Mastering the River Bluff in Poker

What's going on guys? Today I want to talk about how to bluff them out of the pot every single time. Just do this. Let's jump right into it. All right guys, so today I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step example hand showing you how to execute the perfect river bluff. You know, one of the biggest questions that my students often ask me is, Nathan, what do you do when you're on the river with a misdraw? Maybe you've just got nine high, something like this. How do do you bluff them

out? How do you win these pots? So I'm going to show you how to do it right now. Let's begin. So as mentioned today, we're going to talk about the perfect river bluff. Now I do want to mention right off the start that this strategy is a little bit advanced. If you're a beginner poker player, if you've literally just started playing the game and or you play at the very lowest stakes, I would not suggest using this strategy very often.

Biggest reason why, Why, as I've discussed in many of the videos here on the channel, is when you try to make sophisticated plays at very low stakes in poker, often you're playing against other relative beginners in these games, and it's just going to go right over their head.

This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make, is they see some sort of bluff, some sort of play that a high-stakes player makes in a million-dollar cash game, and they try to do it in their $10 game on a Friday night with their buddies while they're drinking their beers or in a $5 tournament on the internet, and lo and behold, they find it doesn't work. So guys, you do need to be playing against some sort of decent-thinking, higher-level opponents for this play to work.

So let's jump into the example. You are playing here against a tight and aggressive regular, a.k.a. a tag. This is one of the best player types in today's games.

This is one of the primary play styles that I teach in everything that I put out here on my YouTube videos, in my Elite Poker University training, in all my poker books, etc. Because this is one of the most profitable play styles to play against. So this is a good player we're up against here. They raise from middle position. Now, I'm not going to go through the positions at the table in depth, and I'm not going to go through all the player types as well.

Once again, if you're new to the game, you don't know what hands to play and all this kind of stuff. I have a free poker cheat sheet. That'll be the top link in the description below. There's charts, there's diagrams. It tells you everything about all of that stuff. So we're going to make the call on the button with nine, eight of hearts, a great little pseudo connector. This is a standard call for me in this situation, as the charts in my cheat sheet will attest to.

So we're going to go see a flop. We're going to assume the blinds fold and we're going to go see the flop heads up. Flop comes down with a five of hearts, three of spades and 10 of hearts. Pretty good flop here overall. When you got the 9-8 of hearts, this is a pretty decent spot. Number one, we have the flush draw. Awesome spot. If it comes with a heart on the turn or river, we're very likely to have the best hand.

Hopefully you guys have also noticed that we have a backdoor straight draw on this flop. If it were to come with, say, a jack and a queen on the turn and river or a jack and a seven on the turn and river, we would make the nut straight. The nut straight in And the second one, a good but not the nut straight in the first example. Very important to understand that. I have other videos on the channel also talking about that. You can check that out.

But overall, guys, this is a great flop for 9-8 of hearts. So TAG makes their standard continuation bet here. We expect them to make a bet continuing their aggression from preflop, continuation bet, a high amount of the time. That's what aggressive poker players do.

And especially on a flop like this, while this board is slightly coordinated, coordinated it's also a little bit dry it's a 10 a 5 and a 3 there's not a ton going on here there is a flush draw a lot of the straight draws like a 2-4 or a 4-6 these kind of hands shouldn't really be in our range so expect the tag player to be making a bet here a large percentage of the time so what should you be doing here well guys calling is okay but raising is even better here

and i want to be very very clear throughout this entire video that everything that i do in poker is all about about ranges. I'm not doing anything 100% of the time in poker. This is something that I talk about in all of my poker books and in my advanced training videos, which I'll be linked up, by the way, in the description below, is that I'm always, for example, in a situation like this, I'm calling 50% of the time and raising 50% of the time.

That's just a random number because I get a lot of comments on these videos and people tell me, oh, you shouldn't be raising here. Guys, I'm calling here 50% of the time. I need to be absolutely clear on that. In this example right here, we're going to be raising. And I do think that raising is a little bit better in this spot here because it puts tremendous pressure on this player to have a hand.

Also, we want to be mixing up our ranges in order to make good players continually be guessing about what we have. And we're going to be doing this with pocket aces and pocket kings, by the way, as well. That is the beautiful thing about balancing your ranges and lastly the whole point of this video really is that we need to be able to earn, That's when we don't have anything. We have a hand like nine high here, which is almost certainly not the best hand.

Almost certainly this player has us beat right now. We want to be able to make a hand like king jack or pocket fours. Just throw away their hand. Both of those hands are better than ours right now. Statistically, they're better than our hand. And if we were to raise here, we can get those hands out of here. We might even be able to make hands like ace king or ace queen fold. Although a lot of more savvy poker players these days will make the call with those hands.

And we're going to talk about that later on how we're trying to make hands specifically like those fold but anyways guys yes i think you should be raising a decent amount of the time here so we're going to assume that the tag player calls because it's not an interesting video if we just make them fold here so let's go ahead and move on to the turn here so the turn is going to come down with the four of clubs so the board now reads five of hearts three of spades

ten of hearts and four of clubs now the four of clubs is not really a very interesting card it really doesn't help us in any but it probably doesn't help our opponent either. And that is something that I should have discussed in more detail, actually, in the last section, is that this board still hits our range much more than it hits their range.

And what I mean by that, when I'm talking about range, I'm talking about the entire spectrum of hands that we are likely to have and that they are likely to have. When a tight and aggressive player raises from one of the early seats at a poker table, typically they're going to have hands like ace-king, ace-queen, ace-jack, king-queen, big broadway hands like like that. They're going to also have premium pairs like aces, kings, queens, jacks, hands like that.

While the big pairs are happy on a board like this, all of those big sort of Broadway cards are not very happy. And us as the preflop caller preflop, what are we going to have? Well, we're going to have some broadways in our range, but we're also going to have a ton of suited connectors. We're going to have a lot of mid pocket pairs, like a bucket eights, bucket sevens. All those hands are pretty happy on this flop. We're going to have some suited aces as well.

Ace deuce is is pretty happy right now. Ace-deuce of diamonds, for example, is a hand that we would be in our range, probably not in their range, and that's a hand that's really happy here. So overall, this board still leans more towards us than it does towards them.

In terms of the meta game of poker, something I talk about a lot on my blog and in my books, even if neither of us have anything right now, the advantage goes to us, because this board hits the range of the preflop color more than it than it does the Razor. So what should we be doing here with the 9-8 of hearts? Well guys, again, this is a spot where I think.

You should be heavily balancing your ranges. We're going to choose to check behind in this specific example right now, but I do want to be clear that I will also be continuing to execute the bluff here by betting again on the turn a large percentage of the time. Once again, guys, when you're playing against higher level opponents, you have to always be mixing up your play. You can't do anything 100% of the time. So we're going to assume it goes check, check on the turn. Let's go see the river.

So the river comes down with the seven of diamonds so the full board now reads five three ten four seven no possible flush draw but anybody who has a six in their hand now has a straight and we still have nine high we've got nothing we've got almost certainly the worst hands so when the tag player checks to us on the river here if we are to check behind here which a lot of people will sadly do there's literally no way you're

going to win the pot guys and this is one of my biggest factors when executing a bluff is, can I even win if I check back here? And we know, guys, the answer is almost, you know, it's nearly 100% we're going to lose if we check back here.

The other incredibly crucial consideration about this spot here is, how does the board read? Are we likely to get a bluff through here? And the answer is absolutely yes. What should you do here with Nine Native Hearts? You should bluff big. And I want to be clear about that point as well, is that a lot of people will will bet too little here. They'll only bet 50% of the pot, 30% of the pot. For example, the pot's $100, they'll bet $50, they'll bet $30.

And the problem is, guys, is that a savvy poker player is going to look you up. One of these players that thinks about the game on a deeper level is simply going to look you up with a hand like Ace-King, and we don't want that in this situation. We want to put them to the test. And lastly, as I mentioned, if you really consider this hand from from their perspective, with a hand like ace-king, or even with a hand like pocket jacks, this is very difficult for them to make a call on the river.

Once again, anybody who has a six in their hand here has a straight on the river, and you often want to be bluffing in situations like this where it's what I call one line or two a straight here, and the card is in our range, not theirs.

Once again, as the preflop caller, guys, those middling cards, five, six, seven, eight, nine, those are typically in the range of the preflop collar because we got suited connectors, mid pocket pairs, suited aces, stuff like that. Those are the hands that a lot of. Callers will have in the range, not the preflop raiser. So this player knows full well that we're going to have a hand like pocket sixes. We're going to have a hand like seven, six suited, five, six suited.

These are typical hands that we're going to flat preflop with on the button to try to outplay this player later on in the hand. So guys, the key to executing a bluff that gets through a large percentage of the time, no bluff is going to work every single time, despite the title of the video, is understanding the crucial factors of the hand.

Number one, what's the player type we're playing against a tight and aggressive decent thinking opponent here can they lay a hand down i would never make this bluff versus a recreational fishy player because we know that those players don't fold number two does the board connect with our range aka are we telling a believable story yes absolutely in this spot here there's a ton of possibilities where we can have a straight we can have two pair we can have

some sort of set definitely in a situation like this this player is thinking about all of these hands when when they're sitting there with their ace king or their pocket jacks, pocket queens on the river. And finally, we want to bet an amount that strikes the fear of God into them. We don't want to bet 30% of the pot, guys, and let a smart poker player realize. Wow, I'm getting like, you know, five, six to one pot odds here. I can make the call with my ace queen.

Guys, these are the three keys to executing a successful bluff in poker. This is what you need to be doing more often in order to win pots when you don't have anything, guys. One of the biggest keys to winning a poker Poker is making people fold better hands than yours, because most of the time, nobody has anything.

I hope you enjoyed this poker podcast episode. If you want to know my complete strategy for beating small and mid-stakes poker games, make sure you go grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet that's available on my website at blackrein79.com. And also, make sure you hit like and subscribe here to the podcast, because I'm putting out new episodes every single week to help you guys quickly get beating your poker games. I wish you guys all the best at the poker tables. I'll catch you next week.

This has been Nathan Williams with BlackRain79.com.