POTD #189 Bluffing Mikita "fish2013" Badziakouski in a 10k Pokerstars Highroller

And I do a deep dive on the bet-check-bet bluff

When people think of the psychological elements of poker, they tend to think of combatting the psychology of others before they think of battling their own psychology. To the layperson, poker is about reading others; in truth, it’s also about reading yourself. Learning that you made a mistake is valuable, learning why you made a mistake more so. Sometimes a punt occurs due to a lack of technical understanding or a lack of creativity. Sometimes it occurs for more human reasons— lack of focus, over-confidence, or self-doubt. A line that often fills me with self-doubt is when I am passive on one street and aggressive on the following street when the board barely changes. If I, say, check back a set on the flop and raise the turn with it, I do not have self-doubt about my line looking fishy because I know I have a set. I also know if I can have a set in this line, I need to sometimes bluff in this line, but when I do bluff in this line it does not feel credible. Ironically, this has created an opposite effect— players bluff so rarely in these infrequent lines because it doesn’t look credible, that their opponents often give too much credit to these lines that begin passively and end aggressively. “No one ever bluffs here. He must have a set.”

Raising the turn to represent a flop trap as a bluff is still rather rare, but the psychology of “no one will believe me when I bluff here” persists in a much more common line, when the preflop raiser bet-check-bets in position. A preflop raiser often c-bets and often bets all their strong hands on the turn, but they can’t always two-barrel air on the turn. So they have to check some total air back, and then the river is a brick and your opponent checks. You have 0% pot share, but also it doesn’t feel like you have any credible value bets, so what can you do? My first suggestion is to override the psychology of “this will look so weak.” If it does look so weak that your opponent always calls with bottom pair or ace high, start checking back some traps on the turn. If your opponents never believe you in a certain line, it’s time to exploit them. The reality is that most opponents will give you credit for having a good hand some of the time and you can bluff in these lines. It might look like an unconvincing bluff, but a reminder— if you have a hand with no showdown, you don’t need to get strong hands to fold, just better hands. A POTD Premium Subscriber suggested I write about these sorts of lines, and I went through my HM2 database and found a simple hand where I bluffed in a bet-check-bet line that illustrates my point. Sometimes you have to bluff, even if it looks fishy.

HH: Pokerstars Replayer

WCOOP 10k Highroller September 1st 2020
(5k/10k/1.25k) (SB/BB/ANTE) 250k Starting Stack. Registration is Open

PokerStars Hand #218025757505: Tournament #2984771312, $10000+$300 USD Hold’em No Limit - Level XII (5000/10000) - 2020/09/01 17:29:07 ET

Table ‘2984771312 6’ 8-max Seat #3 is the button

Seat 1: tinnoemulder (1577088 in chips)
Seat 2: mararthur1 (344747 in chips)
Seat 3: Sam Greenwood (252020 in chips)
Seat 4: Zagazaur (393501 in chips)
Seat 5: fish2013 (1118633 in chips)
Seat 7: ludovi333 (267931 in chips)
Seat 8: Päffchen (184400 in chips)

Dealt to Sam Greenwood [9h 6h]
ludovi333: folds
Päffchen: folds
tinnoemulder: folds
mararthur1: folds
Sam Greenwood: raises 10000 to 20000
Zagazaur: folds
fish2013: calls 10000

FLOP [Qd 2c 4c]

fish2013: checks
Sam Greenwood: bets 13438
fish2013: calls 13438

TURN [Qd 2c 4c] [Jd]

fish2013: checks
Sam Greenwood: checks

RIVER [Qd 2c 4c Jd] [Qs]

fish2013: checks
Sam Greenwood: bets 53213
fish2013: calls 53213

SHOW DOWN

Sam Greenwood: shows [9h 6h] (a pair of Queens)
fish2013: shows [6d 2d] (two pair, Queens and Deuces)

fish2013 collected 187052 from pot