News: How to pick your bluffs

Barry Carter shares a recent lesson he learned about bluffs and bet sizing, after bluffing with the wrong hands for years.

In the self study series Barry Carter shows you how he tried to solve a poker problem then consults a coach or solver to get feedback on his method.

I recently had been struggling to pick the right bluffs in the right spots, but the penny finally dropped for me during a study session with Dara O'Kearney and I wanted to share it.

Basically, I had the mentality that when I bet big, my bluffs had to be really strong semi-bluffs. My logic was that if I got called, I have invested a lot of money already, so I should have the best possible draw.

It seems the opposite is actually true.

For example, this is an UTG continuation range, when checked to, on a 972 rainbow flop. This is from GTO Wizard.

The best draw here is T8s for an open-ended straight draw, so my logic would be to use this for the overbet bluff. But this is primarily a small bet bluff.

There are quite a few overbet bluffs, all of which are broadway hands like KQ/KJ/KT/QJ/QT, suited and offsuit. These are high cards with backdoor straight draws (and some backdoor flush draws). While hitting one pair with these hands is likely to be good, this still surprised me as it seems like a weak semi-bluff.

Dara explained to me that it is simply a matter of what happens when we get reraised. We hate having to fold T8s to a reraise because it has so much equity, so we bet small with it, so we can continue when raised. It's much easier to fold QJo on this board when reraised, even if we have put more money in the middle with the bluff.

For example, QJo has 36.3% equity on this flop. It's an easy fold when reraised. We are also very happy when we take down the pot with a big bet with this holding, because we did not have much equity.

T8s has 51.2% equity, it's in good shape against pretty much any hand. We bet small with it so that we can continue when raised. We are also somewhat disappointed when we take the hand down for just one bet because we had a lot of potential to win a big pot. We are usually the favourite in the hand with T8s, so it's almost a value bet.

Dara paraphrased something he saw Patrick Leonard say recently, which is the key to poker is to realise equity. You do not want to fold away equity when you have it. Likewise, your bluffs should be at the bottom of your range, because that allows you to over-realise equity.

This is why our best draws should be small bet bluffs (or even just checks/calls), and our biggest bet bluffs should be our weakest hands (that have some kind of improbability).

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