There’s a strategy concept professional poker players have been using over the past few years that, based on what I see at both the live and online tables, has yet to make its way down to the recreational players. It’s a somewhat counterintuitive approach to bluffing that is regularly, and unnecessarily, costing amateur players hundreds and even thousands of dollars.
To explore this leak and how to fix it, let’s set the scene.
You’re at a low-stakes cash game table with 200 big blinds effective and get dealt a suited-connector hand on the button, say J9 of hearts. The table folds around to you and you raise. Only the big blind makes the call. The flop comes T84 with two spades and one heart, giving you an open-ended straight draw (either a 7 or a Q will give you a straight). You elect to c-bet your hand and your opponent calls. The offsuit 2 on the turn changes nothing and once again the action goes check, bet, call. The river brings an inconsequential 3, leaving you with nothing but a busted straight, and your opponent checks for a third time.
Take a moment to ask yourself, in this spot, what would I do? Would I give up or bet again? And if I decide to bet, what size would I use?
If you said you would check, that is most definitely a leak. In this spot, poker solvers bet J9s at 100% frequency. Think about it, you have no pair, no showdown value, and your opponent has shown zero strength on a wet board where most players fast-play their big hands. Since you’d want to keep betting your overpairs, sets, and top-pair hands, you need to balance it out with a similar number of bluffs, and J9s is as good of a candidate as there is. However, while that is an important leak to note, it is not the one we’re exploring in this article. Instead, let’s look at the one that shows up when we make the right decision and decide to bet.
Most inexperienced players who choose to bluff this river think that in order to maximize their fold equity, they need to bet BIG. Often, they employ a pot-sized bet or even an overbet. But solvers play it differently. While they do mix in larger sizing about 10% of the time for balance, the remaining 90% of its bets are for a much smaller size—just 33% of the pot.
This may seem counterintuitive at first, but it makes perfect sense once you consider your opponent’s range. In the unlikely scenario they have a strong hand they elected to slowplay, they’re not folding regardless of what we bet. But, since most of the time they’ll be weak when they take this sort of line (check/call, check/call, check), betting small allows us to fold out better hands such as weak pairs, ace highs, better busted draws like QJ or Q9, without putting much of our stack at risk. Similarly, solvers will use this smaller sizing with various other bluffs: 76s, 97s, and QJs, for example. To balance it out, solvers also utilize it when making thin value bets with hands like JT and QT as well as strong hands like top set and top two pair a portion of the time.
By sizing down our bluffs in spots where most recreational players bet big, we accomplish a similar fold equity profile while preserving more of our stack when getting called.
So the next time you’re about to fire a river bluff, ask yourself: do I really need to risk my whole stack to win this pot? Or can I accomplish the same thing—and maybe even more—by betting small?
