Bluffing and Strategy


I am continuing to work on my tournament games and avoiding my cash games. I have always been a better tournament player than a cash game player and I think part of that is due to my adherence to Harrington-esque style of calculating plays and moves. Given that I want my blog to include more theory and less pure hand history/analysis. I plan to have certain posts deal with particular topics. Given that, I am playing in another $5 MTT (because they love me on AP) and am working on some bluffing techniques.

Now, a fundamental concept of bluffing requires you to both represent your hand and understand what your opponent has. Naturally, a key concept is to determine whether or not your opponent is capable of playing beyond his or her cards. Now, as most of my 2 readers know, there are two fundamental bluffs to consider. The pure bluff where you have no chance of winning except by your opponent folding and the semi-bluff where you are probably behind now, but have chances to improve on the following streets. There is also a third kind of bet that does not quite fall into either of those categories. This is the information bet that can come in a few different forms.

The first is a traditional continuation bet. You missed the flop, say with AK, and do not know if your opponents did or not. You bet 1/2+ of the pot and see where you are. The second can occur on the flop or after and usually occurs when you have a low middle pair. You are in LP with A6s and you call with two other people in the pot. The flop is K62 rainbow. Both the BB and the limper check to you. You can check behind here and hope to check it down or place a bet and hope to win it now. You are probably going to get called by most Kings, even with K7+ being a bit curious. However, many pocket pairs might be folding at this point. 77-TT all have an incentive to fold at this point. JJ and QQ are going to call, but they are probably not in the hand due to the lack of preflop raising.


Hands played in the same tournament

Pure bluffs -

A Representation Hand - I was steamrolling the table at this point and playing a bit more quickly than I should have been. At this point, I had only shown strong hands so I wanted to increase my winning by varying my preflop raises. Here I am representing TT+, and AQs+ given my previous hands. On the flop, I raise representing a continuation bet or an overpair that needs to be protected. The turn gives me one more shot and it is enough to get him out of the pot. One thing I didn't realize is that if he reraised all in, I would have to call on the chance that my draw was okay. Make sure to pay attention to your opponent's stack size.

Semi bluffs -

This is a continuation bet- but I believe my two overcards are both live, so if I hit either here I am probably good.

Information bets that are bluffs.

Information bet - Based on the preflop raise, I think my 6 might be good here. One way to find out is bet, and it is. I don't think this is a bluff as a better hand would almost always call, unless it was a middle pocket pair.