Q&A #50: Optimal Bluffing Frequency

Hi

What I tend to do is always bluff (semi bluff) every hand where I have a good draw (8 outs or more) or if the pot is large and I have a few outs.

This is explained in Ed’s book in his Q7s example for where you have few outs including back door outs.

if The pot is large then protect it, and if you have enough pot equity then bet for value. So in cases where a bet helps protect and add value and also shows you to be a bluffer, you are in a win, win , win situation and at low limits these hands make a lot of money even though you lose some of them.

I do not know how well this works in higher limit games or no limit but in loose games whether passive or aggressive this makes money.

I would love to know how strategys for this differ on NL tournaments as a bluff can knock you out completely but never bluffing could blind you out in a fast structure.

PeterL
My Blog

By the way, The Mathematics of Poker has more to say on the subject. The authors mostly use toy games to illustrate and solve the problems, but they are applicable to real-life situations, too. Especially for heads-up play in no-lomit.

But I wouldn’t recommend the book for anyone scared of equations. (I’m sure Ed isn’t afraid of them, but some might be.)

You have given a very long winded dissertation here but you haven’t even demonstrated that you even understand Jim’s question much less answered it. When I read his question it seems to me that he grasps the concept of bluffing at the same ratio as the pot odds. What he was wondering about was how you reconcile that to the fact that pot odds change on every hand. Too bad because I was really looking forward to the answer when I found this post. An answer could have been something as simple as, say “Take a rough average of the pot odds for all the hands that you are playing that day”.