| Many
people who are only casually familiar with poker assume that bluffing
is the key to winning. This impression has been falsely instilled
in their minds by dramatic bluffing scenes in Hollywood movies about
poker. In reality, to win at poker you simply need to "have the
goods" about 95% of the time. A habitual outright bluffer will
usually be the first player to go broke in a real poker game because
somebody will generally call him down.
There is however, a blood relative of "outright bluffing"
that does play a critical role in winning at poker. That relative
is the "semi-bluff". A semi-bluff is when you bet or raise
with a hand that you know is beaten at the moment, but isn't far
behind -- and -- might still make your opponent fold even when you
don't improve. By combining your chances of making the winning hand
with the chances that you might bluff your opponent out, semi-bluffing
often becomes a winning strategy where an outright bluff with nothing
would be foolhardy. Semi-bluffing is so much better than outright
bluffing because sometimes when you get caught -- you've actually
made the winning hand!
Here's an example of a semi-bluff that worked for me in a high
limit 7-Card Stud pot in Vegas. Understand that if this was a $1-to-$5
Stud game, this play would have little chance, since most players
there are strictly just playing their own cards. In games where
players are trying to read what they're up against, however, everything
changes.
I started out with a pair of queens and a 9 kicker, and came in
raising. Three players initially called my raise, but by the time
we got to sixth street I had only one opponent and our boards looked
like this:
ME |
OPPONENT |
9-Q
/ Q-J-3-10 |
?-?
/ 3-8-8-3 |
Note that on
fifth street my opponent was high on board with an open pair of
8s, where he bet and I called. Now on sixth street he made an open
two pair and bet again. What does he have?
Since I held
one of his 3s, and since few players at these stakes will call an
opening raise from a queen with just a pair of 3s, I ruled out 3s
full. Also, he had no straight combinations and his board was unsuited,
so he didn't have a straight draw or flush draw. I put him on a
small or medium pair in the hole giving him three "under-pair".
Considering the size of the pot, my queens alone
were enough to call here since they were only about a 5-to-2 underdog
to make queens up or trips on the river. But wait! I also now had
a 9-10-J-Q. That made me only a 5-to-4 dog to make queens up or
better. I'm still not the favorite, but what if I could get him
to fold his hand say, just an additional one-fourth of the time?
Then, besides winning the pot when I improved, I'd also win a few
of the times that I missed! That's a classic spot for a semi-bluff.
So I raised!
My opponent reviewed my board with concern, peeked
briefly at his hole cards and called. Since he didn't re-raise,
I was even more confident that he didn't already have a full house.
But his mere call also told me something else -- that he believed
his 8s up were probably beaten at this point. After all, I did raise
into an open two pair, didn't I? By the looks of my board, I could've
easily had queens up or even a straight.
The river card came down and dirty, and my opponent
checked blind. I looked down to find a useless deuce as my stranger
and fired a bet out there, while positively holding the worst hand
(still a pair of queens). He then squeezed his river card -- and
squeezed, and squeezed -- then flicked his finger against it disgustedly.
"Three stinkin' pair and I can't catch a card", he muttered
as he threw the best hand into the muck.
I had two ways
to win that hand and one of them came in -- namely, convincing my
opponent that he needed to improve to win. How often will things
work out that way? It depends upon the tendencies of your opponent,
but if your semi-bluff causes him to fold just 25% of the times
that he doesn't fill up, you become the odds-on favorite to win
the pot. Here's a rounded mathematical breakdown for 15 averaged
attempts.
| You
improve / he misses |
win 6 times |
| You miss
/ he folds |
win 2
times |
| You miss
/ he calls |
lose 6
times |
| You
both improve lose 1 time |
There are two
keys to this type of play. First, your opponent must be sophisticated
enough to be able to throw a decent hand away. Second, he must not
be sophisticated enough to read right through your semi-bluff raise.
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