Bluffing is often an overlooked strategy by people who are just learning how to play poker. That’s because you could play online poker at the lower stakes without ever bluffing and still make money. However, as the players around you get better, your poker strategy should include more and more bluffs. Sometimes you’ll win by getting players to fold, but even if they don’t and you lose, they’ll be more likely to call you the next time you’ve got a big hand.
We’ll help you make this poker strategy leap in our beginner’s guide to bluffing. We’ll show you how to bluff in poker, including everything from picking the best times and opponents to deciding how big your bets should be. As with all the best poker techniques, this will take a little time and practice, but once you understand the concepts we’re about to show you, you’ll be well on your way to bluffing like a champion card sharp.
Play Poker online at Bovada
What Is Bluffing in Poker?
In its simplest form, a bluff is the act of betting (or raising) when you have a weak hand. This gives you the chance to win by getting your opponents to fold better hands than yours. It’s a risky strategy, of course – if your opponent doesn’t fold, you’re often left with your hand in the cookie jar. But if your bluff gets through, it’s like found money. Nothing quite beats the feeling of running a sick bluff and scooping up a big pot when you’ve got napkins for cards.
A bluff is more than just the act itself, though – there’s an art to it. The best way to look at bluffing is to treat it like storytelling; you want to make the tale you’re weaving as convincing as possible, so your opponent believes there is little or no chance their hand can beat yours. However, as any con artist will tell you, you have to make sure your story holds up under scrutiny, which means you can’t back down when you’re building your fictional tale.
Types of Bluffing in Poker
If you want to get started figuring out the best way to bluff in poker, start by understanding the two basic types of bluffing hands:
Semi-Bluff in Poker
Some poker hands you bet for value, others poker hands you bet as a pure bluff, and still others fall in between those two categories. A semi-bluff hand is one that contains some value, but when you bet or raise, you’d really prefer your opponent to fold. For example, in Texas Hold’em, you could have Ace-Three suited in spades, on a rainbow flop of Ten-Five-Three with one spade. This could be a good spot to check-raise if you’re out of position; it’s partly for value with third pair-top kicker, but you also have backdoor flush and straight draws to help you out, plus the Ace overcard.
Draws can also be considered a semi-bluff. When you don’t have a made hand, but you’ve got cards that draw to something really strong like a straight or a flush, you might consider betting or raising to get your opponents to fold their marginal made hands. Take the above example, but make the flop Ten-Five-Four with two spades, and you’ve got both a nut flush draw and a wheel draw (to the Five-high straight). Combo draws like this are extra-spicy. In general, the more outs you have, the more likely you’ll end up with the winning hand if your opponent does call.
Naked Bluffs in Poker
A stone-cold bluff is more common in poker movies than in real life. But modern poker players are becoming more familiar with the concept of blockers, and how important a role they play when bluffing. Let’s take our Ace-Three starting hand, but make it the Ace of Spades and the Three of Diamonds. If the board runs out with exactly three spades on the river, but doesn’t otherwise connect with your hand, you might be able to pull off a naked bluff, since everyone else is blocked from holding the nut flush – only you can have the Ace of spades. Recognizing and using blockers like this in the right spots, especially when you’re playing Pot-Limit Omaha, will protect your naked bluffs from overexposure.
Having the ability to pull off both semi-bluffs and naked bluffs is essential if you want to win at the highest levels of poker. There’s a time and a place for these bluffs, as we’ll discuss in a moment, but in general, the more equity your hand has (that is, the bigger share of the pot you can expect to win on average), the more aggressively you should play with bets and raises. A naked bluff with low equity is something that should be attempted much less frequently. As Doyle Brunson once recommended, always leave yourself an out.
When to Bluff in Poker
Poker may be a game of incomplete information, but there are still plenty of things you know about when you’re in a hand. You know which hole cards you have, the community cards (if any) that have been dealt, what position everyone is sitting at, the size of everyone’s stack, and the size of the pot. If you’ve been paying attention, you also know the general tendencies of each of your opponents, and what they think your tendencies are. This is the best information you need to tell you when you’re in a good bluffing situation.
As an example, let’s look at a hand where the flop has delivered two medium-ranked cards of the same suit, plus a low card – say, Nine of Hearts, Eight of Hearts, and Three of Clubs. Your single opponent in this hand opened pre-flop from early position, and is now leading the flop. In this scenario, you’re holding a King of spades and a Jack of spades on the button. Aside from your two overcards and couple of backdoor straight draws (using Jack-Nine-Eight, or King-Jack-Nine), you don’t have much hope of winning this hand at showdown.
But you can still win. Up to this point, you’ve established a reputation at the table: You’ve got credibility. You haven’t been super-aggressive, and you haven’t been caught in a bluff. This could be a good spot for one of those rare low-equity bluffs. If you opt to raise your opponent’s c-bet, you’re masquerading that you’ve got a big made hand like two pair or better, or perhaps a flush draw. Since your opponent opened from early position, they probably have bigger cards than the Nine, Eight and Three that are on the board. Chances are they’re going to fold to your raise.
The problem is that if you’re called, you have to continue with your story, even when the turn card comes and doesn’t complete any mythical flush you might be building. If you check back the turn instead of betting, you’re signaling that you don’t have a made hand or a flush draw, and you just want to see the next card for free. Then your opponent can just take the pot on the river. Better to fire a second barrel and hope they fold.
Let’s say they don’t fold, and the river brings a third medium-to-low heart to complete your possible flush, or maybe even a straight. You now have a very good chance of winning with your triple-barrel bluff. However, if the river blanks instead, then you might have to end your story early and check back. Remember that you’re not telling this story by yourself: The board has to help you along by providing the cards that will make your bluff more convincing. Giving up early on a bluff that aren’t panning out is even more important when you’re playing poker tournaments, where survival is more important than accumulating chips.
How to Know if Another Player is Bluffing in Poker
Playing online poker – especially the anonymous tables at Bovada Poker – makes it difficult to tell when someone is carrying out a bluff. This is good for you when you’re trying to fool your opponents, but what about when they’re trying to fool you? There are two ways to anticipate this. One is to understand when the situation at the table is ripe for a bluff. Is the board “wet” with suited and connected cards? Did you check, giving your opponent incentive to go after the pot? The second way is to pay attention to your opponents while they’re at the table. Have they shown a bluff yet? Are they aggressively betting and raising a lot of hands? Do they think they can bluff you? The more you know, the better chance you’ll have of catching them in the act.
Bluff Percentages in Poker
Knowing how often your bluff will get through is difficult to measure, although you know you’ll have a better chance when you hold the relevant blockers in your hand – and your opponent has a tendency to fold too much. But how often should you bluff? And how big should your bets be? If you’re playing a balanced style, mixing in the right percentage of bluffs and value bets to keep your opponents guessing, you should also make your bet size match your bluffing frequency. For example, if you bet half-pot, you should be bluffing 25% of the time in this spot, to make your opponent indifferent to calling or folding. If it’s a pot-sized bet, you should be bluffing a third of the time.
This is more advanced bluff territory, but again, if you want to beat poker at the highest levels, you need to understand these concepts eventually. Work them into your game as you get comfortable and move up in stakes. But for now, stick to ABC-style poker, mixing in some good semi-bluffs when the time is right. Just like butter, a little bluffing goes a long way.
Sign up to Bovada today
