".

To stop your opponent thinking you're a maniac, you build a strategy in which you have the right balance between value and bluff on every street, such that it keeps him guessing, and ultimately means that your value-bets get called enough to win decent pots, and your bluffs work often enough that villain sometimes folds the best hand. When you get the balance right, you maximize your profit.

Put it this way:
If you only bet value hands (and never bluff), like a nit, then an observant player never calls and gives you that value.
If you bet everything (including 'no hope' hands), like a maniac, then an observant player always calls with any pair (or even ace high), so the bluffs won't work.
The balanced player is kind of average. His betting range consists of value hands that want to get called, and just the right amount of bluffs to keep his opponent guessing.

Run well when you have a maniac image and clean up when they call when their behind and they call when your behind but you hit. Oh wait that's how you win mtts. Most of the time however bluffing isn't required only when you wanna create that image.

It depends what street you are on

balance (noun) a property of a poker strategy which allows the inclusion or exclusion of a specific hand combination to benefit a different specific hand combination in the form of expected value gained. (value hands benefit from draws being in the betting range; draws would not be a part of the betting range if there were zero value hands; these hands complement each other and increase the respective ev values up to the point of draw saturation; at the point of draw saturation if any more drawing hands are added to the betting range, even only at frequency, then there will be a loss of ev for the bettor which is transferred to the caller in the form of showdown winnings).

balance (verb) to add draws (on flop and turn) or junk hands (on the river) to the betting range. (some draws are bet 100%, some 0%, some in between %, some throw around the word balance here to only be relevant to those draws used at frequency in both check and bet ranges, however I respectfully disagree; those draws that check 100% provide value to the checking range and if the opponent knew you had fewer draws in your checking range than you should, your checkdown/calldown ranges would become more capped and thus more vunlerable to overbets; likewise, those draws that bet 100% surely provide good ev bet values and they also increase the value of the bettors strong hands).

balanced (adjective) having maximized profits vs a strong opposing strategy by inclusion or exclusion of draws in the betting and checking ranges to the effect that if (ev bet > ev check) then that hand will bet 100%, and if (ev check > ev bet) then that hand will check 100%, and if (ev bet = ev check) then that hand will bet or check at frequency >0% and <100%.

Balance is the result of ev maximization vs a strong opposing strategy. Note that if your opponent's strategy isn't strong then the correct strategy is not balanced according to any of the above attempts at definitions.

Ok on the flop is it better to bluff with hands that have decent equity when called or really bad hands that allow villain to have a wide range of better hands that will fold? Is it better to turn bottom pair or 2 overs into a bluff. Or is it better to bluff a crap hand that has almost no chance of winning at showdown

depends on how the preflop ranges interact with the flop:

some flops offer the preflop raiser much protection value at a low price(I'm thinking flops like 662r, K62r, A72r, etc) and also much future street value for the preflop raiser's big hands. Such flops allow everything from (junk) to (decent draw) to bet the flop in most situations as a preflop raiser playing the flop in position.

some flops offer the preflop raiser little protection value, but much future street value(I'm thinking of flops that dictate a smaller flop betsize as preflop raiser due to the high realizable equity of the opposing range, such as 652r, T87r, QT8 all same suit, etc). Such flops allow big hands to hit the turn and river for both players and you'll see lots of fireworks here(essentially this action is exactly why a smaller flop betsize is used on these flops). The effect is that it takes a real draw(forget naked overcards or strong backdoor draws) to bet the flop vs all but the tightest opponents on such flops.

some flops offer the preflop raiser much protection value, but at a higher price(I'm thinking of flops like Q82r, J95r, 833r; I approach these flops with 3/4+ pot sized bets to seize this protection value on the flop. The effect is that I can get away with stuffing my range full of any decent draw and many seemingly weak draws(I would bet any open ended backdoor straight flushdraw as default strategy).

Very few(I think) flops offer the preflop raiser much protection value, much late street value, and dictate a large flop bet. Essentially it has to be the perfect flop for your range that supplies you with many nutty hands, while your opponent can't hold such nutty hands. This is a rare circumstance. QJTr flops come to mind(no AK for many players after they decline to reraise preflop) as the number one example of such a flop. I would bet 3/4 pot or even more depending on how I feel about my opponent. The effect here is that you can bluff a lot, more than the other examples above(note that the late street value offers more profitable flop opportunities to bet with very weak hands).

Generally speaking, you should bet with high equity hands (those that are already "near nuts" or that have a chance to become the nuts) on the early streets. By doing this, the pot gets made bigger with big hands and hands that might become big hands, while the pot stays small with mid-strength hands and total air. (You don't want to play a big pot with either of those latter categories, and you also don't want to get raised if you bet them).
You can include some weak made hands in this flop-betting range, partly because they are vulnerable to being outdrawn if you give free cards, and partly because something like bottom pair has 5 outs to a strong hand like trips or 2 pairs, which means bottom pair technically has more outs than a naked gutshot.

e.g. If it's BTN vs BB, and the flop is AT5, you might bet KQ (a good draw) and 54s (bottom pair, with a draw to 2pr/trips, and a backdoor wheel draw, and a BDFD) to balance your value bets with good Ax+, but you might check hands like A3/A2 (TP no kicker) and KK-JJ/T9 (middle pair), along with hands like 87 that don't even have a gutshot.

By the river, your range is more clearly defined. You have made hands, and "air", as you're no longer drawing after the river. For your bluffs in that spot, it's generally the case that you pick some very low showdown value hands (like 7-high) and some hands with blockers (e.g. king high or ace high). Sometimes, the blocking effects are more important than raw hand value, so you might just give up with 9-high or 6-high, and bluff your higher cards that block top pairs/sets/straights. i.e. It's sometimes more appropriate to bluff with 3rd pair top kicker than with 8-high on the river, because 3rd pair blocks sets, whereas 8-high might not block any value hands, meaning the bluff will get snapped off more often.

Should the ratio be the same preflop assuming a 3xBB raising size and 100 BB effective stacks?

In a word, no.
You'd balance your pre-flop ranges by having some light opens, 3-bets, and 4-bets, but there's not a strict ratio. Indeed the terms "value bet" and "bluff" don't make much sense until the river, since prior to the river even your worst hands have some equity, and some of your hands might be winning or favoured to win, but you still want your opponent to fold. On the river, you either have 100% or 0% equity vs a particular hand, and when you bet it's with a clear desire to either get called or to elicit a fold, so it's easier to divide your range into value-bets and bluffs.