Bluffing for beginners

A bluff is a bet or raise with a hand that cannot win at the showdown, made so that better hands fold. It makes sense when few players are left, the board fits the hand you are pretending to hold, and the opponent folds more often than the bet requires. For a half-pot bet that is just one time in three.

Good bluffs usually have these things in common:

• One or two opponents. Every extra player is another chance that somebody holds a hand they will not let go.
• A believable story. Your bets from street to street should make sense for a strong hand. A big bet when the third heart arrives is convincing if you have been betting all along, much less if you checked the flop and the turn.
• Signs of weakness. An opponent who checks twice rarely holds a monster; one who raised before the flop and keeps betting often does.
• Position. Acting last, you see their check before you decide — more in positions.
• Someone who can fold. A player who calls everything cannot be bluffed. Against them, bet your good hands instead.

If you bet B into a pot P, you risk B to win P. The bluff breaks even when the opponent folds at least B ÷ (P + B) of the time. If they fold more often than that, the bluff makes money even though it fails now and then.

The right-hand column is the same bet seen from the other chair: the opponent risks B to win P + B, so calling pays for them if their hand wins at least B ÷ (P + 2B) of the time. Small bets are cheap to bluff with, and just as cheap to call. Try your own numbers:

An example from the Scribes’ Table: the pot is 600 and you bet 400 on the river. The bet needs a fold 400 ÷ 1,000 = 40% of the time. If you honestly think this opponent folds less often than that, check and give up. That is not cowardice, it is arithmetic.

A semi-bluff is a bet with a hand that is probably behind now but can improve — usually a draw. It wins in two ways: the opponent folds at once, or they call and you hit. The second way lowers how often the fold has to come.

Take the turn. The pot is 1,000, you hold a flush draw with nine outs, and you bet 600. A pure bluff of that size needs a fold 37.5% of the time. With the draw, a call is not the end: nine of the 46 possible rivers, 19.6%, complete your flush. If you win 1,600 when it comes and lose your 600 when it does not, a call costs you about 170 on average, and the bet breaks even at just 14.5% folds. That assumes your flush wins and you give up on the river when you miss.

Counting outs properly — including the ones that are not really outs — is covered in outs and pot odds. For hand-against-hand equity on a given board, use the odds calculator.

Bet the size you would bet with a strong hand in the same spot. If your bluffs are always twice the pot and your value bets always half, the size gives you away faster than any face could. The presets at our tables — ½ pot, ¾ and Pot — cover most situations.

Bigger is not automatically better. A pot-sized bluff needs folds half the time, a half-pot bluff only one time in three. Against players who fold a lot, small bets do the job cheaply. Against players who call a lot, no size works.

With no faces to read, online tells come from a few places, and none of them is reliable alone.

• Timing. Our tables give everyone 15 seconds per move and have no “check/fold in advance” buttons, so even an instant action is a decision someone made. A long pause and then a big bet often means a hard decision; a long pause and then a check often means weakness.
• Bet sizes. Players fall into habits. A minimum bet on the river is often a weak hand hoping for a cheap showdown; a sudden overbet from a careful player is often very strong. Watch the same player for a while before you trust a pattern.
• Chat. Someone who goes quiet after chatting all evening, or starts joking in the middle of a big hand, may be telling you something — or nothing. Use it as a tiebreaker, never as the main reason.
• Your own tells. Vary your timing a little, keep your sizes consistent and do not talk about a hand you are still in — that is also basic etiquette.

One detail of our tables matters here. When everyone folds, nobody sees your cards — there is no button to show them. When you are called, every hand still in is turned over automatically at the showdown, so a failed bluff is always on display.

When a table is short of people, AI players fill some of the empty seats: up to three at a nine-seat table, up to two at a five-seat one. They are always marked “AI”. This is how they decide, in general terms, so you know what you are betting against.

• They weigh their own cards against the price. Each decision compares a rough strength of the AI’s hand with the pot odds of the bet it faces, plus a little randomness. A bigger bet asks for a stronger hand to call, just as it does with people.
• They do not see your cards. We checked the code: the decision reads only the AI’s own two cards, the board and the bets.
• They do not remember you. Nothing records who bluffed whom, so your image means nothing to them. Their thinking pause, 0.7 to 2.2 seconds picked at random, means nothing to you.
• Cheap bets get called. A bet of a big blind or less is called by plenty of middling hands, so a tiny bluff rarely works.
• They bluff, but rarely. When checked to, they now and then bet a weak hand, and very occasionally they raise with one. A big bet or a raise from an AI player usually means a real hand.
• Their judgement is rough. They rate a hand by its category with a few adjustments, so they make mistakes much like a beginner does. They also never tilt.

In short, against the AI, betting your good hands for value earns more than bluffing. Against people, everything on this page applies — and people, unlike the AI, remember.

1. Bluffing three or four opponents at once. Somebody nearly always has something.
2. Bluffing the player who has called every bet tonight. They will call this one too.
3. Bluffing to win back what you just lost. That is tilt, not strategy.
4. Firing without a plan. Before the flop bet, decide what you will do on the turn if called.
5. Choosing a special size for bluffs. Your opponents will notice before you do.