Bluffing Basics

The most important thing in playing a Poker hand is understanding the players at the table. Bluffs depend almost entirely on how other players will react to the information you’re going to pretend to convey at the table.

Before you head any farther, make sure you have a basic understanding of Book 3, Chapter 6 and what it means to play the other players at the table — those concepts are the keys you need to understanding bluffs and making them work.

Your turn not to tell

In order for any bluff to work, you first have to turn off all the other tells you normally broadcast in a game. For example, if you always riffle your Poker chips on the table whenever you have a marginal hand, people are going to be one heck of a lot less likely to believe your big bet represents a good hand if you’re shuffling your chips like a bored roulette dealer before you make it.

Of course, one of the problems of becoming overly stoic at the table is that all your small, and otherwise usually not noticeable, tells become much more pronounced. “Gee, I never noticed that you rub your fingertips together for one second whenever you have a bad hand, but now that you don’t shuffle those chips anymore, it’s a whole lot more obvious.”

The best way to get a feel for the way you broadcast at a table is to either videotape yourself playing cards with your friends in a home game, or better yet, designate one of your pals as your Poker watchdog and have him give you a rundown on the way you act and play. The only problem with assigning a watchdog is you essentially eliminate playing that person for money for the rest of your life — so if you do choose someone, it’s probably better to pick the girl who beats you all the time rather than the guy who helps subsidize your rent every month.

If you can’t shut off your emotional broadcasting system as you play, you should at least be aware of what your tells are so you can mimic them in situations when you want to bluff.

When you first start playing Poker, at least up through intermediate play, players will indicate the opposite of what they are. It’s as though bluffing equates with “lying,” so people will act the opposite — if their hands are weak they’ll act strong, if their hands are strong they’ll act weak. Don’t fall into this same trap yourself. If you’re not highly skilled, you’re better off conveying no expression than trying to misdirect someone with an “act.”

Don’t bluff people worse than you

Okay, okay, the title isn’t strictly true, but we’ve put it up there in headline bold to make a point and have you think about it. Bluffing people worse than you are, especially if they’re considerably worse than you are, doesn’t always work the way you want it to.

You’re more likely to run across these types of people early in your Poker career. For some reason, they don’t seem to end up playing the game for years on end. In the following sections, we tell you why not to bluff them.

Some people might call anyway

The killing phrase you want to listen for at a Poker table is, “I just called to keep you honest.” If you ever hear someone say that at a table, and you’re convinced it’s not a bigger part of some general Poker ruse, that’s a player you don’t want to bluff. Essentially what he’s saying is, “You know what? I’m a bonehead. I’m so stupid I’ll actually call you with a hand that can’t beat what you’re representing, and yes, I do believe you have it. I’m just going to give my money away to you.” And instead, he beats you.

If you run across a player like that, you can beat him, sure. But the way to do it is to bet when you have a good hand, not a bad one.

Some people don’t understand what “lucky” means

Many beginning players don’t have a basic understanding of the mathematics behind Poker, and may call simply because they don’t understand what’s at stake.

For example, let’s say the board shows a rainbow K-K-8-2 and the only hands you’ve shown all night have had kings in them. You’re sitting with A-Q in a No-Limit game and decide to push all-in to feign a set of kings. To your dismay, your opponent says, “I know you have three kings, but I’ve got pocket rockets here, and I’m going to call and hope for that ace.”

You’ve gone from having a person not understand what it means to draw to only two outs to a much larger problem of drawing dead for all the marbles.

Assuming the river card wasn’t an ace, if you had waited to make this all-in bluff, you would have fared much better.

Now it’s true that you may not have any idea just how far gone some of your “lesser” opponents may be, but if you’re patient and let the game ride for a while, you’ll get some idea.

For opponents who seem too dull (or just too weird) to successfully bluff, you’re better off not relying on bluffing and instead taking advantage of other types of errors they may make — like playing too many hands or misjudging the relative strength of their hands to the rest of the table.

Making your bluff count

You only want to bluff where it matters, not where it doesn’t.

To look at an extreme example, if you’re sitting in the small blind with 4-2 off-suit in a No-Limit ring game and bet all-in to gobble up the big blind, what have you proven?

If that player passes, you’ve won a single bet on the table by risking your entire stack. That’s the upside.

The downside is that you’ve mildly aggravated the player with the big blind and, worse, you’ve drawn the attention of the table to you. Everyone saw the play; everyone has marked you as a potential bluffer. Slow-players love to eat players alive who do that kind of stuff.

And if the player does call (slightly more likely than usual because everyone else at the table has folded), you’re going to be behind in the race.

You’re better off bluffing in situations in which

There are more chips in the pot (you actually get something if you’re right).
The bluff could make a difference in your tournament position/standing.
You have a reason to establish a stronger table image.

When to Bluff

One of the key elements to bluffing is knowing when to do it. If a bluff is well timed, it will mean more to your stack and it’s more likely to succeed.

Bluffing based on your image of “predictability”

There are two polar-opposite philosophies about how opposing players should view you as a player at the card table. One is to have people think of you as an unknown-and-hard-to-classify player; the other is to be thought of as being very predictable. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Playing the part of the wild man

The advantage of being an unpredictable player at a table is that no one is sure what you have and what it means. Is he bluffing? Is he just over-betting? Does he have something but wants us to think he’s bluffing?

There is certainly a kind of satisfaction in being thought of as the loose cannon at the Poker table that can be had in few other ways (aside from doing something like standing up in the middle of a restaurant and starting to sing). The problem, however, is it will cause people to just stick closer to their pure game.

From a pure bluffing point of view, you’re better off conveying a sense of predictability.

Playing the role of the predictable player

If you have a very predictable presence at the table — meaning players are always fairly certain they think they know what you have — a bluff is much easier to pull off.

To illustrate: If the only hands you’ve ever shown are very strong opening hands (like those we talk about in Book 3, Chapter 2), people will start making predictions on what your hand is, based on the boards that they’re seeing. Say a flop were to show a rainbow Q-J-10, someone bet in an early position, and you raised from a middle position (Book 3, Chapter 2 also has more on the importance of position), you’d probably get players spinning into this type of thinking: “Let’s see, she called pre-flop and now I’m looking at that board… . She’s been playing only tight hands and very conservatively… . She’s got something like a Broadway straight or trip Queens.” Even though you may only have 7-7 for a pair lower than the board.

In fact, if someone does raise here, you’re almost certainly behind and you need to see a 7 on the turn. Continuing to bet the hand to anyone calling the flop-raise on the turn and the river is probably suicidal because if he’s good enough to call you early on, he’ll be good enough to check-call you throughout the entirety of the hand.

Looking at your hand from the outside

When you bluff, try to get inside your opponent’s head, or at least take an objective view of the board. This can be harder than it sounds because everyone has a natural bias toward his own play — people tend to think of themselves as better players than they actually are and their opponents as worse than they actually are.

Boards that hint at the dangerous cards a player could be holding make the best bluffing opportunities. Here are some examples of “more bluffable” boards:

Flush draws: A board with four clubs looks ominous. (More so if you don’t actually hold any clubs in your hand, eh?) If you’re up against only one other opponent, the chances are he doesn’t have a club either. (If you’re up against two opponents, odds are that one of them does.) You may want to take advantage of it.
Straight draws: Any board showing a straight draw can be scary. Something like 6-7-8-9 is even scarier if people see you betting from a later position. If they know Poker theory (or at least have been paying attention), they’ll assume that you had a lower-quality hand and are overlapping the cards they are seeing.
Hidden trips: Boards like 2-4-7 only get heavily bet one of two ways: Either someone has a big over pair, like pocket Kings, or someone has hit trips on the board. This bluff is harder to pull off against beginning players than it is against intermediates.
Overt trips: A-A-2 is the type of board that’s just screaming for someone to have tripped up (especially because people love to tag along into the game with aces). Yet, half the aces in the deck are gone, so acting as though you have one can potentially be a safer bet than it first appears.

You can never bluff a person who already has the best hand, or worse, holds the hand you’re acting like you have. And you will run across these players sooner or later. Accept that as a risk, understand it will happen, and move on with your plans.

Bluffing in the right game

Some games are easier to bluff than others. In general Limit tends to be a much more difficult game to bluff. It’s certainly not impossible, but the amount that a person can bet at any one time (and, therefore, lose at any one time) is limited. Typically, bluffing in Limit works best either in games with extremely advanced players or in games with beginners who don’t fall into the “I never fold” category.

No-Limit is a much easier game to bluff because the stakes are higher, so the penalty of a bad call is more crushing. Obviously, it makes the bluffing risk that much higher, but that is both the beauty and horror of No-Limit.

Who to Bluff

Bluffing isn’t something you do in a vacuum; you need to have a target. And the bigger and rounder you can paint that target, the easier it is to hit.

Preying on weak personalities

If the concept of picking on people when they’re down just generally turns your stomach, Poker may be a bad game for you. If you’re not willing to just keep beating on an opponent — even when he’s down — you better believe that that opponent is more than willing to come back and pound more than a little on you after he gets some footing.

BLUFFING HANDS IN THE MIDDLE GROUND

Nearly all your successful bluffs will happen in the area we call “the middle ground.” You can think of hands as being divided into three large categories:

Good hands
Bad hands
In-between hands

When your opponent has a good hand, for the most part you’re not going to be able to bluff her unless she thinks you have a great hand. So bluffing against a good hand is either rare, impractical, or foolish.

When your opponent has a bad hand, all you’re really going to do is make her fold faster. Although it’s true that semi-bluffs (discussed later in this chapter) work against these hands, for the most part if you’re even a little aggressive in your play, you’ll win these.

The in-between hands, however, are the middle ground where it all happens. You want to be aware of, and probing for, the hands that your opponent has that she just isn’t that committed to. Those are the hands you can bluff against no matter what you have, because, quite simply, your opponent would rather let them go than fight with ’em.

Think about how you feel about an in-between hand. Now fight that insecurity in your opponent.

Knowing weakness when you see it

Bluffing will always work the best on opponents who are willing to drop a hand or those who can somehow be convinced that it’s just easier to let this hand go for now and fight for a better one later.

The thing you want to look for in opponents are those who only play with the absolute best of hands, or better still, those who only call raises when they feel that they have something very close to the best hand possible on the table. These are the people you need to turn your bluffing attention to because they will fold more than they should.

Playing against those who show no weakness

You’ll run across people (especially early in your Poker career) who simply refuse to fold a hand. The underlying theory is that they figure you’re a pathological liar and try to bluff every hand. (Actually, it’s more likely that they just don’t want to be embarrassed by having been bluffed.)

If you run across these overly macho types, your best bet is to not bluff at all (it’s not going to work because they won’t fold) and instead only play hands of the highest quality. Unless you run into that awkward situation where your good hand is beaten by their great hand, you’ll actually win money more quickly off these folks than you do off the ones you bluff.

Taking advantage of other situations

Bluffing may work to your advantage for other reasons. Those reasons run the gamut, but here are a few:

Some people, whether they win or lose, will set a definite limit of how far down they’ll allow their chip stack to fall. If you run across people with this proclivity, you can nearly always bluff them when they’re getting close to whatever line they draw because they don’t want to cross a mental boundary.
It’s easier to bluff people who are preoccupied. If your opponent is taking a phone call from a nagging boyfriend (my editor made me change the gender), playing at another table simultaneously online, watching the grill at your Poker game, or getting paged for dinner in the casino restaurant, it’s much easier to convince her to let go of a hand with a big bet or raise.
Chip leaders in tournaments can bully the smaller stacks. This is especially true when you get near the bubble that determines who will end up in the money and who won’t.
Bluffing is cheaper on the hole cards and flop than it is in on the turn and river. It’s essentially half-price to bluff early on and may gain you an early pot win, or as you can see in Book 3, Chapter 3, a free card.
Bluffing is easier with fewer players. As a rule, you want to be up against, at most, two other players when you bluff — and being up against only one other player is a considerably more favorable situation for you. Remember: When you’re bluffing, you’re trying to get people with intermediate hands to drop — if you try to push enough of them at one time, one of them will not be pushed.

The Semi-Bluff

A semi-bluff is where you bet a hand a little bit stronger than you should or make a bet implying a hand is a bit better than it is. Usually the hope and prayer behind a semi-bluff is that if someone calls you, you have a decent chance of outdrawing your opponent.

Think of a semi-bluff like having a pit bull puppy with a deeper-than-normal bark. It sounds evil enough that most people will stay away. And for those who venture into the yard? Well, maybe it’ll grow big enough that by the time your opponent opens the door to your house, the dog can tear his leg off.

When to semi-bluff

The rules for semi-bluffing are nearly identical to those of regular bluffing. The biggest difference is you’re going to be playing more heavily with the concept of drawing with a semi-bluff (whereas a full-on bluff tends to deal more with the community cards that are already dealt).

Here’s an example: Imagine you have K♥ 10♥ and the flop is Q♦ Q♥ 9♥. You’re sitting in later position, and someone bets in front of you. A raise here is a semi-bluff. You don’t really have a hand yet to speak of — just a straight draw, a flush draw, and a straight-flush draw. The hidden beauty of a raise, however, is that it may make people think you have trip queens this instant and are trying to do something like drive the flush draws away.

Here’s another example: Say you have A♠ 3♠ playing from a late position and the flop is a rainbow 9♠ 5♥ 3♣. That’s a truly anemic and shaky flop — so much so that there’s a pretty good chance no one’s going to touch it with his hole cards. A raise post-flop isn’t that bad of play in and of itself, but considering that you can catch an ace, or have a freak shot at two running spades for a flush, a raise here falls into the category of semi-bluff. (If you got a caller here and then saw another spade on the turn, it’s probably worth following it with yet another semi-bluff. Your opponent almost certainly would put you on trips at that point because he wouldn’t think you’d be crazy enough to play for a running spade flush.)

Obviously, people who are more likely to fold to a flat-out bluff are also more likely to pass on a semi-bluff.

Why semi-bluff?

There are a couple of reasons to consider a semi-bluff:

When someone folds, you get their money 100 percent of the time. There are no bad beats, no lucky draws — you just flat-out win. The more often you can make this happen at a Poker table, the better your game will do in the long run. Semi-bluffing gives you chance at making that happen.
Semi-bluffing is also a nice toe into the water of the bluffing pool. It’s not a full-on bluff, so you may not be as uncomfortable about doing it (either consciously or unconsciously) because you feel you can actually make things better with a draw. This comfort, in turn, may make the play seem more “natural” to other players at the table and make them more likely to pass. Getting this kind of emotional support and security over your bluffing habits will do nothing but help your game.
Semi-bluffing is harder for opponents to read and figure out, even after they see your cards. Unless you’re playing in a home game, and especially if the people around the table are a little fatigued and the game has essentially dropped into autopilot, what happened is often not totally clear. You may get a mild taint as being either insane or just a bad player if people can’t put rhyme or reason to it. But it’s not as if a reputation like that is going to bother your game.

Getting Caught — Now What?

First of all, understand that you will get caught bluffing. It’s all a part of the game. When you do, don’t freak out or let it rattle you. Instead, it’s time, once again, to step outside yourself and try to see the hand through your opponent’s eyes. This turns out to be considerably less difficult than evaluating your pre-bluff strategy because oftentimes your opponent will start crowing at you at length about how he just knew that you weren’t telling the truth and that you never were a good bluffer and a whole bunch of other gibberish you’d rather not hear (but absolutely should listen to).

The immediate thing that your bluff tells other players is that, yes, you do in fact have the ability to bluff built into your character. This knowledge may cause a few players to immediately, completely reevaluate your play on the chance they thought you weren’t capable of it.

You’ll almost certainly be thought of as a looser player, no matter how tight or loose they thought you were before. This means you’ll be more even more likely to be called, so tighten up on the hands you play a bit, but don’t be afraid to go ahead and bet aggressively. Because players are more likely to call, you may well be able to recoup what you’ve lost in just a few large bets.

It may also indicate to other players that you’re unable to read a tell on another player at the table if she happened to have a monster hand and you sort of missed that in your frenzy of trying to bluff against her. This, in turn, may cause the other players to be not quite as guarded toward you in their plays (because, after all, you’re an idiot if you couldn’t see that one coming) and you may find you’re suddenly able to pick up much more information about other players (especially when playing only one other player heads-up in a pot).

Bluffing: When Everything Isn’t What It Appears to Be