Bluffing Styles: Some players have a plan

[thestuman]

Bluffing Styles: Some players have a plan

Jim McKenna / Poker Player Newspaper




How often have you been playing in a Texas Hold 'Em game with fair cards and a player behind you just limps in? Or, perhaps, hesitates before he calls and seems to be doing it reluctantly. Do you relax and think, "OK, At least I've got him beat!"

This is actually when you should start to worry. This quiet player who likes to just call and hide behind the proverbial bush, may already have you in his or her trap. That's why I call this type of bluffing "Sneak Bluffing." It's one of the hard ones to avoid since the player is seldom aggressive yet plays a pretty tight game.


One of these players is a friend of mine and I asked him once, "Do you come to the table with a short stake on purpose or do you have an angle?" He said, "I do it for the players who don't know how tight and conservative a player I am. I'm hoping that such players will make the mistake of going after me when I play good cards and get caught up in my act that I haven't been doing too well." Wow! I knew my friend was much better than he appeared. However, I thought that his short stacks meant that he wasn't doing very well.

That's exactly what he wanted me to think. Now that's pretty sneaky and pretty clever. There's another type of player who likes to be sneaky when he or she bluffs. It's the highly structured player who plans his every move. He only plays good cards and maximizes plays when in position. This is a system player who even has a system for when and how he or she bluffs.

The problem this player has is that he or she is so structured that when they bet, most people with marginal hands will fold like trained pigs. So, I asked another friend who is like this how he handles his tight reputation. I wasn't surprised to hear him say, "I take advantage of it. Sometimes when I've got lousy cards and I am in a good position, I'll bet or check-raise with a stone-cold bluff!" I wondered if he was setting me up to call him next time that he has a great hand.

There's another kind of bluffing style that I refer to as "Dare Bluffing." These players are daring you to call them because they know they have you beat. They are bluffing with the best hand and they seem to know it. These players are also highly planned in their actions and they are aggressive when they play. That's because they only play with winning hands and will make you pay if you are chasing with a mediocre hand. Their dares, however, are not always obvious. They could be checking and re-raise a bet when someone bets. Their bets are always at least "Semi-Bluffs." In other words, what they have is already good and there's a chance of improving if you call them.

Both of these bluffers who are highly structured, have a plan, and differ in how aggressive they bluff. The "Sneak Bluffer" is slow to bluff and plays a more passive game. The "Dare Buffer" is equipped with a plan to at least semi-bluff and does so in a more aggressive fashion.

There are a whole set of players who are not so well planned in their bluffs. They are much looser players who bluff and keep the action going. Some of these unplanned bluffers I refer to as employing "Attack Bluffing." Others are less aggressive and seem to be playing hands they don't have but wish they did. I refer to these as using "Dream Bluffing." Structured players are bluffing with their eyes wide open.

Our next article will feature how many players like to close their eyes with little regard to planning when they bluff.

[thestuman]

Monitoring bluffs can do more harm than good

Poker Player Newspaper


Is there ego in poker? Obviously. But that ego doesn't always relate to winning or losing. Often it relates, instead, to bluffing. Some players take bluffing personally. They feel wounded when they're the victim of a bluff, and they feel euphoric when they succeed by bluffing.

Fine. I've never quite figured out why this is so, because I tend to giggle and enjoy it when opponents bluff me successfully. More power to them. If they bluff too often, they're straying from perfect poker. And they stray - whether it's bluffing too often or not calling enough - the more likely they are to lose to an opponent who doesn't. Law of jungle. Force of nature. Power of probability.

Call More Often


So, yes, it's OK with me if opponents bluff too often. I'll just call more often in response. But sometimes I won't have anything to call with and they'll succeed by bluffing with an even weaker hand than mine. Oh, well. In the hidden recesses of the world, life will endure despite this calamity.

No, it's not a big deal to me if get bluffed out of a pot. And it's not a big deal to me if I get caught bluffing, either. In fact, since I try to convey a loose image, in order to get more calls in the future, there's compensation in getting caught bluffing. Therefore, I don't take bluffing personally, and neither should you.

Here's a lecture I delivered years ago. I've edited slightly for this column. It was called: The mistake of monitoring bluffs. And it sounded like this...


Rick kept a poker notebook. So, one day many years ago when we were drinking coffee and having a philosophical argument about bluffing, he pulled it from his pocket to prove his case. You see, I had contended that the right way to beat those way-too-loose poker games in Gardena, California in the 1970s was to hardly bluff at all.

Sure, you could bluff once in a while, but you had to be certain that the situation ran contrary to the loose flow of the game - that both the particular opponent and the way the cards were playing out made a bluff reasonable. Most of the time this was not the case, I argued, because players in Gardena would call anybody who was breathing. Bluffs were mostly futile exercises in ego enhancement.

Not so, Rick argued. And he cited statistics from his notebook. He had logged games in the $2/$4 up to the $10/$20 range. Mostly he played fivecard draw poker, as I did back then. At the end of each day, he would scour his notes and make a neat statistical table of how he was faring at poker. This covered a lot of factors - how he had done with aces, how he had done drawing to flushes, the average size of his pots... practically everything.

Ahead on Bluffs


So, he told me that for his last 500 attempted bluffs he was ahead something like, $953. That's almost $2 every time he bluffed, he boasted. That was a meaningful amount back then, considering the average size of game Rick played.

"I say you're losing money bluffing," I countered.

"What?" he blustered. "Do you think I'm making these statistics up?"

"No," I said, "I don't think you're making them up, but I think you're misinterpreting what they mean."

A Secret



And I was right. Let me share a secret with you. It doesn't do you much good to monitor the results of your bluffs, because you really don't know - a lot of the time - whether you had the best hand or not.

Think about it. Let's say you're playing seven-card stud and you have missed everything. You have an ace-high. Your opponent probably has something, but only has a king-high showing on the river. He checks to you. You hope he has some small pair that he might throw away if you bet. So you do bet. And, wonder of wonders, he folds.

Now what? Well, if you're Rick, you enter that as a bluffing success in your notebook. But wait one darn minute here. What if your opponent only had a king-high and had missed a straight or a flush? Now you're giving yourself credit for a win that you would have secured anyway, without any risk, by simply showing down your hand.

And here's the powerful truth. A great number of bluffs that seem to be successful are the result of your having the best hand, anyway! That's important and I'll repeat it. A lot of the time that you think your bluff succeeded, you had the best hand.

Betting a Weak Hand


Now, there's another thing we need to consider. It might be correct to bet a weak hand, even if you're not sure you're bluffing. That's because you should often bet in order to avoid a showdown when you think you're opponent is also weak, but you're not certain which one of you has the better hand. If you figure you'll only win half the time in a showdown, but win much more often when you bet, it's usually flat out worth the risk. But don't confuse this tactic with getting away with a bluff. This is just a strategic move, not an attempt to bluff, because you don't really know whether or not you're bluffing.

Here's what you need to keep in mind. You can only give yourself credit for scoring a bluff if you know your opponent has a better hand. And when you do bluff against a player who has a better hand, try to target hands you know are better, but not very strong. Those are the ones loose opponents might throw away. You should hardly ever try to bluff a loose opponent who is likely to hold a medium-strong hand, because loose opponents habitually call with medium strength. That what makes them loose players.

Losing, not Winning


So, Rick was wrong. If he magically had the knowledge to filter out from his notebook all those bluff attempts when he actually was betting the better hand, then he probably would have discovered that he was losing money on his bluffs, not winning money. And that makes sense, because, on average, you just can't expect to make money bluffing players who call too much.

So, save your bluffs for tighter opponents, for rare situations that cry out for bluffs, and for times when you know your opponent has you beat for sure, but is likely to hold a very weak hand. Otherwise, the trick in loose games is to seldom bluff, period.

[MackeSWE]

Well, when I bluff, it often is when I re-raised before the flop, and if I dont catch the right cards, I often bluff me to the pot, some players stick around untill the river, but in the end all players often fold.
Thats my tip

[BangTheBook]

Welcome aboard Macke. Risky style but during online play it usually works. I just hate when you re-raise a pot and players just wont fold because they are in the "blind" as they always say it. The flop comes rags and they have 2 pair!

[thestuman]

i never bluff........

remember that tommorrow night

[BangTheBook]

[toddc33]

i usually slowplay but sometimes i bluff

[thestuman]

Originally Posted by toddc33

i usually slowplay but sometimes i bluff

welcome toddc33 i see you signed up for one freeroll remember we have 2 this week

[Highwind]

strength=weakness
weakness=strength

there ya go, you just figured out how the majority of novice poker players bluff.

[MountainBoy]

I like to slow-play, but have to seldome been beat with my pocket AA or such with something on the river. I try to bump up the pot and get my opponent to as close as I can to all in by large increments at a time. This works best for me. MB