How to Bluff a Calling Station by Andrew Brokos


To give our author feedback and to encourage discussion, I'm creating this thread to discuss the article linked above.

This is solid advice. Especially keeping up the pressure. I find that 3 barreling the right calling stations can indeed be very profitable. Also lots of stations have the tendency to be weak with weak hand, offering great bluff raises.

Foucault--

.

You make a guy who's in grad school and who will probably not play a MTT for the next six months care about MTTs.

--Nate

Great one. I only played with Foucault once in a DS but I can still remember that hand he bet every street against another player and that player folded on river only to see foucault showing a bluff.

Loved the article.

The advice mentioned applies very well for DS tournaments, but in SS sngs it can sometimes be needlessly risky to fire multiple barrels. But SS sngs are full of calling stations and I wholeheartedly agree they can and need to be bluffed. But I believe it can still be done without having to build the pot too much or risk your entire stack.

When you know you are up against a calling station I find the standard continuation bet on the flop to be regularly ineffective and can needlessly inflate the pot to a large % of your stack, leaving you pot-committed. So, my usual course of action is, if I am heads up in a pot against a player and have noted that he/she is passive (position is somewhat irrelevant here, I find), checking the flop and, if the next card is relatively innocent, following it up by by a 3/4 to pot size bet on the turn far more effective as a 'delayed' continuation bet. This seems more likely to result in a fold than a standard continuation bet on the flop. It seems, in the minds of the 'ridiculous' calling stations, they no longer think they have enough time to hit their gutshot or backdoor flush draw and have more of a tendency to fold their weak holding.

Just an idea.
Keen to hear what you think.

I'm not sure whether SS stands for small stacks or small stakes, but either way, it doesn't sound like the best place to apply this article. Calling stations look for excuses to call, and "pot committed" is one of their favorites, so trying to bluff a guy on a short stack is not advisable.

What you're exploiting here is the calling station's tendency to put himself in bad spots. With certain players, there is a huge gap between the garbage with which they will call a smallish flop bet and the kind of hand they want to have when risking their "tournament lives". That gap is going to be more exaggerated with higher stakes and deeper stacks.

The delayed continuation bet is a useful tool, but I think it's actually better to fire at a non-innocuous turn card. If a station likes his hand enough to call a bet on an 855 flop, a 4 on the turn isn't going to change his mind, but a K might.

I think your delayed bet is working because the c-bet has become such a well-known move that some players now auto-call it on dry flops. Waiting until the turn might show more strength to these guys, but that's the only reason I could see it being more effective. In general, a flop bet is more effective than a turn bet because it leverages the threat of two future streets where bigger bets may be coming. Turn bets are inherently less threatening because your opponent knows that if he calls, only one more bet stands between him and showdown.

Yo, Foucault, if you start being more than 75% of the total useful content of 2+2 Magazine, people are liable to be upset.

,

--Nate

Sometimes you're pretty sure what they got.
But how do you know if they're willing to fold?

Cash game online.

You: middle pair

You open raise two off the button.
Button calls, all others fold.

Flop: AsKdKh

You bet a little over half the pot.
After 10 to 15 seconds the other guy calls.

Now you know he has an ace with a
lousy kicker. But you don't know if he is
willing to fold to more pressure?

So do you continue bluffing?

Does this mean you're going to be submitting an article in 2007?

I wouldn't recommend trying to bluff a player you consider a calling station off of top pair or better. These players are inclined to make their decisions based on the frequency with which you will hold a better hand than theirs, not the hand that you think your line is representing. In other words, they aren't going to think, "He wouldn't triple barrel without trips," they are going to think, "Pfffft there are only two Kings left in the deck and I have OMGTOPPAIRCALLCALLCALL."

I suggest looking for spots where you think the board is scary for your opponent's likely holding, such as the KQxx board when I thought my opponent had 88 or the like. You might get a guy off KQ when the board is QT976 with three diamonds because that is a scary board for his hand, but AKKxx is not a scary board for Ax. Your proposed bluff is relying on him interpreting your line as scary precisely because the board is NOT scary, and that is more thinking than I like to give these guys credit for.

Remember, they are going to default to calling when in doubt.

very good article. And certainly not limited to MTTs or indeed hold'em, which is an unfortunate attribute of many theory posts.

I think the example was pretty bad. With a K and a Q on the board, I think it is likely the station hit a pair and will be calling down.

Playing very TAG in tournaments with buy-ins of $50 or less my most common bust-out type hand is against a calling station committing his 20BB+ chip stack on the turn with 3rd - or at best 2nd pair - after I've shown aggression all the way.

I'd say the recommended strategy generally does not work at these buy-ins, at least not frequently enough to make it profitable, when you consider the upside of having poor/loose players call your value bets.

Thanks for the response, Melch. Just to be clear, I wouldn't recommend something like this against a Villain with a 20 BB stack. In the example, we were 150 BB deep. The idea is that you take advantage on a later street of a Villain who will play pots that are way out of proportion to what his hand is worth. It works better at higher stakes, not necessarily because the calling stations are slightly better calling stations, but because they will care more about losing a big bet or their entry fee. Your point about having easier ways to get chips in smaller tournaments is a good one as well.