4-Bet Bluffs (2) - Theory

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4-Bet Bluffs (2) - Theory

by MiiWiin

The second part of this series covers the following aspects:

• Why 4-bet at all?
  
• Balancing
• Raise sizes
• Your equity
• Bluff / value hands
• Important opponents' stats
  
• Ideal opponents
  
• Potential hands
  
• Villain's 3-bet range and the card removal effect
• General bluff frequencies
  
• Situation-specific bluff frequencies (table image, game flow, history)
• Your position
• What do you do after a call?
• Alternatives
• Tilt resistance

Important opponents' stats

When you decide to employ a somewhat unusual play such as a 4-bet bluff, you should first make sure that you know as much as possible about your opponent. Stats play a particularly important role here, and so do reads. Taken together, they can help you tremendously with your search for ideal spots.

The following stats are relevant in this context:

• VPIP/PFR
• 3-bet stat
• Fold-to-3-bet
• 4-bet stat
• Fold-to-4-bet stat
• Call 4-bet

These are the most fundamental stats that you need in order to assess your opponent. It is important that you can roughly categorise his VPIP/PFR, because it will help you make better estimations about his other stats. Find out more about the different player types in the following section.

One of the most important things to know is how often your opponent tends to 3-bet and how often he shows a high level of aggression with a marginal hand preflop.

In every situation in which you consider a 4-bet, Villain has 3-bet you and you need to figure out how often he does that altogether (and what range he does that with).

If he only 3-bets very few hands (<5), then why should you bluff 4-bet in the first place?

After all, you do not only want your bluff to be as +EV as possible; you also want to balance your game and show your opponents that you will not let them push you out of the pot with light 3-bets. Against a 16/12 player with a 3-bet stat of 3%, some of these goals will not be met.

If your opponent has a 3-bet stat of 8-9% and higher, you could probably categorise him as "annoying".

This stat is only interesting in an indirect way. However, it is a first indicator of how much Villain likes to bluff by raising preflop. For example, if he folds to 3-bets very rarely (<50%), this may indeed mean that he is loose. However, it can also mean that this player bluffs relatively few hands and is more likely to raise for value, which in turn means he can call a 3-bet.

If the "Fold-to-3-bet" stat climbs over 70%, this opponent will lay down his hand fairly easily and may generally be more vulnerable to bluffs.

The 4-bet range only serves to show how often your opponent shows heavy aggression before the flop and employs the 4-bet weapon himself.

One of the most decisive stats. Your opponent 3-bets fairly often, but how often can you force him out of the pot with a 4-bet? A fold to 4-bet stat of over 50% would be excellent, but there are players whose stats are even higher than that. A very high fold-to-4-bet stat is of course an invitation to go for the 4-bet bluff.

In order to figure out how often your opponent pushes, you have to consider how often he folds and how often he calls. It's obvious that you don't want to get a call either. Later we will have a closer look at the problems that occur when your 4-bet bluff gets called.

Ideal opponents

After this overview of important stats you now have to ask yourself which opponent types will often have stats of this size.

Also, you always have to keep in mind which goals you want to achieve with your 4-bet:

• Balancing
• High fold equity
• Defending yourself against aggressive 3-betters

If you look at these stats and use them as a point of reference for your opponent analysis, it becomes quite obvious that the calling station is not a good victim. None of the above mentioned points plays an important role here.

It is quite an unusual event to see a calling station 3-bet at all. Sure, it might have been a misclick - in most cases however, it simply means that there's no hand the calling stations would still fold now.

When a calling station has a good hand, it will usually not push to your 4-bet, but simply call. Unfortunately, that doesn't really help you either when you cannot expect any more fold equity on the flop.

Let's have a look at the maniac. One of the above points applies - you want to defend yourself against his constant aggression.

Unfortunately, you won't get far if your opponent does not fold anything. You're better off using other weapons here. You could either call a 3-bet lightly or make a light value 4-bet and go all-in. As we have seen before, it wouldn't be a big mistake to 4-bet/call with a medium pocket pair, especially if the maniac is willing to go broke much more loosely.

The rock is another candidate. And this is where the stats become extremely important. At first glance, such a tight opponent may not seem like the ideal victim because his 3-bet range as such will usually be very tight. Keep in mind however, that this opponent does not play an ideal game and is even capable of 3-bet/folding AK and QQ to avoid going broke with them.

Even if his 3-bet range is rather small, his "Fold-to-4-bet" stat is a good indicator of what you can expect from him. It should be clear that a 4-bet is a good move if your opponent is only willing to go broke with KK+ and folds everything else. Therefore, rocks can be good victims for 4-bet bluffs.

Let's come to the TAG. This player type shows similar preferences in his preflop play. However, you can generally be sure that he is a thinking player with a considerably bigger 3-bet range. Another two of the above mentioned points come into play here:

• He might make rather light 3-bets and you should defend yourself against that.

If you categorise him as a thinking player, balancing is another factor you have to keep in mind.

Last but not least, we have the LAG. Again, all of the above points apply. He will make relatively light 3-bets and you should regularly defend yourself against that.

However, you also have to realise that LAGs who 3-bet and 4-bet quite loosely will also go broke more loosely. Try to assess your opponent and look at his stats, it might again be better to lightly call 3-bets or lightly play 4-bet/call for value here.

Potential hands

Let's take a look at potential hands now. You were already familiarised with rough hand categories in the equity analysis.

Here's the decisive factor: First of all, you need to get into a situation where you are confronted with a 3-bet. With J3o, this will hardly ever be the case since you don't necessarily want to open-raise with such a hand.

So, as soon as you open-raise you have to ask yourself which options you have to win the hand with XX. Let's look at the different scenarios:

• All opponents fold
• Opponents call, you bluff the flop unimproved
• Opponents call, you hit the flop
• Opponent 3-bets, you call and bluff the flop unimproved
• Opponent 3-bets, you call and hit the flop
• Opponent 3-bets, you 4-bet and call a push
• Opponent 3-bets, you 4-bet and fold to a push

As you can see, the 4-bet bluff is only one of seven (in most cases) possible scenarios that can occur.

Your main concern should be: "When does it make sense to consider a 4-bet in the first place?"

Well, when many of the other options can be ruled out, that's possibly the ideal scenario. This is particularly often the case when you have a hand that...

• ...is hard to play out of position.
• ...will hit relatively seldom.
• ...could be dominated by Villain's range.
• ...you cannot play with a lot of fold equity postflop.

The hands that immediately come to mind during this analysis:

• Suited connectors from early/late position
• Axs hands from early position
• Ax/Kx hands from late position
• Broadways from late position

As shown in the equity analysis, two hand groups are particularly suitable for profitable 4-bet bluffs:

• Suited connectors - from an equity point of view, you can easily fold them and use them for nearly pure bluffs (you rarely have to worry that your 4-bet gets called, and therefore play the hand) 
• Crap hands, which have even lower playability (offsuit connectors, broadways such as QTo or K9s)
• Ax hands because of the card removal effect

With these hands a 4-bet bluff is generally possible since they...

• ...are difficult to play when a 3-bet is called.
• ...are almost impossible to play out of positon.
• ...allow you to play an "error-free" 4-bet/fold.

Villain's 3-bet range and the card removal effect

Many players underestimate the card removal effect, but you need to remember the following thing:

Your opponents may raise and 3-bet a lot, but the main thing you can read from the stats is a range given in %. However, this range does not correspond to the top % range. This assumption is a fallacy that many players fall into.

Your opponent 3-bets 9% of hands. It is important for you to know which hands he 3-bets here.

You might be tempted to assume that he 3-bets his top 9% of hands. This would be 66+, A9s+, KQs, AJo+.

However, it is certainly not true that he 3-bets exactly this range.

This range includes a lot of marginal hands that will neither be raised as a bluff nor for value. However, you can be sure that there is a reason why your opponent decided to 3-bet.

He might only call hands such as AJ/AQ in order to avoid the threat of domination, by keeping weaker hands in your range. The same is true for KQ.

It is very well possible that he only calls hands such as JJ-66 because he doesn't want to play 3-bet/fold and is also not willing to go broke with them. Every now and then you might see him muck hands like 77- right away if he does not think that a 3-bet would be very promising and neither sees enough playability nor sufficient implied odds. 

On the same note, suited aces can be called or even folded more often. So, what can your opponent actually 3-bet for value? We assume the following hands: ATs+/AKo/QQ+/KQs/o. However, this only makes up 4.68%. Where do the remaining 4.5% come from?

These hands are bluff hands, in a wider sense semi-bluff hands. They include very small pocket pairs (22-55), small suited aces (A2s-A5s), suited connectors (45s-JTs) and of course pure bluffs with hands that could gain some playability (78o, 23s).

Let's add the following hands to the 3-bet range: 22-55, 45s-JTs, A5s, A4s. That makes 4.52%.

Villain's 3-bet range could therefore look as follows: QQ+, 22-55, AJs+, A5s-A4s, KQs, JTs, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s, 54s, AKo, KQo. This makes up around 9.20%.

At this point you will object that this looks kind of forced and you can rarely get that accurate a result when analysing an opponent's range. Still: This 3-bet range is a much more realistic assumption than a top 9% range.

So what about the card removal effect?

One thing is clear: It's a big success already when you get Villain to fold one of his semi-bluff hands. You must expect that your own bluff hand will only enter a coin flip against his bluff hand, at the most. This means the equity is equally divided. If he folds this hand, it would be +EV for you (this is only logical, since it can never be your goal that a weaker drawing hand calls your 4-bet).

Now you basically need to make sure that your opponent has such drawing hands more often than hands that he will 3-bet for value.

Stick to the 4.68% range of ATs+/QQ+/KQo.

Most likely, Villain will always 3-bet this 4.68% range (Note: He may still fold many hands to a 4-bet), however it would be good if the chances are higher that he has a bluff hand.

Image the following case. You raise with K 9 and get a 3-bet. What influence does the card removal effect have?

Villain can no longer have the following hand combinations:

A K ; A K ; A K ; A K
K K ; K K ; K K
K Q ; K Q ; K Q ; K Q

Out of the (16+16+6=) 38 possible combinations of these hands, 11 can be eliminated. Therefore, the probability drops quite significantly.

If you hold Ax for example, you would even have to eliminate 18 (4+4+4+3) of the possible (16+16+16+16+6) 70 combinations.

General bluff frequencies

You should not overdo it with any type of bluff, i.e. with plays that have the sole intention of getting a better hand (or a hand with outs) to fold.

While it always depends on the individual spot, you should never consider bluff 4-betting every suited connector or every Kx or Ax hand that you get. If you do that, your opponents will soon no longer give you any credit whatsoever and your advantage of getting the maximum payout for your strong hands will be a thing of the past.

What's the ideal bluff frequency then? A ratio of 70/30 (for value) is a first point of reference here.

Which 70% should you 4-bet for value? In other words: with which hands will you usually be willing to go broke preflop against the specified opponents?

Aassume a range of JJ+/AK here. This corresponds to around 3%. This means you should try to 4-bet another 1-1.5%.

Now, there are several ways to play here: you can follow a game theory approach and always 4-bet particular hands (ATo, KJo, 45s/67s etc.).

You always have to evaluate however whether an alternative play might be better (in the form of a call, depending on your opponent and your position). It would be a shame if you always turned a playable hand such as 45s into a bluff, when a call in position would also be a good option.

That's why you need to analyse each individual situation and find the right spots to play against your opponents. It is up to you to make sure that your 4-bet range levels out at around 5%.

If you generally go broke somewhat tighter (individual playing style, low limits), you should naturally reduce your 4-bet bluff frequency as well.

Situation-specific bluff frequencies (table image, game flow, history)

This is something that always needs to be mentioned. Keep in mind your table image, the game flow and the history:

• If you are currently playing like a maniac, don't bluff a lot.
• If you are card dead and have been playing tight, bluff more.
• If the game is overall very aggressive, don't bluff much.
• If you are in your Nitty phase, bluff more.
• If you have just 4-bet twice with strong hands without seeing the showdown, don't bluff 4-bet in the upcoming hands.

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