I'm a live tournament player.
I'm not sure if it's me or just the average live player in general, but I seem to get bluffed way more than I should.

I think I have an image that I'm a good bluff target or something.
Over the last months I've become aware of this and started making some ridiculous calls, so far I've always been right.


Example hand:

€225 live tournament with 1000+ players and several starting days.

It's early in day one, we've been playing for about 2/3 hours, level 3 or 4.
Blinds are 200/400 with 400 BB ante

It's folded to me in middle/late position, I open KJo for 1100
BTN calls, everyone else folds.

Pot: 3200
Flop: K42
I bet 2200
BTN calls

Pot: 7600
Turn: J
I bet 4400
BTN calls

Pot: 16400
River: 7
I check
BTN bets 15500

I think for 2 seconds and call, all the draws missed, if he has a set he can have my chips.
I check the river because I don't think I get called by worse and I want to induce a bluff, not a bluff this big though.

Villain shows 66 and I take the pot?

Pretty easy call here since my hand is very strong, but what if I have AK here? Or KQ?
I'm probably folding those hands ... So villain is making a great bluff here, he's just unlucky he ran into the top of my range.


How do I adjust to players constantly making these bluffs against me?

Or am I just seeing too many bluffs because I often face big bets and have to fold against them without seeing my opponents hands?

I've been making some crazy calls lately when I feel like my opponent is bluffing too often, in similar spots as the above, but with things like TP or even 2nd pair.
I don't remember making a bad call over the last few months.

Most of the time I'm just folding while facing a big bet though.
I think my opponents are picking up on this and are trying to bluff me out of pots with total random crap.


How do I face this issue?
Do I start calling more with TP, 2nd & 3rd pair type of hands?
How do I prevent turning into a calling station?
Or do I just keep folding (too) much and call when I think I'm ahaid, like I'm doing now?
I'm pretty sure I'm folding too often now though, but I'm afraid of making bad calls.

1. I'd bet much smaller on the flop. You are OOP, and the flop is fairly static. Betting 2/3 pot will strengthen Villain's calling range more than a hand like KJ would like.
2. Villain probably was supposed to fold turn, but we benefit from those mistakes.
3. Villain's river bet assumed you'd always triple your draws, and he turned his hand into a bluff targeting your one pair hands.

You adjust to players overbluffing by doing just what you did; induce a bluff and call it.

Let's look at the odds on the river. You faced a ~ PSB. You need to be good 1/3 of the time to break even in Cev. You mentioned 'calling when you think you are ahead'. You don't need to be right 1/2 of the time to make this a profitable call.

One way to think about this is your distribution. How strong is your hand relative to all of the hands in your range. Obviously KJ is very high. KK,JJ (if you bet that on the flop) are your best 6 combos. KJ is next, for 9 combos. Then AA, etc.

One other way to bluff catch is to look at blockers. A hand like KQ is a better call when you don't have a diamond in your hand, especially the Q.

Don't be afraid of making bad calls. If you always win when you call a PSB, you are folding WAY too often. Even just winning half the time is a big win for the call.

What tell you have the goods early in the tournament.

Try to keep the pot smaller, so when they play back at you, your laydown isn't as penal.

Players that bluff too much will stack off eventually. Certainly, they cause problems before that happens.

When I induce a bluff, I almost always call the bet I was trying to induce. I'm fairly inelastic wrt V's sizing -- indeed larger bets often look (to me) more like bluffs after V's totally passive line -- why would he want to scare you off when he's done nothing to test your strength. This is a particularly good strategy when (as in this hand) you have been the aggressor the whole time with no push back and all the draws missed.

I also exercise a lot of pot control and would have bet smaller on all streets, making any river bet likely to have been smaller. (Maybe I lose value this way, but I avoid costly mistakes, which is huge in tournament play).

I got a very similar question from one of my students last week so I'm going to provide the same response here. Briefly on the sizing, you rarely want to throw your middling hands into a large cb size. Typically you want to be polarized when choosing a large size so throwing in your strongest hands and maybe those that benefit from protection plus add in some hands that are at the bottom of your range that have some turn cards that we can continue barreling on for balance, so here that would be hands like A6ss/A5ss, note that we don’t include hands with diamond fds since those would actually land in the middle of our range here.

On to the bulk of your question, in general your exploit vs villains that are overbluffing should be to overcall. However, there is a really important point to be made in this exact hand based on the analysis you provided. You are strongly over valuing your exact hand strength while disregarding your range (and your opponents range). When you call river here, your KJ is almost identical to AK and KQ. Villains bet sizing is large and thus polarizing (excluding thin value hands). The only difference between AK and KJ is that AK will lose to KJ at showdown but this just includes slightly more value combos for V. You are virtually at the top of your range on the river which is the first indication we should be calling (the other would be that all draws missed thus V should have a reasonable amount of “obvious bluffs”. On top of that, the only hands you lose to are 77/44/22. There is no need to even discount the amount of times V gets to river with these hands since there are more than enough bluffs in V's range for us to call with any king (especially when you already have the read the V is overbluffing). Additionally, back to analyzing ranges instead of actual hand strength, given Vs river sizing, QQ/JJ/TT/99 all fall into the "bluff catcher" bucket as well since V should be polarized to 2pr+ hands or air and should not be choosing that size with hands like KT/K9 (shockingly he turned 66 into a bluff here which has a decent amount of sdv with both fds bricking, because I believe we could also call river w some of our A high hands that unblock diamonds and spades).

Thanks for that cito, makes a lot of sense!

The issue is that it makes sense against players who have at least a bit of an idea what they're doing.

The players I face live have no clue. They turn random hands, even hands with sdv into bluffs.
They don't care about equity or ranges.
They're just like "Oh, I'm gonna try to bluff here."

I'm not sure if I'm over-valuing my hand here.
Again, against decent players I probably am.
But these guys will probably call with any K and a lot of 2nd pair or even 3rd pair hands and all their draws, even when getting horrible odds.

I think I would miss way too much value if I start betting smaller here.

With KJ in this exact spot maybe, assuming there are ANY competent players you face regularly, they will begin to exploit your sizing choices especially when you RFI and play postflop against them OP. If you are literally playing live against a bunch of recs then there is no need to balance. Play your hands more based on actual strength compared to range vs range, however, this will not make you a better player and will not work at any reasonable stakes online.

OP the way I handle overbluffing opponents is to keep some strong hands in my checking, calling and block bet ranges and make it more difficult for opponents to attack.

One fairly simple example from a cash game last night:

2/5/10
Hero (2200) limp AdKs utg
V1 (7000) MP Very aggressive high bluff frequency opponent raise to 50,
one caller V2 BTN
I raise to 250 (utg/utg1 limp/raise to iso with premiums is very common strat in cash)
V1 calls, V2 folds
Flop Ax 4d 3d
Now normally I’d cbet this but against this opponent I laid a trap instead
Hero checks (repping KK-JJ)
V1 checks behind
Turn Ac
I bet 125 (still repping KK-JJ)
V1 takes bait and raises to 350
I pause just long enough and call (still repping KK-JJ)
River 2d
I check,
V1 bets 525, I snap, he shows Ts9c

There are an endless variety of similar opportunities against opponents who are prepared to attack when you rep the weaker part of your range, especially in large pots. Just keep your repped range consistent on all streets.

Another very common situation in mtts is when you flop set+ against an aggressive opponent who is employing the small cbet, bomb high equity turn strat. Against such opponents the correct line is to just keep calling and wear the variance. They will frequently bomb the river too, possibly all in on a busted draw, and you just need to hold your nerve.

For example:

Villian KQhh raises pre
Hero 77 defends
Flop Th 7d 2s
Villian cbets 30%, hero calls
Turn Ah
Villian barrels 75%, hero calls
River 3s
Villian shoves, hero fist-pump calls

I can think of three immediate examples of massive pots in late stages mtts with $300K+ up top where the tournament has effectively been won after the two chip leaders play out a massive pot AI on river with one holding set+ and the other having triple barrelled allin with air.

Cliff notes: keep some strong hands in your postflop checking, calling and block bet ranges against bluffy opponents, then hang on for the ride.

What would they do to exploit me here?

check oop rather than lead on the flop.

Based on your logic, you would be choosing a smaller size w weaker hands. That's very easy to exploit by regs who play enough hands w you.

Here's another example I just ran into today.

2nd level of a small (60 player) €20 single day tournament, levels of 20 minutes.
Starting stacks are 20k blinds are 100/200/200 bb ante

Villain is an older player (40-60) that I assume is not very good. I've seen him around a lot, but never really played with him.

Villain opens from CO to 600.
I have ATs in the SB.
I make it 2400.
Villain calls, everyone else folds.

Pot: 5200
Flop: T84 with two hearts (I have no hearts)
I bet 2200
Villain calls

Pot: 9600
Turn: J of hearts
I check
Villain bets 4400
I call

Pot: 18400
I check
Villain goes all-in for his remaining 11k
I call, villain shows AKo, everyone at the table is amazed that I make the call ...


I was gonna fold on the turn, but I remembered that I wanted to figure out how much people are actually trying to bluff me out in spots like these.
I think the bet sizings made this bluff fairly obvious, I don't think villain bet this large with a flush, but he could.

Thoughts?

Well the river card would be interesting to know. If it was a heart, Q or K then it’s probably a bad call

You need to understand why good players bluff. They add actual equity (robust draws) to fold equity (the chance you will fold you hand). the greater the chance you will fold your hand to scare card pressure, the smaller their robust draw equity can be (and still be a profitable bluff).

If some reg live players have figured out you are over folding to pressure, then their draw equity might be as thin as AK or Kh in this spot. If you over call, they may adjust by only bluffing with the strongest draw equity eg KhQc

But if you want a much deeper analysis of how to adjust in a very profitable way to opponents that overbluff, read my earlier post.

The river was something irrelevant, maybe a 3 not a heart.
Villain had AKo without a heart.

I am 99% sure this guy has not figured me out for folding too much.
Tbh, I'm not even folding too much, I'm just respecting big bet sizings when I should.

I don't think checking more often with strong hands is a good way to counter opponents overbluffing. I would miss way too much value.
I agree it would work against opponents who are way too aggressive, but people turning random crap into bluffs is not the same.

So far I really liked 3for3poker's reply.
I think I'm just gonna have to seriously loosen my calling range since the majority of live players seems to bluff with very little equity and on the river way too often.

I really wish there was a live tournament section in this forum, because comparing these live players to online players is just ridiculous.

90% of people I play against have never even heard of GTO
they're not trying to put people on a range, they're putting them on a specific hand instead
they think you should always cbet, no matter your position or how many players in the pot
...

The level of live play, at least where I play, is seriously bad compared to playing online.

The river card in the hand above is obviously important. MSMTT is both live and online. cito and I have considerable live experience, as do many other posters.

This thread has basically boiled down to
I don’t like people bluffing me
But I’m really good at calling them off when they do

There’s no real question in any of this and your recent responses are appalling, so I’m locking it.