In today’s article, we’ll address the topic of bluff catching rivers, with a specific focus on playing from the big blind. So, we’ll mostly talk about spots where you get to the river, check to your in-position opponent, and face a bet.
To develop a good strategy for catching river bluffs, you first need to develop some fundamentals on how to think about these spots and what things are and aren’t important. This will give you a solid framework to work with.
Thus, we’ll cover three major topics/goals to help you develop this framework, namely:
- Using blockers and unblockers as assets and liabilities
- Compare and contrast various bluff catchers
- Identifying situations that are often over or under-bluffed
Blockers and Unblockers: Assets vs. Liabilities
When discussing bluff catching rivers, assets are cards that remove potential value combos from your opponent’s range. Liabilities are cards that reduce the chances of the opponent having a bluff.
The best starting point to figure out what cards go to what category is by looking at preflop ranges.
We’ll talk about this more in a moment, but let’s say the board reads A♥8♦6♦5♣2♥, and we are playing against an LJ open. Cards that your opponent will be bluffing the most on this river are at the bottom of their opening range, so T, J, 9, and 8. So, these cards are liabilities, i.e., the cards that we don’t want to have when calling a river bet.
On this specific texture, it’s not that easy to identify assets, and in some situations, you won’t have both, but at the very least, you can recognize these liabilities and adjust your calling range accordingly.
Evaluating Your Bluff Catchers
By definition, bluff catchers are hands that beat all your opponent’s bluffs and lose to all of their value hands. They all have the same expected value across the board, except for two important factors:
- How much value do they block?
- In what way do they unblock bluffs?
When it comes to tailoring your bluff-catching strategy, bet sizing is a very important aspect you need to consider. The opponent’s bluffing frequency represents the pot odds that you are given.
For example, if there is 100 in the pot and they bet 100, you need to call 100 to win 200 that’s already in the pot, so you are getting 2 to 1. This means that the opponent’s bluff-to-value ratio needs to be 33% for a profitable call.
It is crucial to consider the bet sizing as it helps us identify the value range. When betting smaller, opponents are usually representing a thinner value range. Big bets usually represent a more polarized range.
Recognizing Over and Under-Bluffed River Spots
Generally speaking, there are certain river spots that are either bluffed too much or not often enough. Recognizing these situations is a third important element for our bluff-catching strategy.
Let’s look at an example where we defend the big blind against a standard button raise, playing about 50 big blinds effective. We have 9♥8♣, and the flop comes 8♥4♦2♥.
We check-call a small continuation bet on the flop, and the turn is the 7♠.
After we check, the button bets again, once again using a small sizing. Against a one-third pot bet, we are not going anywhere, so we call.
The river is the A♦, and after we check, the button player now bets the full pot.
We are up against a player on the button who has a very wide preflop range. So, they have a bunch of combinations that we are ahead of – there is simply a lot of air and a lot of available bluffs.
This is all to say that on this particular runout, there is a big potential for the button player to over-bluff this spot, which wouldn’t be the case if there were more big cards on the flop, like K, Q, and T.
Because of this, I tend to bluff-catch a lot in this spot. Although the solver suggests checking back with pretty much every king-high and some queen-highs, most players will barrel. So, knowing that the general tendency is to over-bluff, we can call with a much wider range.
The value-bet-to-bluff ratio here is completely off. To be able to bluff profitably in these spots, the button player would have to value bet with hands like pocket 9s and small aces, which is hard to do as we can easily have an ace that we got to the river with, given small flop and turn bets.
Putting It All Together
Now that we’ve covered all these theoretical aspects let’s put them all to work in an example hand, going through it step by step.
We have A♠K♥ in the big blind facing a cutoff 2x open. Normally, I’ll often 3-bet here, but I was playing a bunch of tables at the time, so I ended up just calling, which is perfectly fine.
The flop comes Q♦6♠2♠, and we check-call a super small bet of just one big blind. We proceed to the 10♦ turn and now the CO player bets bigger, about 70% of the pot.
We make the call once more and get to the 10♥ river. After checking, the CO player fires a half-pot bet.
So, do we have a good candidate to bluff catch with? Let’s examine:
- We value AK pretty much the same as a 6 or a 2 – the opponent isn’t likely to value bet any hands that we are beating with a small pair, so our AK is a good candidate to bluff catch with.
- The cutoff’s value range after betting 20% on the flop, 70% on the turn, and 50% on the river is mostly a pair of queens, maybe some pocket aces and kings. They are unlikely to have a ten.
- Bluffs are coming from the bottom of the opponent’s opening range, so they have a lot of eights, nines, and sevens. So, these cards are liabilities, and we don’t have any of those.
- Ace and King are both assets, as the opponent is likely to check back with a lot of their ace highs and some king highs.
- We are not folding any queens on this river (like Q4), and for bluff-catching purposes, AK is the same as Q4, i.e., the opponent is not betting a worse hand for value.
Looking at all this, it is clear that AK is a perfect bluff-catching candidate and we can call the half-pot bet on the river.
What about other hands, say the ones containing a six? Unlike queens, we will be using a mixed strategy with our sixes, depending on the second card, i.e.:
- Always calling with A6
- K6 & hands like 64, 65, and 63 calling frequently
- 96 not calling because 9 is a liability
It is also interesting to note that, as the bet size increases, our sixes become more profitable as bluff catchers. This is because bigger bets skew the value range a lot towards a set of sixes, and since we’re blocking that combo, we have more opportunities to bluff catch.
Summary
Bluff catching rivers out of position is tricky, but developing a solid strategy based on correct math is very important. It ensures you call enough in these spots when the circumstances are right and fold when that’s not the case.
There is a lot to think about when it comes to these scenarios, so make sure to spend enough time studying them and understanding the logic behind them. They may seem difficult, but once you develop a good framework, your overall results will improve significantly.
