Introduction to Bluffing
There???s no escaping it - bluffing is an integral part of poker, and Hold ???Em in particular. Successful bluffing can add a surprising amount to one???s win-rate, whereas unsuccessful, ???silly??? bluffing can wipe out a few sessions worth of good work in a matter of minutes.
Many weak players don???t understand the mechanics behind bluffing. They???ve seen some guy on WPT go all-in with no pair no draw and force someone off a better hand and they simply think ???Hey, I could do that!??. So they go and deposit a few bucks in a poker site or trek down to their nearest casino, try it, and seem aghast when it doesn???t work the first few times. ???Oh well, I was just unlucky, that was just bad timing?? they may think, and so they???ll try it again and again, and they will be unsuccessful more often than not.
So what???s the big mistake they???re making? Are they just ???unlucky?? and a victim of ???bad timing??? Well, perhaps partly. A certain percentage of poker is unarguably luck-based, especially in the short-term. But more likely they???re bluffing almost randomly, and not taking into account many factors which would turn the odds of their bluffing being successful in their favour.
Good bluffing is primarily situational. A month or two ago I read a post on the forums saying something like ???You should be aiming to bluff x% of the time??, and not a lot else. This is a rather silly way of looking at bluffing. If I said to you, ???You should be voluntarily putting money into the pot about 20% of the time?? and nothing else, you should be looking at me as if I were mad, because this statistic, much like bluffing, is primarily situational. If you???re at a tight full table or at a 6-max table, you should be raising more preflop and generally seeing more flops, so this figure will obviously be higher. If you???re at a loose-aggressive table, you will be more likely to want to wait for premium hands before playing, so the figure will be lower. Thinking something like ???Oooh, I haven???t bluffed in a while, I???d better bluff now to keep up my quota?? or ???Hmm, I haven???t seen a flop in two orbits, maybe I???ll just limp under the gun with this 84 offsuit?? is just ridiculous, and is one large step on the road to ruin.
So if we can???t determine how to optimally bluff in terms of a percentage, how can we determine it? There are a wide range of situations in which bluffing becomes more feasible and considerations to make before bluffing, some of which are listed below.
The players you are trying to bluff
One of the most widely used sayings in poker is ???Don???t bluff a calling station??. This is quite simply because you are more likely to be called down by this type of player. This sounds like such an obvious thing to say, but you wouldn???t believe the number of posts I???ve read on various for a along the lines of ???HOW COULD HE CALL MY BLUFF DOWN WITH THAT?????. One of the reasons you should be paying attention to your table and making notes even when you???re not in a hand is so that you know who can be bluffed off strong hands, and who can???t even be bluffed off Ace-high on a dangerous board.
Your table image
Self-explanatory. If you???ve just been caught bluffing, it???s invariably a bad idea to try it again until the table has had a chance to forget about it. If on the other hand you???ve barely played a hand in two hours at a table, people will respect your bets and raises more, so you???re more likely to get away with a bluff.