When each of us first starts out in poker, we all have aspects of the game that are more interesting to us, based on what it was that attracted us to the game in the first place. For many of us, our perceptions about poker come largely from media representations of the game, and the way the media has portrayed poker over the last twenty years or so has a lot to do with why many people are attracted to the game as a pastime. People think of poker as being an extravagant display of psychological warfare, and they’re always very preoccupied with the role that bluffing plays in the game.
This is mostly because they’ve seen examples of big bluffs on TV made by pros, where the player simply decides their opponent doesn’t have it and goes with their read – you can find a bunch of these hands in five minutes browsing YouTube, with Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius and others being some of the names cropping up the most often. These plays are impressive because people are largely too taken in by the idea of poker as a battle of big egos, more so than a battle of strategy more akin to chess.
People are impressed by bluffing in big pots, and of course the pot is usually biggest on the river. Novice players think about big river bluffs as something that can only be done by high-level pros with deep pockets and a lot of heart. The reality is that this isn’t even close to true. Big river bluffs can be made effectively by almost anyone, and there are a few simple factors that can help you make better decisions in this regard. There will be some of you out there who have simply never bluff-raised versus a river bet in your lives – after you read this article, now’s the time to start!
Look for weak or capped betting ranges
In almost any situation, the best times to attack your opponents with aggression are the times when you can identify that their range is capped, i.e. it’s difficult or impossible for them to have the nuts. This obviously is going to mean they’ll have a hard time responding to river aggression, since they’ll frequently have few hands capable of calling large bets or raises.
In addition, we may be able to find spots where our opponents’ ranges are not technically capped, but do still contain a large number of weak hands – for example, a spot where they are over-bluffing to a great extent, or where they choose an unusual bet sizing that could theoretically be made with a strong hand, but isn’t very likely to be.
These are the spots where we should be applying pressure. Any time your opponent caps your range in a spot where you can still have a lot of strong hands should be like a red rag to a bull – it’s our signal to take the initiative. The next requirement is that we understand our own range in more detail.
Understand your own range
In order to maintain credibility on our bluffs in these spots and avoid situations where our opponents might be inclined to make very big calls, we need to ensure we’re making these bluffs in spots where it’s possible for us to actually have the hands we’re representing. An example of a great spot for this is a situation where the river brings a backdoor flush – there will frequently be a decent number of hands in our continuing ranges on earlier streets that contain backdoor flush combos, if we’re defending our ranges appropriately.
Of course, from time to time our opponents’ ranges will appear to be so capped that they simply can’t really have anything capable of calling a raise, and in these situations it makes sense to raise with 100% of our range. In fact, this is a situation where the traditional logic of “I’m never getting called by worse” doesn’t apply in theory, because if we’re 100% confident our opponent doesn’t have a hand above a certain level of strength, then raising all hands better than that level is a freeroll – even if they only call with the top of their range 5% of the time, that’s better than nothing, and they’re still folding enough to make bluffing with any two cards profitable.
Apply maximum stack pressure
As with any situation in tournament poker, stack sizes are a key component of our decision-making process. The degree of flexibility we possess in terms of strategic options can make it either extremely easy or extremely difficult to exploit our opponents on the river. Situations where we have our opponents covered can be great opportunities to really turn the screw, especially in the middle or late stages of a tournament, while we may not want to mess with bigger-stacked opponents who aren’t going to think twice about calling a relatively insignificant river raise.
The degree to which we can leverage our opponents must always be weighed against the value of the bluff itself – we may be able to apply a lot of leverage early on with a huge river bluff in a deep-stacked pot, but that might not actually have much of a bearing on our overall ROI in the tournament. It might in fact be a bad idea to waste time planning out a detailed river bluffing strategy in the early stages, since picking up an extra 20bb to take your stack from 40bb to 60bb in the middle stages is generally going to be more important than picking up an extra 50bb in level 2.
Don’t forget to raise for value!
Finally, it’s important not to forget about raising the river when you do actually have the hand you’re representing. If your river aggression level goes up, sooner or later people are going to start picking up on it (particularly if you’re an online grinder, since HUDs are so prevalent), and you’re going to start getting less credit for your bluffs, which means that not only should we slow down on our approach to bluffing, but we should also raise thinner for value.
If you’re not taking advantage of your more aggressive image to ensure you’re getting paid off when you do make big hands, that takes away a lot of the benefit of playing aggressively in the first place. Since such a huge portion of your chip gains in MTTs is going to come from when you make trips, flushes, straights and full houses, maximising your EV in those spots is necessarily an important focus area. If you think you’re not going to get paid off by raising a value hand on the river, that’s a sign you’re probably not bluffing that spot often enough.
Turbulence
Another excellent article Matt.
All I would add to this is to be mindful of your opponents capabilities, are they actually capable of reading what our range might be and what their range looks like. Trying to get certain players to fold top 2 on a 4 to flush and str8 runout can be difficult and expensive. You need a competent opponent to run these type of bluffs against.
theginger45
Thanks Turbulence, glad you liked it.
You’re definitely right that this is only really possible against players who know how to fold – however, the line isn’t quite so clear-cut as “good players know how to fold, bad players don’t”. Since a good player is also more likely to sniff out instances where we might be repping too thin of a range, we shouldn’t necessarily assume those are the better players to bluff. There’s almost no instance in poker where it’s more favourable to be up against a good player than a bad one.
The best way to look at it is to target players who are inclined to bet-fold, whether they’re good or bad players. Good players might be doing it because they’re betting for thin value, bad players might be doing it because they have a middle-strength hand and think a middle-sized bet is appropriate whenever that happens. Either way it’s a plausible play to make, and one of the good things about doing it against weaker players is you can sometimes get away with repping absolutely nothing if the villain’s range is so capped they can’t possibly call a big river raise.