Bluffing and Value Betting, Naturally
You’ve called an early position raise to $20 from the button, and you go heads up to a K♣️8❤️5❤️ flop.
There’s $47 in the pot. Your opponent bets $30, and you call with 8♠️7♠️.
The 2♠️ rolls off on the turn. Your opponent bets $75, and you decide to call again.
River comes the 4❤️.
Your opponent checks. You happily check back.
Your opponent shows K♦️Q♦️.
You muck your hand, and you move on to the next without thinking twice about it.
Now, let's look at the same situation with different hands:
You’ve called an early position raise to $20 from the button, and you go heads up to a K♣️8❤️5❤️ flop.
There’s $47 in the pot. Your opponent bets $30, and you call with 7♦️6♦️.
The 2♠️ rolls off on the turn. Your opponent bets $75, and you decide to call again.
River comes the 4❤️.
Your opponent checks. You bet $230.
This time, I’m your opponent.
I show you the next best hand, K♠️K♦️, and I fold.
Easy Fold
How did I do it?
Did you give off a tell? Did I see your cards?
No.
I simply did some hand reading.
And because I could hand-read, I made your value bet with a straight worth nothing.
Actually, I made it worth less than nothing! I was only going to put in money if I had you beat.
The reason I found the fold against you is the topic of today’s newsletter. As you may have guessed, it has a lot to do with the first of those two hand examples I showed you.
We’re going to talk about natural bluffs and natural value bets, and why this concept is one of the keys to profiting at the poker table.
Let’s dive in.
You’re a Natural
You know what a bluff is, and you know what a value bet is. But what makes them “natural?”
Let’s illustrate this with the board example above:
K♣️8❤️5❤️ 2♠️ 4❤️.
After you’ve called my two bets, if you’re playing somewhere close to theoretically optimally, you’ll have roughly 19% flushes and 4% straights when I check to you.
These are hands that are very clearly worth betting for value. That makes them “natural.”
Natural simply means that the decision to bet should come naturally to you.
You don’t have to think hard to figure out that straights and flushes are good hands to value bet!
So in this hand example, you have a clear value bet 23% of the time.
You bet about 90% pot, so in order for me to call, I need to have you beat just under 1 out of 3 times or more.
That means (if you only value bet these 23% of hands) I need you to bluff with about 11% of hands or more.
You didn’t think about bluffing with 8♠️7♠️ in the first example. So the $230 question is:
What would you bluff with?
Natural Bluffs
Continuing with the same example, you should have exactly zero unpaired hands by the river after calling my two big bets.
So if you’re ever going to bluff, you need to bluff with a pair.
And if you’re going to pick pairs to bluff with, you generally would want smaller pairs, and it would be nice for them to block a straight or flush. (Check out this previous newsletter to learn more about blockers)
You don’t call preflop with 9❤️8♠️, and you’re not supposed to call the turn with 3❤️3♦️, so it’s going to be very hard to block flushes while having a low pair.
8♠️7♠️ is about as good a bluffing candidate as you’re going to get. And again, you didn’t even think about it.
That is the key.
Maybe you could pick different hands to bluff with, like T❤️T♠, and still end up with almost enough bluffs (probably still not). But for that to be true, you’d need to have had the thought of turning your 2nd pair into a bluff.
If you didn’t think it... guess what?
You likely don’t ever bluff in this situation.
That means that even if you’re value-betting all of the weaker sets (5% of hands), I should still fold Kings!
And it means that when I fold it, I’m taking a lot of money out of your pocket.
The True Cost of Missing Bluffs
Many beginners might think about not getting paid in this spot and shrug.
“It’s not like I lost the pot.”
No, you lost the $230 you should’ve won if I called you.
This is a $2/$5NL game.
That’s 46 big blinds you just got outplayed for. In one hand.
And if you’re thinking, “But I bluff sometimes, so you’ll be wrong when you fold those times...”
I’ve got more bad news for you:
I probably won't fold when you're bluffing.
Every Hand is Unique
The reason I could fold top set against you in this hand is because of the specific board runout and the specific betting sequence.
You called two big bets on a board with only one open ender and one flush draw. And both of those got there on the river.
In a situation like that, you will not have any natural bluffs.
Can you guess what you have to do, if you want to be balanced, when you don’t have any natural bluffs?
That’s right – You have to bluff with hands that feel unnatural.
If the board were instead K♦️J♦️6♠️ 7❤️ 5♣️...
And you remember to bluff with T♠️9♠️ and Q♣️T♣️, and maybe you decide to bluff with A♦️4♦️…
Congratulations – You bluffed with unpaired hands, just as I’d expect you to in a spot where you can have a lot of unpaired missed draws.
Bluffing with a weak hand feels a lot more natural.
A VERY Important Caveat
Before we go further, I want to make one thing very clear:
You’re not going to be playing $2/$5nl against me.
If your opponent is just going to shrug and call with K♦️Q♦️ because “he has top pair,” then it doesn’t matter that you have no bluffs.
Your opponent is not hand reading.
If your opponents are calling stations who don’t think about your hand, you don’t have to dig deep for those bluffs – in fact, you shouldn’t.
So, if your opponents aren’t that good, is there any point in this post for you?
YES!
To Call, or Not to Call?
You can carry on playing just the way you have as the in-position player, but as the out-of-position player…
You get to be me!
Hand reading is the key to massive win-rates against weak players, and even against good players.
One of the most important ways to hand-read is to look at your opponent’s range and decide how many natural bluffs and value bets they have.
Because every board and line of action is different, even the best players will struggle in situations where they’re supposed to find very unnatural-feeling plays.
We all have a barometer in our mind that hints at what types of hands are good enough to VB and what types of hands make good bluffs.
Maybe we know that we need to adjust based on the situation, but often, we don’t adjust far enough.
Or we don’t realize in the moment how few natural bluffs (or value bets) would play the hand in the way we did.
If you can spot these situations (and the opponents who are less likely to adjust properly), you can gain a big edge.
To Bluff, or Not To Bluff?
When you’re playing against opponents who do hand-read, you can take this concept even further.
Not only should you dig to find all of the unnatural-feeling, theoretically correct bluffs to make you balanced – you might want to dig far past that and way over-bluff.
If I’m folding sets, you could even start bluffing with top pair.
Similarly, in situations where you have a lot of natural bluffs and/or where you don’t have a lot of natural strong value bets, you’ll want to dig deep and go for thin value.
I might be hero-calling you with Ace High!
Takeaways
If this struck a chord with you, take a moment to think about what you’re going to take from it and apply to your game going forward.
Write it down.
It'll take you 2 minutes, and you'll be more likely to actually change your game if you do it.
I can’t stress enough how important hand reading and hand representing are – how much your win-rate increases when you routinely find correct folds or cals against big river bets.
Sure, study solvers and learn optimal play – that’s great. But don’t turn off your brain and simply try to execute.
For those of you who already knew all of this, I want to offer you this takeaway:
I’ve played against nearly everyone who’d be in the conversation for the best in the world. Each and every one of them is unbalanced at times, as am I.
Never assume someone is playing too perfectly for you to hand-read against them.
Players that precise don’t exist.
