Good bluff spots

I just finished a week away from poker. Well not quite a full week, but close enough. The start was due to a weekend away with mrs, the next couple of days was due to overloaded work schedule eating into personal time. Overall though it was good to spend some time away from the beloved game.

The itch came back hard last night. And it was the 6 max itch. It has to be said, my game needs a lot of improvement, and Rayz (sp?) made an interesting comment about live vs online experience. The onliners generally laugh at the number of hands played in a year for a live pro, and claim to hit a similar number in a week 6-12 tabling. Rayz said while you may be playing 500+ hands an hour online, you don't learn from most of those hands. He has a long time to think about every hand live, and therefore learns a lot each time he plays.

I agreed 100% with him. When all you get time for is to click raise or call, you aren't giving each decision it's proper respect, and once the hand is over, you've made 5 other decisions anyway, so you don't get time to reflect on it's outcome. So why multitable? Money. Once you are good enough to beat the game, playing for highest expected rate means a lot. Making 6BB/100 at 6 tables is a better rate than making 8BB/100 at 4 tables, so it's worth the table upgrade. Personally I want my bankroll to improve, but I'm not playing for money yet. I am playing to improve. So for now I'll keep my HU to one at a time, and 6 max to 2 tables at a time.

I was rusty after a week off and a few weeks away from serious 6 max, and playing NL50. It started off rough, with a big misclick costing me 1/2 a BI and the next 20 minutes doubling that loss on two tables. But with time fish arrived and turned my tables into very profitable ones, and gave me a + 2BI night. I can attribute a lot of my success last night to HU play. It really opens your eyes to poker, and allows you go after each pot more aggressively. And not only with betting either. Calling/checking becomes a bluffers tool once he understands game flow, opponents and board texture.

An excellent tool I have in my belt now comes with bluffing and board textures, in particular opponents betting when your opponents can't bluff. For example, lets say you cbet and the board comes out Td8d7h, and he calls. The next card is a Jc, completing a pretty obvious draw. This spot may look so drawy, but think about what happens if you bet. Lets say he has 77/87/65/AA. He can't raise any of those hands, the only hand he could raise is a 9x hand. OK, so because we've taken out a huge range for him to raise, what can he call with? Maybe 77, probably not 87/65, probably not even AA. So if he's going to fold so many strong hands, what sort of fold equity do you have? You have a lot. Especially a small bet, which costs next to nothing, and can look strong is brilliant. He doesn't call with most hands, and when he raises he obviously has the hand. If he bluffs/semi bluffs, good on him, but it's a terrible spot to bluff.

Another hand Qd8h2c. Very dry. You cbet he calls. The turn is a 3h, super dry board. Now you can bet here, but it is a super dry board, so he'll be more inclined to call a bluff with a wider range. He might call with Qx/JJ/TT/99/98/AK etc. He really doesn't see you hitting much of that board, so if he thinks you can bluff a bit, he'll be more likely to call or even raise here without a hand.

So I'm looking out more and more for spots where my 1/2 pot bet/minraise bluff will pick up the pot a lot of the time he doesn't have the obvious big hand.