Advanced Bluffing
Sure you now know when
the best situations to bluff at, what about those times where you
are unsure? It's always good to look at poker from a mathematical
perspective, and that even applies to bluffing. This way if the
statistics are with you, you should always be on top. You can
determine with statistics if it is financially smart to bluff or
make calls. This will give you an edge over someone else, and poker
is all about who has the most edges over the other players. Remember
you are playing against other people not the house, so its all up to
you to walk away with the money.
It’s good to make the
math on potential straights and flushes that you missed but appear
that you could have hit it. For example let’s say you have two
hearts as your hole cards, flop comes heart, heart, club (you have a
flush draw, and probably will bet/raise). Now the turn comes club,
and the river is a club. What are you going to do? You just missed
your flush… BUT you can act like the club flush was what you were
going for! Another example is the flop is 3,5,6 (you have a 4 as one
of your hole cards, sweet an open ended straight draw!) but the turn
and flop is 8, 9. Crap, you missed your draw again! But wait…you can
act like you have that 7! Why? Likely if a person is in this hand to
the river, they had a 4 like you (thus you can scare them out of the
hand).
So let’s apply
the math to the above situations. Let's it’s in a $10/$20 game and
on the river there is $300 in the pot. Your only opponent checks to
you. If you check, you know you've lost. So you bluff. The reasoning
is that if you invest another $30, you're getting 10 to 1 odds. As a
percent that's around 10%. If they fold more than 10% of the time,
you make money in the long poker game of life. If not, it's a losing
endeavor.
Of course as usual you should know your opponent! Knowing you
opponent will help you deal with the situation instead of a pure
mathematical look at it, and will help make these bluffs worth it.
You can also evaluate it by reasoning that they missed their draw
more than 10% of the time and will fold. Another reason why you want
it just between you and someone else is if two players were involved
in the pot, it cuts the odds in half. With three, it becomes 1/3rd
of 10%, etc. You can see why you want to bluff against fewer
players, it is mathematically unsound. Also, keep in mind other
people will stay in the pot purely because of pot odds. When
applying odds and math with a bluff make sure to know your
opponent’s playing style. You should use this when you are unsure of
what move to make, not as a guideline of how to play.
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