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Problem with overbluffing

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Posted by posted in Mid Stakes

Problem with overbluffing

I hate to lose a pot and almost always end up overbluffing the river.
I try my best to check and give up more but i can't help myself...

My most used river bet sizing is 75% and usually i have around 40% bluffs when i use this sizing. To become balanced without adjusting my bluff/value ratio all i need to do is start betting 2x pot instead, right?

Would you recommend this simple adjustment or should i take the (for me)difficult path and bluff less and use "normal" sizings?

5 Comments

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Juan Copani 6 years, 7 months ago

I would first check whats your success betting river 3/4x pot, it is not necessary to balance your value: bluffs ratio in case your bluffs works too much, or either too little..

My most used river bet sizing is 75% and usually i have around 40%
bluffs when i use this sizing. To become balanced without adjusting my
bluff/value ratio all i need to do is start betting 2x pot instead,
right?

Also i think you are misunderstanding a concept here. You dont necessary balance your range by increasing your size in your example, because your bluffing range should be tied to your value betting range.. So lets say you have 20 valuebets for 75% and in order to be balance you need around ~8 bluffs, but because you bluff too much you end up bluffing 10combos, so you think that increasing your size will just fix your ratio, but it wont, because now that you want to bet lets say POTx, now you don´t have 20 valuebets anymore, you now have less valuebets because you are targeting stronger parts on other´s players range.

JackPozzi 6 years, 7 months ago

Well, balancing bluffs to the right amount it's difficult, at least for me. But I think you are not approaching this situation the right way, sometimes you should overbluff, others not at all.

Juan Copani was absolutely right, you cannot artificially increase your sizing because you'll be value betting hands that you shouldn't.

What I think you may do is review your river bluffing game in various lines, and just focus on what's important: is Villian overfolding or not? But don't trick yourself with made up assumptions that aren't real, use real data.

Some lines are often good to overbluff, like when villian checks back the turn or fails to bet OOP on the river.

Other lines aren't that good on average, like 3-barrel bluffing, except in certain situations. Maybe you should focus on these first, because they are very costly if you overbluff your stack off when you shouldn't.

Some specific tips that come to my mind when you decide to bluff or not:

  • Don't bluff busted flush draws, you are blocking Villian's folding range.
  • Dont' bluff OK SD value hands when you have worse hands to bluff, you beat his busted draws, pick your spots to bluff AK high or low pairs.
  • Don't try to bluff Top Pair or better out of the pot, don't expect that to happen.
  • Think if you have good blockers to villian's calling range, like Q/J on K-high boards for example when villian's most likely bluffcatcher is KQ/KJ.

Also, review your turn bluffing frequencies, because if you overbluff the turn, you will have more available combos to bluff the river.

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