Quote:
Originally Posted by wonkydonk
1) Opponents who have a reasonably wide 3 betting range. I'm basically never 4 bet bluffing fish or confirmed nitty regs.
2) Connected to 1), better to be in positions where ranges for the open and the 3bet are wider - so I'd be more inclined to 4 bet bluff in CO vs BTN, BTN vs SB, blind vs blind, rather than if I'm UTG and MP three bets. I guess in theory you should have some bluffs in all of these spots but I'd focus on the later position battles first.
3) Hand selection - this depends on villain's tendencies and how much they flat rather than 5 bet but either suited hands with good playability (like a suited wheel Ax) or double blocker high cards (KQ) can be decent candidates. Usually makes sense to pick hands just weaker than the ones we're calling the 3bet with.
4) Don't just do it with a random hand because someone has 3 bet you a couple of times in a row and you want to 'play back at them'/'keep them honest'/'show them who's boss' etc.
Yeah, basically this.
If you know somebody is 3-betting you light, then you can either adjust by tightening up your opening range, 4-bet bluffing a polar range, or some combination of the two. There's a great chapter in The Grinder's Manual about this if you have a copy -- hero gets 3-bet and the author works through how we want to construct our range so that we have a balanced value:bluff ratio, and what the best candidates are for us to bluff. I usually use A5s-A2s at some frequency for my bluffs because of blockers, but there are other candidates as well.
If you're playing people who can't fold to 4-bets (e.g. the vast majority of people in the micro stakes pools on Ignition), then don't bother having a 4-bet bluff range.
