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Q&A #50: Optimal Bluffing Frequency

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Jim asks,

I know I am at very small stakes and bluffing shouldn’t be too much of a concern. But I am still trying to grasp me head around the concept and it’s bugging me to the point I need to ask someone.

In “The Theory of Poker” It says in an example of Bluffing Frequency, that if a pot lays an opponent 6-1, that, your chances of you bluffing him should be the same.

But what about other hands? What if the pot laid 4-1, 8-1, 12-1? You just can’t change your bluffing frequency on the spot to accomidate the hand at the moment. He doesn’t mean that I sit around and wait for the pot odds to be around 6-1 each time I want to bluff, that makes no sense. I just don’t get it.

I feel that even though it’s only .50/$1 table I play online, I feel that I am getting taken advantage of a bit because I am tight and fold to a raise a lot. When I do raise and get a hand, I am not getting any action. This is the reason I wanted to study bluffs. Besides, I think that practicing it for .50/$1 would be better than hitting the live $2/$4 since I am goig to screw it up quite a few times before I get the basics down.

Ok, this concept is a little tricky, so I’ll try to explain it simply. The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky explores what the game-theoretical optimal bluffing frequency is. You can think of the optimal bluffing frequency as the amount you could bluff so that you don’t care how your opponent responds, you’ll still make the same amount on average (i.e., your EV is the same whether your opponent calls or folds). That is, if you bluff at optimal frequency, there’s nothing your opponent can do… if they call, they’ll usually be paying you off. If they fold, then sometimes you’ll have bluffed them out. Damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

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4 Responses to “Q&A #50: Optimal Bluffing Frequency”

PeterL
@ Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:35:26 AM
1

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

Jarno Virtanen
@ Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:44:43 AM
2

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.)

Nick Lang
@ Tue Mar 25, 2008 06:55:04 PM
3

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”.

Ed Miller
@ Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:32:56 AM
4

Nick,

My last few paragraphs were my answer to his question. The first stuff is for readers who are new to the concept of optimal bluffing frequency.

In a game like stud where the final card is face down, it’s fairly easy to bluff nearly the optimal frequency. For instance, if there are 8 cards of your suit remaining and the pot is 7 bets, then you should bet all your flushes and bluff an additional card. That lays 8-to-1 to your opponent, and your opponent will win 1/9 times to make calling break-even. You can adjust your frequency easily to the current size of the pot.

In limit hold’em, however, you can’t adjust that finely because the final card is face-up so some bluffs are “credible” and some aren’t. So my answer is… I don’t use the concept of optimal bluffing frequency DIRECTLY when I play limit hold’em. I try to generally tune my hand ranges so that there are some bluffs in my range at all times. But I don’t worry so much about 1/7 versus 1/9 or whatever.

In no-limit, since you can set the pot odds by setting bet sizing, you can do a better job of bluffing with a more optimal frequency. In no-limit, I think about my total range of hands for every situation I’m in and I try to balance my range with roughly the right number of bluffing hands and roughly the right bet size to go with it to set the pot odds.

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