Semi-Bluff (Poker)

When a player is bluffing in poker, he is trying to represent a hand he doesn't have. A player can either have no hand that has no potential to improve (known as a stone cold bluff) or a partially made hand but cards that could still come to make a winning hand (the semi bluff). The semi-bluff is easier as you will still be hopeful that you will win the hand (it's always harder to bluff with utter rubbish). It does require that you have equity, or a chance of winning.

The good news when semi-bluffing is that you have a chance to win the pot. Let's look at an example. You hold Q 10 and the flop comes 9 J 2 . Now as it stands you have nothing, only Queen High, however you have plenty of potential outs to win the hand (any heart, any King, and Eight and possibly any Queen or Ten). This would be a very good scenario to bet out or semi bluff as you have real chance to improve (equity in your hand). If you have a lot of outs, you don't want to be sitting on a small pot when you hit your hand, so it's important to build the pot as you go.

Let's look at a situation where bluffing wouldn't be advised. You hold 3 7 and the flop comes 5 9 10 . This isn't a good spot looking at the cards alone, as you have very little equity. There are very few cards (other than miracle) that you could catch to help you improve to a winning holding. This doesn't necessarily mean you don't bluff in this spot. If you're up against a Rock, there's a better than average chance that your bet will be enough to take down the pot. Against a LAG, this might not be such a good idea. A the end of the day, if you think you're opponents fold to a bet, you bet.

So when do you use this? In the right spots! Firstly, betting out is usually a better move than not. All the other players could fold or you could hit your cards - this gives you double the chance of winning the pot. By checking or calling you are limiting yourself to having to catch cards to win the pot, which is far less likely to happen. Here's when not to pull a bluff:

- Don't bluff up against super aggressive LAGs.

- Out of position and against too many opponents

- If you don't think you will be successful

- When the player has invested most of his stack

- Up against habitual callers