To figure out the size I use the rule 3. So with 1 caller I will squeeze 4x the open-raise size, with 2 callers 4. As with any sizing formula, this is really just a starting point. On the contrary, also consider spots where you may need to make your squeeze just a tad larger to generate those preflop folds often enough.

And of course if you risk less money you need less fold and if you risk more money then you need more folds to breakeven.

The last consideration is our hand. Who cares if we have 85o, A3o, or Q9s…so long as we can bluff squeeze and pick up the pot we are happy!

Now some hands certainly play better than others. But we can also consider how blockers impact their combos. A blocker is a card that limits how many combos of a certain hand villain can have.

For instance, in this hand, we have K3s which blocks combos of AK from 16 down to 12 and blocks combos of KK from 6 down to 3. And if we have to go postflop Ax and Kx have decent equity. Good squeezes are an easy way to make money with hands you would otherwise fold.

Practice looking for good bluff squeezes in your own games and go down that checklist to ensure you are making easy profit with those ugly cards. We can use a very similar process when 3betting bluff hands preflop. While a squeeze requires multiple players to fold preflop the original raiser AND all of the callers , a 3bet has fewer players to contend with.

This can lead to even better preflop bluffing opportunities, especially when you find players who are folding too often against the extra aggression. Let me explain how that works:.

For instance, say that UTG open-raises and you are next to act with AJ. Postflop play has extra nuance given the multiple ways you get to the flop, what the flop texture is, exact positions, etc.

But since most starting hands connect with the flop rarely, bluffing is of the utmost importance. What began as an innocent 3bet preflop, turns into a ton of aggression when hero misses the flop and decides to get it all-in with just Ace-high.

Concepts include hand reading, floating vs 3betting, and fold equity or rather, when there is very little fold equity! In this hand, the player in seat 3 is described as extremely loose, whereas hero has been playing extremely tight.

What do you think is going to happen? But if you think they are folding things like 44s or A6 suited or anything junky like that, I can totally be on board with the cbet.

It just totally depends on your assumptions and also how aggressively they play things like straight draws, pairs, gutshots with overs, etc. Bluffing is crucial, but bluffing requires your opponent to fold often enough, either now or later.

Given the texture and size of the check-raise, it would likely have been better for hero to avoid the bluff. Remember, knowing when NOT to bluff is just as important as knowing when TO bluff!

Hands like this require some solid hand reading skills. Hero in this hand put their opponent on a range that included many two pair combos. However, a conversation about overbetting the pot is certainly in order.

As a very general guideline to follow value-to-bluff ratios for all streets of play should ideally something conform to the likes of this formula:.

NOTE: As you know by now, though, that formula for the river will be true if using a pot-sized bet but will vary depending on the bet sizing used. Not all draws are created equal. If you always bet with all of your flush draws and all of your straight draw combos, you will likely be over-bluffing.

In general, the best hands to semi-bluff with on the flop and turn are going to those with very little, if any, showdown value. Two more instances where it may be advisable to check in situations with draws instead of betting is 1 with combo draws i.

Always keep in mind that the above lists are general tells. What may be true for most of the population may not be true for all players. This section refers to the aftermath of a poker hand where one player has bluffed, and the other player called and caught them bluffing.

The best players in the world will bluff at every opportunity. Well, not only because it showcases their skill level, but also because it is profitable. It makes them money!

It can not only help you win more money when executed in a timely fashion, but it can also transform you into an extremely tough player to play against, as your opponents will simply have to guess as to whether you have the goods or an air-ball.

Continue studying the concepts and principles of bluffing well beyond the end of this article. You are here. When you are last position and it checks to you with an innocuous board rainbow, no pair and nothing higher than a jack.

If there is a low pair on the board say 7s or lower and it has checked to you on the flop or turn, this is a good time to bluff. This is an excellent time to try some bluffs against the short stacks that are in danger of busting out, so long as you have them comfortably outstacked.

Bluffing is a valuable and profitable tactic, but there is a time and a place for everything. It is as important to know when NOT to bluff as when you should be doing it. Remember that your goal is to get everybody else to fold. The chances are just too great that someone has connected with the flop.

Bluffs have a much better chance of succeeding in hands when there are only one or two other players. No bluff has ever worked that checked the turn and river. There is always a chance your opponent is on a draw, too, and continued pressure could induce the fold before they get there. A bluff generally takes a series of bets to be successful, so if you go into a hand with less than 10 BBs you are not going to be able to keep increasing the pressure on your opponents with each round of betting.

Not every bluff is going to work. You may be in last position with what looks like a dry flop only to find out another player flopped a set with pocket 2s, hit two pair with suited yes, people actually play suited , or was slow-playing pocket aces. If you are bluffing you should be betting or raising.

When you call, you have simply thrown away an opportunity to convince your opponent that your hand is really strong. It is virtually impossible to know for certain when an opponent is bluffing. Some experts will tell you there are physical tells or signs you can look for when playing live.

A bluff is essentially a lie and humans have different, often involuntary, physical responses when lying. Some believe it is a sign of a bluff if a player places a bet and then immediately reaches for a drink.

Instead, your best bet is simply to get as much information on your tablemate as you can throughout the session. Have they been playing a lot of hands? Where is their chip stack in relation to the tournament average?

Are they in the cutoff or button positions, where it is common to bluff before the flop? Did they recently suffer a bad beat that may have put them on tilt?

All of these factors should be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not you are going to make the hero call or — and this may be the most difficult skill of all — the hero laydown. When bluffing, you are by necessity trying to convince your opponent that you have different cards than you do, because you believe the cards you have are not good enough to win.

Mastering the art of deception is critical to becoming a winning poker player. Improve your game further by checking out even more poker strategies and guides or bring it back to basics with the poker rules for other poker variants. No downloads, deposits or accounts needed.

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Image is Everything The purpose of a bluff is to get players with better cards to lay their hands down. How to Pick Your Spot to Bluff Most players do not enter a hand with the intention of bluffing and in fact, that is generally not a good idea.

Using your position Trying to bluff from an early or middle position is not recommended because of the many players yet to act behind you.

What Is a Semi-Bluff?

Bluffing in poker is the art of making your opponent lay down a better hand than what you hold. It is the opposite of a value bet Practice bluffing when the stakes are low to build your skill in convincing opponents that you have a good hand. Choose your timing carefully, then slowly raise Bluffing is one of the critical elements of poker. Players can't just rely on having the best cards all the time to win, either in tournaments or cash games

Bluff en el póker - Our Ultimate Bluffing in Poker Guide will give you all the tools you need to incorporate bluffing into your poker strategy Bluffing in poker is the art of making your opponent lay down a better hand than what you hold. It is the opposite of a value bet Practice bluffing when the stakes are low to build your skill in convincing opponents that you have a good hand. Choose your timing carefully, then slowly raise Bluffing is one of the critical elements of poker. Players can't just rely on having the best cards all the time to win, either in tournaments or cash games

And this is all before considering the fact that our hand has some backdoor draws on the flop that can occasionally end up winning a huge pot. The final piece of this puzzle is whether or not we need to be balanced.

Truthfully, most players are so focused on their own 2 hole cards and the absolute strength of their hand, that balance is not a primary concern for me. But again, this is under specific circumstances when my opponent can think and adjust properly — something that very few players do properly, especially in lower stake games.

This may seem like overload at first, but I promise you, that if you study one bluff hand per day for the next few weeks, bluffing will become second nature.

A bunch of theory about bluffing with seemingly abstract numbers can lead to confusion. We will start with some preflop bluffs since too many players implement a preflop strategy that misses many spots where extra aggression can be quite profitable. The truth of the matter is that we are dealt garbage starting cards way more often than hands like KK and AA.

But the good news is that we can turn those junky starting hands into easy profit with a good bluff squeezing strategy.

First, what is a squeeze? A squeeze is a special preflop 3bet after the original raise got 1 or more callers. If the CO had called as well this would also be a squeeze opportunity.

But if both MP and the CO had folded it would NOT be a squeeze opportunity. The whole point of a squeeze is to 3bet and SQUEEZE out the dead money from the callers who likely have weaker hands. Which brings us nicely to the considerations we want to analyze before squeezing.

These considerations include:. At first, this list may seem daunting with so many things to consider before making a simple squeeze. But in reality we want to be considering these things in EVERY hand…so this list should become second-nature and something you always consider before making any preflop action.

When we are bluff squeezing our major goal is to generate folds, and ideally to get those folds preflop so we can just pick up an easy pot and move onto the next hand. The ideal open-raiser to squeeze is a player who will fold a large chunk of their open-raising range. Next, we want to consider who the caller is, or callers if there are multiple.

What kind of hands did they call the open-raise with and how would they react if we squeezed? If he called the open-raise with hands like small pairs and suited connectors is he likely to fold against our squeeze or call?

Of course we are very happy if he just folds preflop…again…allowing us to pick up an easy preflop pot. As a general rule, I suggest being more and more selective as there are more and more callers.

The more callers there are the more players we need to get to fold which can be very tricky to do. Focus on squeezing players who call preflop open-raises with setmines or drawing hands and will fold them to the pressure of a squeeze.

If they fold those kinds of hands to a squeeze you can expect a very large percentage of preflop folds…which is the goal when making this kind of bluff. Also take a quick glance at the players left to act in the hand. As a general rule I dislike bluff squeezing here with huge fish in the blinds.

Because if that fish calls then 1. it then becomes likely that EP and MP will both call as well. With tighter players and unknowns I usually assume they will fold a very large percentage of the time…but be very selective with fish and players with zero preflop discipline.

To prevent bluffs from occurring in a predictable pattern, game theory suggests the use of a randomizing agent to determine whether to bluff. For example, a player might use the colors of their hidden cards, the second hand on their watch, or some other unpredictable mechanism to determine whether to bluff.

Here is an example for the game of Texas Hold'em , from The Theory of Poker :. Therefore my optimum strategy was The pot is currently 30 dollars, and Worm is contemplating a dollar bluff on the river. If Worm does bluff in this situation, they are giving Mike 2-to-1 pot odds to call with their two pair 10's and 2's.

Where s is equal to the percentage of the pot that Worm is bluff betting with and x is equal to the percentage of busted draws Worm should be bluffing with to bluff optimally. Assuming four trials , Worm has the nuts two times, and has a busted draw two times.

Under the circumstances of this example: Worm will bet their nut hand two times, for every one time they bluff against Mike's hand assuming Mike's hand would lose to the nuts and beat a bluff. This means that if Mike called all three bets Mike would win one time, and lose two times, and would break even against 2-to-1 pot odds.

This also means that Worm's odds against bluffing is also 2-to-1 since they will value bet twice, and bluff once. If the second hand of the watch is between 1 and 30 seconds, Worm will check their hand down not bluff.

If the second hand of the watch is between 31 and 60 seconds, Worm will bluff their hand. Worm looks down at their watch, and the second hand is at 45 seconds, so Worm decides to bluff. Mike folds his two pair saying, "the way you've been betting your hand, I don't think my two pair on the board will hold up against your hand.

This example is meant to illustrate how optimal bluffing frequencies work. In real game situations, this is not usually the case. The purpose of optimal bluffing frequencies is to make the opponent mathematically indifferent between calling and folding. Optimal bluffing frequencies are based upon game theory and the Nash equilibrium , and assist the player using these strategies to become unexploitable.

By bluffing in optimal frequencies, you will typically end up breaking even on your bluffs in other words, optimal bluffing frequencies are not meant to generate positive expected value from the bluffs alone.

Rather, optimal bluffing frequencies allow you to gain more value from your value bets, because your opponent is indifferent between calling or folding when you bet regardless of whether it's a value bet or a bluff bet.

Although bluffing is most often considered a poker term, similar tactics are useful in other games as well. In these situations, a player makes a play that should not be profitable unless an opponent misjudges it as being made from a position capable of justifying it.

Since a successful bluff requires deceiving one's opponent, it occurs only in games in which the players conceal information from each other. In games like chess and backgammon, both players can see the same board and so should simply make the best legal move available.

Examples include:. Evan Hurwitz and Tshilidzi Marwala developed a software agent that bluffed while playing a poker-like game. The agent was able to learn to predict its opponents' reactions based on its own cards and the actions of others.

By using reinforcement neural networks, the agents were able to learn to bluff without prompting. In economics, bluffing has been explained as rational equilibrium behavior in games with information asymmetries. For instance, consider the hold-up problem , a central ingredient of the theory of incomplete contracts.

There are two players. Today player A can make an investment; tomorrow player B offers how to divide the returns of the investment. Bluffing is therefore much harder when you have a loose table image. You must also take into consideration the image of the player s you are trying to bluff.

A tight player will be more prone to fold even a decent hand against an aggressive bet. A loose player , on the other hand, might hang on to pocket 4s all the way through to the river, making them more difficult to bluff. In one of the great ironies of poker, good bluffs tend to work better against better competition.

Inexperienced players will throw away a lot of chips thinking their bottom pair is going to turn into three of a kind and are more likely to keep calling. Most players do not enter a hand with the intention of bluffing and in fact, that is generally not a good idea.

Instead, they take advantages of opportunities presented to them. This is why position is so important. Trying to bluff from an early or middle position is not recommended because of the many players yet to act behind you.

The best positions for bluffing are late , such as the hijack, cutoff, or button. If the action folds to you in one of these spots pre-flop, it may a good time to try to put some pressure on the rest of the players yet to act with a raise.

One of the keys to successful bluffing is figuring out when your opponents are not particularly strong. This will make them more susceptible to a bluff. The fact that players are just limping into a hand is generally a sign of weakness, which is what you need to execute a good bluff.

Pouncing on a couple of limpers with a raise from either of the blinds can sometimes be enough to win the hand before the flop. The downside to raising from the blinds is that after the flop you will be out of position, so proceed with caution. Use the early part of the tournament to build up your chip stack so you can afford to take a stab or two at a bluff in the later rounds.

The semi-bluff is a bluff that can still improve to become the best hand. These are hands which would likely win if the right card comes, but are almost certainly behind at the time you make your semi-bluff. Technically you are bluffing because you do not have a strong hand — yet — but you have a lot of potential to make a better hand.

A semi-bluff can help build up a nice pot in case you do complete your draw, but the ultimate goal is still the same — to get your opponents to fold. Your semi-bluffs only need to be successful around a third of the time in this spot.

Sizing bets appropriately is key in bluffing. Many inexperienced players fail to make their bluffs big enough to scare away the opposition in the early rounds, while others make them too large on the river and wind up losing a significant portion of their chips, when a much smaller bet would accomplish the same goal.

You have to be committed when bluffing, and you need to be willing to lose however many chips it will take for you to apply aggression through at least three rounds of betting. A good rule of thumb is to take the big blind and multiply it by at least A common mistake made by a lot of players who have followed up a pre-flop raise with an aggressive continuation-bet after the flop is to check or bet a smaller amount on the turn.

Doing either of these indicates weakness and will not convince your opponent you have a strong hand. To bluff successfully in poker, you do not want to put out any signs of weakness, which is why the size of your bets should get bigger, not smaller i.

Continual, accelerated pressure is key to a successful bluff. It is not necessarily critical to be the aggressor before the flop , but it is important that somebody has instituted a pre-flop raise. This will help thin the field and build a pot worth winning, and will also send out a signal that you have a good starting hand.

A community pot with five or six limpers is not a good time to try a bluff. Post-flop is the first real opportunity to start weaving your tale, but you have to take note of the flop. Is there an ace, or did the board pair?

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