All winning Texas holdem players bluff. But most losing Texas
holdem players bluff too. The difference between the winners and
the losers is knowing when to do it.
Have a high chance of success for a bluff. The best places to bluff in a Texas holdem tournament are when you have a large stack than an opponent, and when the opponent isn’t pot committed. When a player gets short stacked they become pot committed so when you try to bluff they call, even if it looks like they’re beat. Betting History of the Hand. Your good opponent is not likely to believe that your bet on the river means you hit your flush if your betting up until that point didn’t indicate that you were on a flush draw. Conversely, here’s an example of your bluff following a believable “I made the flush on the river” narrative. Bluffing in Texas Hold’em Bluffing is a vital ingredient to playing the most popular card game in the world; poker, and this article is centred on bluffing in the most popular format of poker played around the globe; Texas Hold’em.
You’ll find there are different types of bluffs and to be a
long term winning player you need to know each type and
understand when and how to use them for maximum profit.
Straight Bluffs
A straight bluff is when your only chance of winning the hand
is if your opponent or opponents fold. This often happens when
you miss a draw or your opponent hits a better hand on their
draw.
When your opponent hits a better hand by hitting their draw
it’s almost impossible to bluff them out of the hand. It’s not
always easy to see when they hit a draw, but the more you study
them and how they play the more likely you’ll be to put them on
a hand.
In the hands where you miss your draw you need to try to
determine if your opponent can predict that you missed your draw
by the board cards and the way you’ve been playing and you need
to figure out how strong their hand is.
For a straight bluff to work your opponent needs to be
convinced your hand is better than theirs and if they know what
they’re doing you need to make sure they’re not getting the
correct pot odds to call even if they think they’ll lose most of
the time.
If this all sounds complicated, that’s because it is
complicated. This is why it’s so hard to run successful straight
bluffs.
You’re drawing to an open end straight but don’t complete
your straight. You’ve been betting aggressively and the board
doesn’t show anything that looks too dangerous. You bet on the
river because the only way you can win is if your opponent
folds. This bluff has a decent chance of success because it’s
almost impossible for your opponent to put you on a straight
draw. You’ve also been betting aggressively making it look like
you have a strong hand from the start.
The flop has two cards of the same suit and you’re drawing to
a flush. Your opponent bets and you call on the flop and the
turn. On the river you don’t complete your flush and your
opponent bets. If you call you lose so you have to either fold
or raise. It’s almost impossible to get your opponent to fold in
this situation because you played the hand in a weak manner and
it looks obvious that you were drawing to the flush and missed.
Semi Bluffs
A semi bluff is when you have a hand that may or may not be
good, but you also have a draw to a better hand.
You see the flop with the ace and queen of clubs and the flop
has two clubs and the ace of diamonds. This gives you the top
pair and a draw to the flush. You want to play this hand
aggressively, even if another player is also playing
aggressively.
Semi bluffs don’t have to be as clear cut as this example.
You may pair your queen with four to a flush or have two pair
with a board that shows a possible flush.
Most of your bluffs should be semi bluffs where you have a
chance to win even when you get called.
When You Should
The short answer is you should bluff any time a bluff offers
the best positive expectation situation. This means that if a
bluff makes more money than any other option in the long run, or
loses less than any other option, you should do it.
You’re in a hand where you missed your draw and the pot has
$100 in it and you’re first to act against a single opponent. If
you check and your opponent checks you lose the hand. If you
check and your opponent bets you’ll either have to fold or
raise. If you bet your opponent can call or raise, in which you
lose, or they can fold.
In this example your only two real options are check and fold
to a raise, or bet. Checking means you have no chance to win so
the only real question is if you bet will it be profitable in
the long run. Here’s how you determine this:
If you bet $20 how often does your opponent have to fold to
show a long term profit?
Let’s look at what happens if you do this 100 times:
- Betting $20 100 times means you put a total of $2,000 in
the pot. - When you win you get back your $20 plus the $100 in the
pot. - So you simply divide the $2,000 investment by the $120
you get back to see what the break-even point is. - You have to make your opponent fold 16.67% of the time
to break even. - So if they fold 17 out of 100 times, or more, you’ve
made a profitable play.
You can determine the percentages using different size bets
to find the one that gives you the best chance to win.
Once you know the answer to how many times they have to fold,
the only thing you need to figure out is if they’ll fold this
many times or not. In the example above, the odds are high that
your opponent will fold at least one out of every five times, or
20%, so you should make the bet.
You also need to recognize these numbers when you’re on the
other side of the picture. If you think it’s possible your
opponent is bluffing you need to use the same type of
calculations to determine if a call is profitable in the long
run.
When You Shouldn’t
On the other side of the discussion, when you shouldn’t bluff
is determined much the same way as when you should. If it’s not
going to be profitable in the long run you shouldn’t bluff.
We’ve already mentioned one situation where it’s probably not
profitable to make a bluff. When you miss a flush draw it’s
often obvious that you’re bluffing. But you can use this same
mentality to extract extra money when you have two pair or a set
and it looks like you missed a flush. When you bet in this
situation you’ll almost always get called.
Use the same calculations you learned about in the last
section and combine the numbers with your knowledge of your
opponent and what has happened during the current hand. Try to
determine what your opponent holds and try to figure out what
they think you have.
How Often
The bad news is there isn’t a magic number or percentage of
times you should be bluffing. Proper bluffs depend on too many
variables that constantly change to be able to pinpoint a set
percentage of hands.
But the good news is you can probably improve your bluffing
game immediately by doing one simple thing. Start tracking how
often you bluff now and start bluffing half of the times you’re
bluffing now.
The reasons most players bluff too much is it’s exciting to
try to fool your opponent and when you watch poker on television
you see a bunch of bluffs. The poker shows cut out most of the
boring hands and because bluffs are exciting they get shown more
often than many other types of hands.
Your other option is to stop bluffing entirely for the next
several playing sessions and then just start using semi bluffs
from time to time. Then slowly start using a real bluff no more
than once per playing session.
Almost every long term losing Texas holdem player bluffs too
often. Even some of the better players bluff a little bit too
often, but they’re good enough in other parts of their game they
can cover up some of their faults.
The bottom line is if you want to start improving your
results you should immediately stop bluffing so much.
Bad Players and Good Players
One complaint that you’ll hear often is about when a player
makes what they think is a great bluff but a player calls them
and they start whining about how they can’t bluff a bad player.
They say this like they’d rather be playing against great
players.
It’s silly to want to play against better players. The way
you make money playing holdem is by playing against players who
aren’t as good as you.
Many poor players are hard to bluff because they call almost
any bet. But good players recognize this and stop bluffing
against the poor payers. Instead, bet your good hands against
the poor players because they’re more likely to pay you off.
Making bluffs work is as much about understanding the
psychology of poker and poker players and using it to your
advantage as anything else.
Years ago I was playing a no limit cash game and one of the
players was a hot shot kid who thought he was God’s gift to
poker players. He was convinced he was the best player in the
room and that he could outplay anyone and everyone.
We got involved in a heads up pot where I raised before the
flop, bet on the flop, and bet on the turn. I started the hand
with suited connectors and flopped a straight draw. I played the
hand aggressively but didn’t complete the straight. The raise
and bets I made before the river were normal size.
I knew that the only way I win the hand is by betting the
correct amount to get him to fold. Many players mistakenly think
they need to bet a lot to make their opponent fold. This is true
in some situations, but this guy thought he was so good that he
could lay down a hand in any situation proving he could read you
and your hand.
So in this situation a move all in would look like a bluff
and probably get called. So I took a long time to act, trying to
look like I was determining the perfect bet size to get him to
call, making it look like I was trying to extract the last
little bit of profit from him, and I made a very small bet.
The pot odds he was getting were so good that a good player
would never lay the hand down. But he wasn’t a good player, he
just thought he was. He thought a good player could lay down a
hand for a small bet and it made him look smart, but his ego
forced him to make a bad play.
He folded and I won the pot.
This is a perfect example of trying to understand your
opponents and how they think and figuring out a way to use it
against them. He could have called and I wouldn’t be writing
about the experience here, but until he actually became a player
that was almost as good as he thought he was, he’ll continue
making mistakes like the one we just went over.
You can learn a few lessons from this example:
- Always consider the pot odds when deciding whether to
fold or call - Always try to conceal how good or bad you really are at
the poker table - Don’t make yourself a target at the poker table
- Learn as much about your opponents as possible
Conclusion
Bluffing is exciting and can be addicting. Just remember to
make sure a bluff is the most profitable long term play before
you try it.
Always try to learn as much as possible about your opponents
so you can find the best times and situations to run a bluff.
Everything you learn about your opponents can mean more profit
in the long run.
And don’t forget to cut your bluffing in half starting today.
It’s almost guaranteed to increase your profits, and you might
find that you need to cut it in half again to increase your
winnings even more.
Any post with an ambitious title claiming that the concepts in the post are the most important is bound to generate controversy. Texas holdem is a complex enough game with enough levels of thinking that there are probably hundreds of concepts you could discuss in a blog post. Just thoroughly covering 7 concepts takes more space than most blog posts do.
At any rate, I’m going to give it a shot. These are Texas Holdem concepts that are less related to the play of individual hands and have more to do with your overall approach to the game.
One of my favorite poker writers, Steve Badger, often points out that poker isn’t a game where you should slavishly follow a cookbook recipe. He told me once that it’s more like making a stew—the exact amounts of each ingredient are open for negotiation, but you want a reasonable balance of those ingredients.
That’s what I’ve tried to do with my blog posts related to Texas Holdem ideas.
1- Game Selection Is Important
Being able to choose the most profitable game for your skill-set might be the most important poker concept to learn. It’s also probably one of the lease talked about skills, too. In fact, you can be a relatively poor player and make more money than a better player if you’re better at choosing the appropriate game.
This skill comes in most handy when you’re dealing with online poker because you have such a large number of games to choose from at any time.
But game selection comes up and is important in live play at brick and mortar poker rooms, too. Your goal is to find a game with more players who call a lot and play a lot of hands. (These are called “loose passive” players.) You want to avoid games with a lot of players who only play a few hands but bet and raise with them when they play them. (These are called “tight aggressive” players.)
You can read more about categorizing poker players in the section on concept #5, below. For now, just know that your goal is to find a table where you’re at least one of the best players at the table, if not THE best. You can make money if there are better players than you at the table, but you’ll probably avoid confrontations with them. If you’re good, they’ll avoid confrontations with you, too.
Finally, unless you have a big bankroll, stay away from games where there’s a lot of loose, aggressive action. Even if you have an edge, you might not be able to withstand the swings of luck that are part and parcel of playing at such a table.
Texas Holdem Council Bluffs
2- Attention Is an Important Prerequisite Skill for Learning to Read Hands
One of my biggest leaks as a new poker player was my tendency to not pay attention to any hand I wasn’t involved in. You’ll see plenty of players who do this. They’re often wearing earbuds. Sometimes they’re watching TV or just gabbing away with the other guys at the table.
When I learned to start watching what was going on more closely, my game improved dramatically. Paying attention gives you a better idea of your opponents’ playing tendencies (see concept #5 below). It will also help you figure out which hands are likelier to win in various situations.
I know from reading that big pairs win more often against smaller fields, but I need stronger hands to win against larger fields. Some of this depends on the texture of the overcards but getting a real feel for what wins in which situations requires attention and experience.
You might think that being patient enough to fold until you get premium cards is the most important Texas Holdem skill you could have. If that’s the only trick you have up your sleeve, you’re in trouble. That will beat a lot of competition at the lower levels, but even at low stakes holdem, you’ll find opponents who are paying attention to how you play and are compensating accordingly.
I’d suggest that being able to put your opponents on a range of hands is a more important skill. In fact, it might be the most important skill. This isn’t something someone has an innate talent for, either. You have to work for it, and that requires paying attention and thinking.
If you’re having trouble concentrating at 1st, I suggest singling out one opponent and pay attention to his playing tendencies. How aggressive is he? Does he bluff? Is he a calling station? Does he defend his blinds?
These are all questions you can answer about opponents if you pay attention to them for a while. Some players are easy to evaluate in this way. I often tell a story about a guy who played every hand preflop, and he raised with all of them, too. Putting him on a range of hands preflop was easy—he could have anything. He tightened up a little bit after the flop, though.
Most players are going to have subtler playing tendencies than this, though. The only way you’ll be able to pick up on these tendencies and put them on a range of hands is by paying attention to what they’re doing, even when you’ve folded and aren’t involved in the hand.
3- Bluffing Is Part of the Game, but It’s a Smaller Part of the Game than Some Beginners Think
People who watch poker on television or in the movies think that bluffing and tells are the 2 biggest components of the game. Both of those skills matter, but neither of them are hugely important compared to things like hand selection, aggression, and calculating outs and pot odds. But you can’t succeed in Texas Holdem if you never bluff at all, either—not unless you’re playing at the lowest limits imaginable.
One rule of thumb I learned early is that you should never try to bluff more than 2 opponents at a time. To win a bluff, all your opponents must fold so that you can win the pot. The more opponents you’re trying to bluff, the less likely you are to succeed. Your best option is to bluff against a single opponent.
Look at it this way:
If you’re bluffing one opponent who you estimate will fold 50% of the time, you don’t need a huge amount of money in the pot to make this a profitable play. You only need even money to break even.
But if you’re bluffing 2 opponents, each of whom has a 50% probability of folding, your chance of succeeding drops to 25%. (To calculate the probability of multiple events happening, you multiply the probability of each of them.) You need 3 to 1 to break even.
If you’re bluffing 3 opponents like that, your probability drops to 12.5%. Now you need 7 to 1 to break even. You won’t usually be getting pot odds good enough to warrant bluffing in this situation.
The best times to bluff are when you see scare cards come up on the flop or the turn or when an otherwise strong player starts acting weak. If you can find a situation where both situations are true, then you’re well-positioned to win a bluff.
The worst times to bluff are when you’re dealing with calling stations. These are players who play passively but rarely fold. Often they’ll check in front of you, but then when you bet into them, they call you down.
4- Don’t Tilt
Poker players are said to go “on tilt” when they get upset about how a hand turns out. They start betting and raising aggressively with lousy cards. Or sometimes they’ll start calling bets with hands they should fold. Players on tilt are trying to force an outcome.
If you’re going to play winning Texas Holdem, you absolutely must learn how to avoid going on tilt.
If you’re new to the game, you might think you’re immune to going on tilt. That’s a common beginner mistake, too. Until you’ve experienced getting your aces or kings cracked several times in a single session, you don’t know how you’re going to react emotionally. It’s easy to get discouraged and think that short-term variance means that everything you know about poker is meaningless in the face of random chance.
The best thing to do if you go on tilt is to quit playing temporarily. You can lose tremendous amounts of money while you’re on tilt. The money you save by getting away from the table when you’re upset is worth just as much as that same amount of money in a pot.
Learning to keep calm and handle the swings of the game is a skill like any other and takes practice. It’s also easy to tilt and not realize you’ve tilted. Recognizing when you’re not playing your best game because of your emotions is a critical skill.
One way to develop this skill is by practicing meditation, by the way. People who meditate pay better attention. They’re more easily able to recognize what’s going on, both inside and outside. I’m not sure about other benefits of meditation, but I’m convinced that poker players who meditate on a regular basis have better luck than those who don’t.
5- Categorizing Your Opponents Is a Crucial Skill
One of the 1st things I learned about poker strategy had to do with playing styles. I’d never given the concept of playing style much thought until I read Andy Bellin’s book, Poker Nation—which was my 1st poker book, by the way.
The different styles of play make poker so interesting. Luckily, the number of styles can be categorized into a handful of groups. How you should play against opponents of a specific style varies based on how they play.
If you pay attention to your opponents’ general tendencies, you can put them into 1 of 4 categories:
- Tight and aggressive
- Tight and passive
- Loose and aggressive
- Loose and passive
Think of these as being 2 continuums. One—the tight-loose continuum—describes how often a player participates in a hand. Tight players fold a lot and only play premium hands. Loose players don’t fold often, so they might have any kind of cards.
The other continuum—the aggressive and passive continuum—describes how often a player bets and raises versus checking and calling. Aggressive players drive the action by betting and raising. Passive players, on the other hand, check and call more often.
But these aren’t binary categories, either. You can face a tight player who folds 90% of his hands preflop, or a tight player who folds 80% of his hands preflop. You can face a loose player who only folds 50% of his hands preflop, or you could even face a player so loose that he plays 100% of his hands preflop. (I played a guy like this at the Winstar in Oklahoma not long ago.)
Also, some players play looser from the blinds even if they play tight the rest of the time. Other players might play loose before the flop but tighten up considerably on the flop and the turn.
That’s why I suggested that these categories are continuums.
The consensus is that tight aggressive is the best playing style, so that’s the style you should emulate. Don’t play many hands, but when you do, bet and raise with those hands. Go big or go home.
The 2nd best approach is loose aggressive. If you’re facing the right opponents, being willing to bet and raise a lot is enough to get you an edge at the poker table. You get extra equity if you’re facing tight players because you win a certain percentage of pots just because your opponents fold. And even if you have 2nd best cards, you’ll occasionally hit your draw.
A passive poker player is always the worst. Rocks (tight-passive players) tend to lose their money in the face of aggression. Calling stations (loose-passive players) tend to pay off their tighter opponents. Passive players of either persuasion never (or rarely) give their opponents an opportunity to fold.
When you categorize your opponents, you can make better-educated guesses about what kinds of cards they might be playing. If you get good enough at that, it’s like playing poker with someone whose hole cards are always exposed.
6- Learn When to Play for Higher Stakes
If you’re a winning player at the $2/$4 tables, you might also be a winner at the $5/$10 tables. You won’t know until you take a shot at that level. If you ARE able to win at the higher limits, you should be able to make more money just because there are larger amounts of money in play in those situations.
One thing to think about is how big your bankroll is. Even if you have an edge, short-term variance (i.e. bad luck) can cause you to lose all your money and go broke. You should have about 300 big bets at a given level if you want to avoid risking going broke. Of course, if you’re a bad player, it won’t matter how big your bankroll is. The size of your bankroll only starts to matter when you’re a winning player.
That’s only one aspect of moving up in stakes, though. You also need to be skilled enough to win at that next level. You might be ready; you might not.
My suggestion is to start with a bankroll that will get you through to the lowest limit game in the cardroom. If you’re playing $2/$4, then you should have a $1200 bankroll.
Set yourself a goal of winning enough money to move up to the $3/$6 tables. That means you have to win $600 at that level before moving up.
If you lose that $600 and get back down to $1200, you go back to the $2/$4 tables.
But if you’re winning, you move up in stakes to the $4/$8 tables once your bankroll has increased to $2400.
This kind of approach guarantees that your skills are improving, because it’s almost impossible to grow your bankroll like that without being able to win at the higher stakes, too.
In other words, you’ll know when you’re ready to move up because your bankroll will tell you.
7- Tells Can Take Your Profits to the Next Level
If you watch TV or movies about poker, you might think that picking up tells is the #1 most important skill in poker.
It’s not.
But learning to read your opponents’ tells can help you win more money than you might win otherwise. It won’t make up for a lack of ability to fold or a lack of ability to read other players. But if you’ve mastered the basics, looking for and finding tells can take your game and profits to the next level.
Not all tells are individual, either. Some players fall into predictable categories. You can read Caro’s Book of Tells by Mike Caro or Read ‘Em and Reap by Joe Navarro to learn about some common tells that apply to most players.
Here are some tells you can look for without reading an entire book on the subject, though:
Shaking hands – A player whose hands are shaking when he goes to bet or raise isn’t bluffing, usually. That’s a release of subconscious excitement about how strong is hand is. Keep this in mind when putting that opponent on a range of hands.
Are they going to play the hand? – Most players learn pretty quickly that they’re not supposed to act out of turn. But if you watch the players to your left, you can often see clues to what they’re planning to do before they do it. It’s obvious when a player puts his chips on top of his cards that he’s planning to play his hand. If he’s picking up his chips even though it isn’t his turn to act, he’s getting ready to call, bet, or raise. Paying attention to this tell can help you avoid some of the disadvantages of playing out of position.
Weak is strong, and strong is weak. – Players who act one way are usually representing the opposite. A player who’s trying to stare you down when he’s betting or raising into you often has a weak hand and is hoping you’ll bluff. A player who’s staring at the television and calling in a disinterested manner probably has a monster and is hoping to get some action with it. Most of the time, players try to be deceptive and act in the manner opposite of their hand strength.
It’s easier to pick up on your opponents’ tells when you’re not involved in a hand. See concepts #2 and #5 above.
Conclusion
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that “most important Texas Holdem concepts” is a highly subjective idea. These are the concepts I think are most important, especially if you’re just getting started. I’ve tried to focus on concepts that apply to the game as a whole and your overall approach to it.
You’ll find other blog posts with specific details about how to play hands of certain types from certain positions at certain levels. There’s nothing wrong with those posts, either. I just think you need to grasp some of these other elements of poker first, or at least concurrently, with those tactics.
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