(DISCLAIMER: I've organized this as best I can, but it may still have a stream-of-consciousness feel to it. I don't claim to be right about everything I wrote here; just getting the discussion started. This is EXTREMELY tl;dr, so if you want you can skip straight to the bottom (CONCLUSIONS) for the cliff's notes.)

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but bluffs and bluffing is one of the most critical concepts to the up-and-coming poker player (which all uNL grinders are)--but not for the reason you think. (You think it's because zomg all the best players run sick bluffs!!11)

It's not because bluffing is so inherently important to winning, but because your underlying thought process behind bluffing is inseparably tied to all of your decision making at the tables.

If you came here expecting a tidy tutorial to teach you how to bluff like a pro, you might as well close the window now and find something better to do with your time--it ain't here. Sorry.



This is about the thought process that leads to assigning a reasonable range to (a) what Villain has or Villains have, and (b) what he/they think you have. From there it's a simple and (to the frequent player) almost mindless math calc to determine the most +EV move.

Which brings us to our theme:

Every time it's your turn you have a decision to make: Bet/raise, call/check, or fold. A +EV bluff is any time you hold a weak hand,* assess the situation and correctly decide that betting is more +EV than checking/calling or folding.

* Naturally, what constitutes a weak hand depends on the board and the villain. More on this later.

BLUFFING PREFLOP

This comes in two flavors: Steal-raising, and 3-betting. Read those CotW threads and do your best to grok them, if you haven't already. To be honest, doing so will set you a long way on your way to the right thought process to beat pokers.

I will say this: don't 3bet light OOP against guys who call too much. God kills a baby sea bass every time you 3bet light OOP against a guy who calls too much.

WHO SHOULD I TRY TO BLUFF?

Never bluff fish; they don't fold. Bluff regs and nits, the guys you know can fold. It's that simple.

^ That's the answer you'll usually get to this question. It's bad, because it's lazy. Once in a while you'll find excellent spots to bluff a fish. But the larger point here is, don't substitute rules and mantras for thinking.

You should not bluff very often, especially at the micros where fish are abundant and, let's face it, even most of the regs are not very good players. But you should consider bluffing, however briefly, every time you hold a weak hand and your turn comes up. Not because you want to be baller and bluff the **** out of everybody, but because a good poker player always considers all his options.

Most of the time it's trivial. I hold 76d in the CO, called a PFR from a tight MP1 guy and got another call from a fish in the BB, flop was AJ3, two hearts, the PFR cbets--it takes .0004 seconds to conclude I should not bluff. But if that fish hadn't come along and the ace was the Ad, I might at least give it more consideration--how much of his range really liked that flop? Can he fold QQ here if I lean on him? Etc. Your poker mind should be well trained to consider these kinds of things every time your turn comes up. The vast majority of the time bluffing will NOT be the most +EV decision--but occasionally it will be.

POT SIZE

This is simple: The bigger the pot--the lower the SPR--the less inclined you should be to bluff, and the more inclined you should be to stack off when you have a medium-strong hand and the other guy is firing. In reality, most of your so-called 'sick bluffs' will happen early (on the flop) in fairly small pots. That brings me to my next point:

HAVE A PLAN!

I CANNOT stress this enough. The top four leaks of uNL regs are:

4. Bad betsizing
3. Calling too much
2. Not paying enough attention to opponent tendencies/reads
1. NOT PLANNING

Not planning is the #1 leak because, if you think about it a moment, all the other leaks come from it. Why did you bet 10BB on the turn instead of 15BB, or 7.5BB? ... I dunno. It just felt right. Why did you call the flop? What were you planning to do on a blank turn? ...I just wanted to reevaluate.

Anyway, that's kind of a rant. When you enter a hand preflop, you should have a flexible but definite plan--I will do this if I get heads-up with the limper; I will do this if it's 4way; I will do this if I get 3bet by the 38/8 SB. Once the flop comes down, you have most of the information you're going to get, and you need to make a definite plan for the hand. If you're having trouble doing this, cut the number of tables you're planning in half, right now, and work on it. Record a video of yourself playing, force yourself to talk through your hands, and review the video when you're done. If you want to win at poker (and life), YOU MUST PLAN.

In almost all situations, you should not be bluffing the turn or (*gasp*) river unless it fits with your plan. If it doesn't, it's very likely you won't be telling Villain a convincing story--because you didn't write a story at all to begin with--and he'll snap you off.

KNOW YOUR VILLAIN

I'll tell you a secret. If you're going to mass table (like 16+ tables), then you don't have time to really pay attention to your opponents, beyond looking at their stats, other than an occasional note on a reg when you reach a showdown in a big pot with one. That means you had better put in a lot of time and effort to getting very good at interpreting opponents' stats on the fly and making smart decisions based on them.

But if you're not mass tabling, you have NO excuse to not have extensive notes on most of your opponents--there should be at least a very short note damn near every time you see a showdown. These will immensely help you know what your opponent has, because most opponents play the same kinds of hands the same way the vast majority of the time.

I'll give you a few tips, to get you started.

* Tend not to bluff at two-tone or 3-straight flops against TAG regs. In case you didn't notice from reading HH threads around here, they ALWAYS tend to assume 'lol he's on a draw' and will shove over pretty damn wide.

* Bluffing at those kinds of boards is wonderful against nits, though. They're afraid of everything and generally wouldn't dream of playing back.

* Keep an eye out for aggro villains. Lately I've seen seeing a lot of guys who are like 50/0/7.0 -- they constantly limp and then go bananas after the flop. When an aggro villain (especially a bad one) check-raises your cbet on a flop of 973r or whatever, basically he's representing a set and nothing else. And IT'S HARD TO HIT A SET. Usually he's FOS. So punish him with a quick (pause for about 1 second), smallish (like 2.5x usually) reraise and watch him fold.

* Most aggrodonks CAN be bluffed, contrary to popular opinion, since they're bluffing themselves such a high % of the time and therefore have to fold when they get raised. They make awesome semibluff targets even with normally weak draws like overs+gutshot. (Incidentally, a lot of you guys lose crazy value against aggrodonks when you have AA and raise and blow them out of the pot, when if you'd call they'd keep bluffing.)

* Many fish, even the really loose-passives, are terrified of an ace on the board if they're not holding one, and many fish are terrified when the third flush card hits. You can often abuse this and steal pots from them; it's the one spot where you CAN bluff a fish, particularly if the pot's small.

1rd omfgthatsbs

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BLUFFING IS ABOUT UNDERSTANDING RANGES!

Just like everything else in poker.

Loose-passive (20/0/0.5) limps in MP1 and calls your iso-raise. What's his range? How about after the flop comes A98cc and he check-calls your cbet?

Nitty reg (8/7/3.0) raises in MP2 and you call on BTN. Flop is KTTcc. He checks. What's his range? You check back, the turn is an offsuit 5. He checks again. What's his range? If he bets instead, what's his range?

LAG reg (20/18/2.4) calls your UTG+2 raise on the BTN. What's his range?

These are very easy questions. You should know the answers. But the important part is--you need to think about these things while a hand's going on, and apply them. That means whatever action you choose, you should know which flops are likely to be agreeable to the villain(s), and which turn cards are good for the villain(s) and which are bad/neutral for them.

The profitable bluff happens when your know your opponent and his logical range well enough to know that (a) he is usually weak, and (b) he will usually fold if you bet $X.

SIZE MATTERS!

With women, and with poker. :P

In no-limit, bet sizing is tremendously important, and running proper bluffs is no exception. If you're paying attention to your opponents it will only take a few orbits to get a handle on what kind of bet sizes tend to make them call, and what tends to make them fold. SPOILER: Most of the time, the more you bet, the more often they fold. But this is NOT linear.

The cardinal question is this: If I were holding the nuts right now, what's the most I would bet and maximize the chance he calls? If you're in a profitable bluffing situation, bet a little more than that amount. This means if the pot is 18BB and you think 12BB is the calling-maximizing amount but 14BB is too much--bet 15-16BB to make him fold.

And if you identify a spot where you might want to fire two barrels--there are some opponents that are VERY profitable to 2-barrel, you want to consider your bet sizing of BOTH bets BEFORE YOU MAKE THE FIRST BET.

Bet sizing is crucial for two primary reasons:

1. You want to bet as little as you can and still make him fold when bluffing to maximize EV.
2. Many villains have red-siren-alert bet sizes they don't like. To wit, sometimes you'll get MORE fold equity by betting LESS (because the bet looks stronger to an opponent trying to think on the 2nd level).

* Against guys that love to chase draws, when you get to the river, the river bricks off and you know missed draws are a big part of his range, you can profitably stab at the river with a really small bet, because these guys are bad and will just fold their missed draws on the river for like a 5BB bet into a 20BB pot. Usually, as always, you should have been planning for this and telling your story straight, but a few fishy guys are so bad they'll fold their whiffed draws no matter what. Abuse them.

At this point let's discuss the primary kinds of postflop bluffs.

1. Single street bluffing (stabbing)

This is when you have reason to believe nobody's likely interested in the pot, and you make a smallish bet to try and pick the pot up right now. (You like to have at least SOME equity if called, be it overcards, a gutshot, backdoor FD, what have you, but sometimes even that isn't necessary.)

One variant of this that can be profitable against the right opponents is if there's one or two limpers to your BB, and you check with some trash hand, and the flop comes down super dry and/or A high. There's a big chance neither limper liked that flop, so for a 1BB minbet you can lead out and often take down the 3.5BB pot. It only has to work one time in four to be profitable.

Anytime it's like 4way and you're last to act, the flop is obviously dangerous (like 444 or AK5ss or AA7), the turn bricks and it checks around twice, tend to stab for about half pot. They'll usually fold, and some callers--again, you need to know which ones--will even call then fold to a river bet (because they had 66 or whatever and just wanted to see if you were kidding.)

2. Semibluffing

This is when you have a strong draw--an OESD or a FD. (If you have an OESFD you're almost always a favorite, so shoveling the money in isn't really bluffing.) In many cases you want to play your strong draws hard and fast, raising aggressively to maximize fold equity. Winning the pot right now with no made hand is much more +EV than getting it in as a 40-60 dog or so, as is usually the case when you have to get it in. Plus if you see a turn and it misses you (as it usually does), your equity plummets--so play those draws fast on the flop unless you have a good reason not to.

3. Bluff-raising/check-raising

This is when your opponent bets and you raise with air or close to it. You do it because

1. You know your opponent's betting range is wide and consists mostly of air or weak hands,
2. Despite that, your hand probably isn't best right now and has little chance to improve, so calling is bad, and
3. His range is weak enough that he will fold to your raise often enough to make it +EV, which makes it better than the 0EV move of folding.

It's that simple, really. And IT DEPENDS ON RANGES! A good bluff isn't based on gut feel. It's based on cold hard probability (which can sometimes be influenced by timing tells, bet size tells and the like--but ultimately it's just a probability calc.) He has a hand he can continue with after I raise 30% of the time, my raise is sized such that I have to take the pot 40% of the time to be profitable--therefore my raise is profitable. And don't get results-oriented about it. The process, not the immediate result, is what counts, because over time a good process will produce good results.

You don't need to Stove every flop to be able to estimate these things accurately--you just need to play some damn cards, play with Stove after your sessions, and get experienced until you can estimate continuance ranges in your sleep.

4. Multi-street bluffs (barreling)

As stated before, the proper multi-street bluff knows it's a multi-street bluff from the moment it's commenced. It goes: "This guy floats and then gives up to another bet a ton, and most of his range doesn't fit the board. Therefore I will bet $X now as a bluff, and if he calls and the turn is blank I will bet $Y on the turn, and he will fold most of his weak hands. If he calls the turn I know he wants to get to showdown and will shut it down. And if the turn's an ace or a king, then I shut down immediately because there are tons of those in his range."

That's what a good, solid plan looks like.

"k well betting's the only way i can win this pot, so i bet! he called. k... now the turn puts three to a straight out there, cool, i can totally rep that hit me, and betting's still the only way i can win this pot, so... i bet again!"

Against some opponents you'll win the pot sometimes that way--but it's bad thinking. There's no plan.

5. River bluffs

There are only a few particular kinds of river bluffs you should try with any regularity at uNL, and then only against certain opponents. For the most part once you're at the river, your opponent usually wants to see the showdown and will pay to do so.

1. 4 to a straight/4 to a flush on board--if you're OOP making a small (half pot or a little less) bet at it is a good idea against any opponent whose software has a fold button, unless it's exceedingly likely from the rest of the hand he has the straight/flush. Unless he has top two or a set, he's going to fold without the high end of the straight or a high flush card most of the time.

2. It's been checked all the way down and the river was a blank (ideally it paired the board). Again, if you know this guy knows how to fold, just stab at the thing; your opponent usually has nothing, and usually isn't interested enough in the hand to care that you also usually have nothing.

3. The pot is big, but a BIG part of Villain's range is draws that have missed. In these spots you can bet really small (like 1/4 or 1/3 pot) and make him fold often enough to make it profitable. He'll call a lot, but remember--with these small stabs when his range is largely missed draws, he only has to fold occasionally for you to make money.

DEFENDING AGAINST BLUFFS

Don't sweat it too much. Seriously. Someone bets at you or raises you and you have nothing much, you're not going to go too far wrong by just junking it almost every time, ESPECIALLY if it's a random.

Think about it. What players do you see, besides the regs you see all the time, who raise you and you have to scratch your head and think about whether they might be bluffing? Almost none. Randoms almost always are of one of two flavors: Those that hardly ever make a big bluff, and those that obviously bluff too much. And you should know what to do with them (spoiler: fold against the first group, tighten up and let the second group valuetown itself when you get a decent hand).

This is one aspect of life where the best defense is a good offense. Which is to say--if you're good at identifying potential bluff spots, you won't have trouble recognizing when it's more than usually likely the other guy is making a play at you. Even then, remember that your profit comes from value betting, not pissing matches, and tend to fold unless you have a good read and at least a little equity. Now and then you'll have to play back at the aggro regs to keep them from running you over, but it doesn't really have to be that often. Pick your spots to pick 'em off.

CONCLUSION

I demand that you read this post right now. Five times.

Ask yourself: "If I had the nuts, would betting X amount in this spot be +EV?"

If the answer is no, consider betting X amount.

Winning at uNL poker is mostly value betting. Like, tremendously hugely value betting. Whatever you do, don't lose sight of that.

Bluffing is about thinking and planning. If you can't say aloud, in two sentences or less, why you're bluffing and why it's +EV, don't bluff. In fact, that's true of any action in poker besides folding. If you find yourself sitting there--I do this too often myself--trying to talk yourself into a given action (usually calling, occasionally betting), just knock it off and fold (or check, if applicable).

I can't stress this enough--avoid results-oriented thinking. You know that run you went on recently where you value bet your AA and ran into a set or some weird straight over and over? Value bet your sets and kept getting sucked out on by somebody's idiotic flush? You know how that started making you question value betting at all, and you started checking strong hands too much and losing value, until you finally snapped out of it and realized that's dumb?

Yeah. It can work the same way with bluffing. Either betting in this situation is profitable, or it is not. The actual result this time makes no difference. Don't go on tilt and start double fisted monkey spewing because you're pissed off none of your bluffs are working. Chances are, you're picking the wrong spots to bluff, so get your hands dirty, get into the HHs and do some studying. Plug the leak. But it's also entirely possible you're picking good spots--you just keep running into the top part of villain ranges. It happens. Focus on the thought process.

HOMEWORK

1. Drop to a level blow your usual haunt, and cut your tables way down--no more than 6, 4 is better--and watch your opponents, even on hands you're not involved in, and try to put them on ranges. Try to guess their hands, even. Play way LAGier than you usually do preflop so as to get yourself into more postflop spots. It'll do good things for your game, because it'll get you thinking about spots you usually don't think about. Bonus points if you record the session and talk through it (or sweat it with someone else).

2. Dig through your last few sessions and find all the hands where you made any kind of a bluff (light 3bet pre, light raise or donkbet post, etc.) and critique it hardcore. PROVE to yourself it was the right play, in each case. And if it wasn't, grok WHY it wasn't.

yeeeeeeeeehaaaaaw FURST!!!!! great job zeth.

btw, recently at the stars reg thread we had a discussion about moving up and what is real poker.

This thread is closely related to that.

Ever wondered why your UTG TAG opponent is not giving you action on 279r when you cc on the button 4-way with 22 and raise the flop when you have a set? ever wonder what you should do to maximise value when he bets the next time and 2 fish click fold fold and you have 33?

There is two ways to make money. Either your opponents folds when he has the best hand or he calls when he has the worst hand. vs the latter you obv don't bluff. Its a waste of money. Use all your range skills to figure our if your hand is better and then bet bet shove. Vs the former figure out how *dumb* he is and then bluff him. Zeth has some really good ready made receipes. (like 4flush, straight, any flush card, A high boards etc.) but you should be thinking about it every time. What will he fold and for how much and when? Learn to pounce on weakness and spot times when everybody is showing weakness and there is your money making opportunity and there is your poker skill.

and i honestly think a big uNL leak is not bluffing enough. By that i mean even if you mechanically cc any s/c any pp any Ax on the BTN and check raise all Kxy rainbow boards every time a TAG MP opener c-bets that flop (and also obv when you have two pair, set and oesd) and get it in when you have a draw + better and fold to a reraise when you has nothing you will show auto profit!

Something that are exploitable at 50NL are just too exploitable. Eg. TAGs that check call one street with underpair to the board coz they learnt somewhere that if you bet you can't get called by worse. True and very true. But if they are not checking their sets twopairs and A K hands ever to call two streets with it and fold to the second barrell everytime=== $$$$$.

Nice article. I'll read it a couple more times and add my $0.0000000002 cents.


True.-

Awesome post.

Excellent post Zeth.

I'll dissent on this. There are many, many leaks bigger than this in the micros. Failing to value bet is the biggest by far, for example.

The reason "bluffs" seem to work as often as they do is because we are often bluffing with the best hand, especially early in the hand.

Zeth nailed the conditions in which a bluff works well.

1. Small pots
2. Single opponent
3. Board that hits our range and misses the villain's
4. Villain is someone who can lay down a decent hand

Bluffing has to be part of any player's tool kit, but way too many players think it is the best tool for many occasions, rather than a specialized tool for a certain application. At 2nl and 5nl, if someone never bluffed, they would be better off than doing it poorly.

Anyway, nice work Zeth.

+venice. notice how my post talks about playing pots vs TAG openers and making them fold hands.

bluffing is obviously only if you have 1k+ hands on villian and you know they know how to press the fold button.

and its not like we never learn to bluff anyways. The first uNL thing you learn is to c-bet and c-betting with 78s or K5o or whatever you iso with on a AQ7r board is a bluff. Many times vs passive villians you don't have the best hand.

Although its not a major leak or anything its easily a thing that ppl overlook or don't use in their tool kit like they do c-betting, blind stealing etc. like Zeth points out those are bluffs, but are rarely viewed in that way and are just mechanical. Its not like c-betting is the only thing you gotta bluff. If some reg has a 100% c-bet you should bluff more often than not at 50/100NL. If some other reg b/f flush cards you should make notes.

I think every single time you don't get value from a made hand you should make a note that makes it profitable for you to bluff.

tyvm, will finish reading after lunch.

In terms of immediate EV, this is correct. But it'll hamper their poker progress, because it probably means they aren't thinking and ranging at every decision point... that's just my two cents and obviously YMMV

It all depends on the level of hand reading ofc. Some people will see raising on an k83 rainbow board as bluffy because there arent a lot of hands in villains range that beat their hand.

In general i think this is a really good post. Well played.

Precisely! That's why you shouldn't do that against a 2p2-type reg or even a spewyfish, unless of course you have KK

But the nits always put you on AK anyway, and most of them have acute MUBS, so the super dry boards are awesome for blowing them off their 99... that's not ALWAYS true of course but many nits are unwilling to stack off or even continue without at LEAST top pair

+1. It's better to bluff on wet boards against good thinking players because you can rep hands. Also, good players usually understand equity so you can move them off better hands on draw heavy boards.

Dry boards are tougher against thinking players and you need to value raise less and bluff raise less.

Dry boards are fine against bad/non-thinking players because they will fold a lot. On wet boards they will fold less, so the plan should be to bluff raise less often.

Nice post zeth.

tbh, bluffing too much or bluffing incorrectly is a much bigger leak. Along with not value betting properly of course.

Tyvm. Great post

Wow.

Sick good. And anything with a Pokey reference is automatically +1.

Two things I find useful re: betsizing and bluffing--

Its true, big cbets get more folds! Small ones tend to get floated.

When double barreling, proportionally larger turn bets get more respect. That is, if you do 3/4 or 2/3 pot on flop, do 90% pot on turn and continuation ranges are very narrow. Best without SD value though, as even most draws go away.

Just my observations; interested in hearing other's take.

telling a story that doesn't makes sense is a major leak in micro bluffing. ie does it make sense that i can have what i am representing.

The ohhh thats a scare card i can bet it mentallity is a leak. Sure this works vs some but vs others as you move are going get that it makes no sense for you to have that card in your hand and there going to pick you off like crazy.

II. Calling with the intent folding to another bet :

“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”
- Sun Tzu

This is from the "Common Leaks" CotW

Stated in that thread is that this is a common leak of most regs and many 2+2'rs and if that is so we need to adjust are plan as so. Am i going to raise enough on the flop to get him to fold, or raise 1/2 pot and double barrel.

Just something to think about

out.

If I were to merge my range around approx pot size bets on streets, i'd like the merge to be much closer to 1/2-2/3 pot than to 90% of pot.

The bigger the pot, the less of a skill edge you have, so don't give your opponents (whom you're better than ldo) more of an edge than they deserve.

Once you learn how to hand read and fold (god i'm still terrible at both), you can size your bets smaller so that you're not always thinking "OMG this board is wet lets bet pot to price the draws", but instead you're learning to identify when you can widen villains calling range instead of pricing in hands that crush you only.

I think if villian is donk betting a ton or you just called in position and villian is cbetting, thats the easiest raise in the world. (ATC's) Dead money

But should we be raising if we hold Ace high? 8 7?

Then were not doing it as a bluff but for "value". But the dead money is still there and theres many cards we don't want to see.

And on the other hand, were allmost turning our "value raise" into a bluff anyways.

I think this a deff leak in my game. Trying to idenifiy the MAIN reason for my bets/raises/potcontrol etc, but it seems like somtimes there perfectly good reasons for either.

BTW Great CotW Zeth. Will read it again and again.

Larger bets may get more respect but have to be successful more often too.

basically know your Villian and take advantage of him is the lesson over and over in the top post.

I still think bluffing is the most overrated part of poker, Its a glory play, "I am the Man" play more often then it is a good poker hand reading play at micro's even by the regs. They even think out playing guys means out bluffing them. Great vaule bets are missed far more often and get none of the chest bumping fist pumping that a great bluff gets. I think this is so true at micros because 95% of people are just flinging bets out there hoping what there doing is working and not reading putting the villian on a range.

Reasons to bet/raise:

1) Value - getting a worse hand to call.

2) Bluff - getting a better hand to fold.

3) Capitalize on dead money - usually flows from 1 and/or 2.

#1 is by far the most important reason for betting and is key to beating uNL, but is important at any level.

If you can't come up with justification for betting based on the above you should check.

Just ask yourself why am I doing this before any decision, or when doing a session review ask yourself why you're betting/raising/chking.

I always like breaking it down in to these three points.

I do want to talk about bluffing vs. showdown value b/c I see sooooooooooooooooooooooo many regs screw this up.