Having a good hand and making big bets for value is great, but that’s not all poker is about. If you want to play good poker, you need to also know when to bluff and when to effectively bluff catch.
Bluffing with your missed draws and hands that didn’t get there on the flop, turn, or river is an important part of your overall poker strategy.
Being able to catch bluffs on the later streets is equally as important, as it allows you to benefit from overly aggressive opponents and stop everyone from bluffing you too often.
In this article, we take a look at the top ten tips for efficient bluffing and bluff catching that will help you print money in certain scenarios in poker.
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1. Choose the Right Hands to Bluff on the Flop
While many poker players bet anytime the action is on them, when they feel they can’t win the pot in any other way, or simply when they get a hunch their opponent is weak, you should be picking your bluffs in a different way.
Instead of just blindly betting your entire range on the flop, you should be picking hands that have good equity or hands that have good blocker effects.
According to GTO solutions, your first flop bluffing candidates should be hands with strong equity, namely strong draws.
Hands like flush draws and straight draws may not have any showdown value, but they have a good chance of improving by the river.
Choosing these hands to bluff with on the flop allows you to continue your story on the turn when you miss and sometimes improve to a very strong hand on the turn or river.
Hands with good blockers, such as backdoor flush draws, can be good secondary candidates to bet on the flop as a bluff.
Unlike these hands, betting with hands that have nearly no equity and very poor backdoor options is often a losing play, especially out of position.
2. Bluff Turns When You Get Extra Equity
After you bet the flop with a relatively wide range of bluffs, you should usually continue betting on the turn when cards come that improve your equity.
For example, if you bet on a board with two spades with a number of backdoor flush draw hands, you should keep betting when another spade hits the turn, giving you a flush draw.
On the other hand, if the turn is the 2♦, you should give up on your bluff quite often so as not to overbluff the turn and allow yourself to get exploited.
Similarly, if you bet the flop with an overcard and a backdoor straight draw, a card that gives you an actual straight draw on the turn can be a great card to keep barreling on.
For instance, if you c-bet the flop with Q8 on a board of T74, any J, 9, 6, or 5 gives you a straight draw, giving you extra equity and more of a reason to keep running the bluff.
On the other hand, you may want to check a card like a Q or 8 that gives you some showdown equity, as well as a card like a 2, 3, or 4, that does not improve your hand in any meaningful way.
3. Be Willing to Fire Three Barrels
In order to be able to make big value bets on the river with your bets made hands, you also need to have some bluffs in your river betting range.
While firing the third barrel can be quite scary, it is also essential in order to balance your river range and make yourself less exploitable.
The poker hands you want to fire the third barrel with are usually hands that block your opponent from having the nuts or other auto-call hands.
For example, on a board of J♣10♣8♦6♣4♥, a hand like A♣9♦ would be a great bluffing candidate, as it blocks the nut flush and some of the straights your opponent could have.
On the other hand, a combo like A♦K♦ would be a worse bluffing candidate, as it allows your opponent to have the nut flush, which will always raise you, as well as any of the available straights, that are likely to call.
While you should not fire the third barrel every time you bluff the turn and don’t improve, it is important to have this move in your arsenal, especially when holding the best blockers.
4. Be Careful Against Calling Stations
Playing a balanced strategy is recommended, and you should always try to play a semblance of a GTO strategy as your baseline.
However, as your opponents move away from the baseline, so should you. Some players, especially in live poker games, simply never fold. We call these players “calling stations.”
When playing against a calling station, you should significantly adjust your bluffing frequency and bluff a lot less frequently.
If your opponent is always going to call a flop and turn bet with any pair and call a big river bet with top pair or even second pair on a scary board, you should not be bluffing this player.
Instead, you can simply keep checking with a lot of your draws and trash and get maximum value when you have strong hands.
Against a player like this, you can go for a lot more thin value with hands like one pair or two pair, even when straights and flushes get there on the turn or river.
5. Use Scare Cards to Keep Bluffing
Typically speaking, you should be looking to continue your bluffs when turns and rivers bring cards that make the board very scary for your opponent.
The more coordinated the board becomes on later streets, the more opportunities you will have to bluff, especially if you have the appropriate blockers.
On the other hand, if the turn and river bring cards that are fairly safe for a top pair type hand, you should usually not keep on barreling.
If your opponent is going for the check-call line on the flop and turn, it is likely they have a hand like one pair that is looking to get to showdown.
This type of hand may get quite curious if two bricks come on the turn and river, looking to bluff catch against your missed draws.
On the other hand, if the turn and river complete a number of potential draws, you can keep barreling even if you do miss your particular draw.
6. Consider Your Blockers
The cards you have in your hand can play a big part in how your hand performs as a bluff, as they can block or unblock hands in your opponent’s range.
For example, if you have a hand like A♠K♦, your opponent cannot have any combo containing the A♠ or the K♦. If there are three spades on the board, this can be very important, as it blocks your opponent from having any of the nut flush combos.
On the other hand, if you have A♦K♦ on the same board, this is a hand that blocks all of your opponent’s auto-fold hands, the hands they would be throwing in the muck to any bet.
Furthermore, your A♦K♦ does not block any flush combos, making it that much more likely your opponent actually has a flush.
A hand like 99 can be a great bluffing combo on a board of JT864, as it allows you to represent hands like 97 and Q9, while at the same time making it that much less likely your opponent has a straight.
7. Bluff Catch in Good Spots
There are few better feelings in poker than calling a big river bet with a marginal hand and being right.
This play, known as bluff catching, usually comes in handy on the river when your opponent misses his draws and fires a big river bet, looking to get you to fold your showdown value.
Typically speaking, you should be looking to bluff catch a lot on the river when the board had many logical draws, and all or most of them bricked out.
On the other hand, you may want to over-fold on boards that don’t have too many draws and where your opponent’s more likely hand is top pair.
For example, on a board of J♠10♠7♥4♣3♦, a hand like 99 or 88 can be a good bluff catcher. These hands block the 98 straight combos and beat quite a few of the AK, AQ, KQ, and flush draw combos.
On the other hand, if your opponent fires three barrels on A♠9♦5♣4♦5♥, you should be more inclined to fold a hand like KK or QQ, as your opponent simply isn’t likely to have been bluffing each of the earlier streets.
8. Choose the Right Hands to Call With
When you were thinking about hands to bluff with, you wanted to have cards that block your opponent’s made hands. When thinking about bluff catching, you want to have cards that unblock your opponent’s busted draws.
On a board with two spades, you don’t want to be calling the river bet with a hand that contains the Ks, as this card would be a part of many of your opponent’s busted flush draws.
Similarly, on a board of 873 that bricked out by the river, a hand like 66 is a bad hand to call the river, as your opponent’s most likely bluffs are hands like 65 or 96, which were open-ended straight draws on the flop.
When considering bluff catching, you should always be thinking about your opponent’s best bluffing hands and how likely they are to have those hands based on the cards you hold in your hand.
9. Don’t Over-Fold on Connected Boards
When your opponents bet on the flop or turn on heavily connected boards, you should be looking to do quite a bit of calling.
Players will often bet any draw they may have on the flop or the turn when the board is very connected, which means you should be calling their bets with a lot of hands.
If you have extra equity, such as backdoor draws or overcards, you should definitely look to peel cards and see how the situation develops on later streets.
On the other hand, on static boards like A♣8♦4♣, you can look to fold a lot more hands, as your opponents simply aren’t as likely to be bluffing with a drawing hand.
10. Call Often Against Maniacs
Earlier on, we talked about deviating from your baseline strategy against calling stations. Similarly, you should be deviating quite a bit against maniacs.
Maniacs are players who keep barreling off regardless of their hand, position, range, or board texture, which makes them very unpredictable.
However, by betting so much, maniacs inevitably reach too many rivers with a very wide range, the majority of which has no connection with the board.
When you reach a river against such players with hands that have reasonable showdown value, you will need to call quite often.
Keep in mind that you still need to have a hand that actually beats all of your opponent’s bluffs, and that you will sometimes lose a big pot against a maniac because of this.
If you adjust properly, you will be winning lots of chips by making hero calls against maniacs on the river, but also be ready to lose some huge pots with marginal hands when they simply luckbox into a big hand.
