Learn the most effective heuristics for building solid bluff raise ranges on the river and crush your opponents
Bluff raising on the river is one of my favorite things in poker. In fact, it’s probably my Top #1 favorite thing. Aggressive plays like this make the game fun, challenging and exciting. And that’s what I want to teach you today.
Bluff raising on the river is also extremely profitable. Most people perceive river raises as a very strong move in poker and they give it a lot of respect – so much so that population overfolds to raises in many different spots of the game tree. Therefore, if you can learn proper heuristics for this move, not only you’re gonna have more fun playing, but you’ll also capitalize on your opponent’s imbalances and make a lot of money.
So let’s get started.
To properly bluff raise the river, you need to figure out 3 things:
- What sizing you’re going to use on your raise;
- Which hands you are going to use as bluffs;
- How often you are going raise them;
Number 1 is relatively straightforward. You want to pick the sizing you would use with your value bets in that spot. If when holding a value hand you would raise to 40 big blinds, then use that exact same sizing with your bluffs.
This is important to avoid playing a very exploitable strategy where you pick one size with your value raises and another size with your bluff raises. An opponent that picks up on such pattern can completely crush you by always calling your ‘bluff raise size’ and always folding against your ‘value raise size’.
Although relatively straightforward, the first item in our list demonstrates how important it is for you to keep track of your own range. This is an incredibly underrated skill.
A lot of players make mistakes and sometimes get severely exploited by their opponents because they are not thinking about their own range. They play their hands as if they were unique and independent entities; or as a lot of people say, they play their hand ‘in a vaccum‘.
You can’t play like that against competent opponents. If you are playing against the bottom of your player pool, like recreationals or the very worst regs, then sure, just do whatever your hand wants to do without necessarily considering the whole context of your range. These players are weak enough that you’re unlikely to have any troubles with this approach. It actually may even be a more profitable way to play against them. But against competent players, nonono – you have to play your hands by visualizing how they fit into the construction of your entire range.
Therefore, if you want to become better at constructing bluff raise ranges, the first thing you’re probably gonna have to do is improve your thought process at the tables. If you find yourself making decisions without even thinking about how your range looks like in that specific spot, then you’ll know you need to improve your thinking process. Build the habit of not just playing your hand, but playing your whole range in every single spot.
I like to use the term ‘range tracking’ for this. When playing poker, a lot of people try to ‘hand read’ their opponent, in a process where they interpret how their opponent’s actions change the shape of their distribution of possible hands. Range tracking is the process of hand reading yourself – you are constantly aware of how your own distribution looks like because you are actively thinking about how your own actions change the shape of your distribution of hands.
Let me be very clear about this: there is no way to become a very strong player if you are not constantly aware of your own distribution. Playing good strategies is about determining how your range should play against your opponent’s range in a given spot. If you don’t have a very clear picture of what your range looks like, how can you possibly figure out how it should be played?
If you want to get good at bluff raising, and at poker in general, develop the habit of Range Tracking immediately.
With that out of the way, we can move to the fun part: how do we decide what are the best bluff raise candidates we have? How do we effectively select the hands that should be used as bluff raises?
Hand selection is extremely important when the context is bluffing – no matter if it’s a raise or a bet. This is because you’ll always have multiple different regions of possible bluffing hands, and selecting the best ones is what makes the biggest difference for the profitability of your bluffing strategy. If you consistently pick the wrong region of hands to bluff, you are effectively capping your winrate because building bluff strategies is a very frequent necessity in the game, and doing it incorrectly will be like a hole in your winrate bucket. Everytime you fail to do it properly, a drop of money falls out of your bucket. And those drops will accumulate quickly.
HOW TO SELECT BLUFF RAISE CANDIDATES
The trick to selecting appropriate bluff raise hands is by realizing that bluff raising is no different than bluffing in the first place.
When we bluff, we try not to block our opponent’s folding range and we try to block our opponent’s calling range. With bluff raising, it’s the very same logic.
The only slight difference is that when you face a bet and raise, these regions (folding range and calling range for the opponent) become way more clearly defined.
When your opponent bets into you, he is going to have 3 major regions of hands facing a raise:
- An auto-fold region
- A bluffcatcher region
- A auto-continue region
The auto-continue region is made of the top of their value betting range. The very very strong hands. Those hands will either call or reraise against a raise. If you can have removal on this region of hands, your bluff has a chance of being very profitable.
The auto-fold region is the region of bluffs from your opponent’s betting range. Your opponent constructed a range of value bets and bluffs, and once he gets raised, there is nothing he can do with the bluffs. Those will just fold to the raise. Therefore, what you really want when bluff raising is not having removal to the auto-fold region of your opponent. This is crucial to the selection of bluff raises.
From the 2 paragraphs above, you can develop 2 very strong and effective heuristics for bluff raising:
- Use pairs that share a card with the board;
- Use A highs.
By using pairs that share a card with the board, you are guaranteeing that at least one of your cards doesn’t interact with your opponent’s auto-fold region – simply because it’s very unlikely he is bluffing with a pair. At the same time, you can also have removal in his auto-continue region by blocking hands like 2pair and sets.
The logic of using A highs is similar – it’s very unlikely your opponent is bluffing with an Ace High hand, simply because those hands usually have some showdown value and should be played passively. By having Ace high yourself, you guarantee that at least one of your cards doesn’t interact with your opponent’s auto-fold region.
These heuristics can be observed in most river raise ranges. Take a look at this example in a BTN vs BB spot, after BTN checks back the flop and the BB bets 75% twice:
BTN is supposed to bluff raise hands like Q7s (3rd pair), QT (2nd pair) and even some low kicker Kx (K3s and K4s).
Now take a look at this example – SB vs BB SRP, the SB goes for a triple barrel for small size:
The BB should bluff raise hands like 3x combos, 2x combos (A2, 42s, 32s) and a bunch of A high hands (A8o-AJo).
Similar construction can be observed in a 3bet pot, SB vs BTN – the SB goes for the BXB line and BTN responds:
We see the BTN bluff raising hands like A5s, 65s and 54s, alongside K8s and Tx hands like ATs and T9s. For the A highs, IP is using some A4s hands.
The understanding of the range dynamics in these situations is quite important because the EV of bluff raising with various hand classes can be quite different.
In the above example for the Q85 board, bluff raising a hand like AhJh loses 6bb at equilibrium and should always fold to a bet. A hand like Ah4h on the other hand is indifferent to raising or folding, and should bluff jam 25% of the time. The reason for this is that the OOP’s folding range to all-in raise contains a lot of Jx hands, therefore holding a J is terrible for bluffing:
If you want to maximize your chances of picking the correct hands to bluff raise, then always try to visualize what are your opponent’s folding hands against your raise, and then select hands that don’t interact with that region. At the same time, visualize your opponent’s auto-continue region and then prioritize using bluffing hands that share cards with that region.
HOW OFTEN YOU SHOULD RAISE YOUR BLUFFS
The answer to how often you should raise with your bluffing hands is dependant on two factors:
- The size of your value region;
- How many similar candidates you have;
The logic is very simple here – the more value hands you have to raise, the more you should raise your bluffs overall.
The second item refers the availability of similar bluffs in your range. If you have many hands that share similar properties, then instead of using specific hands at high frequencies, you’ll see solver using all of them at a low frequency, as all of them will be indifferent. This is exactly what is happening in the second print above.
On a Q53Q2 board, after calling 2 bets and facing a 3rd bet on the river, the BB has a lot of 3x combinations and A highs. Since all of them have similar properties and there are no huge blocker effects going on in that board, we see the solver using all the 3x combinations at a low frequency, and using most of the Ax combinations at a low frequency.
So, a good way of thinking about it and determining your frequency is asking yourself: “how many similar candidates I have here?” If the answer is that you have lots of very similar hands in terms of their blocking properties, then you should use all of them at a low frequency. If instead you have a small amount of potential candidates, then you use them at a higher frequency. Realize that determining whether you have “lots” or a “small amount” of bluff raise candidates can only be done by visualizing your value region (item 1 above). How many bluff candidates you have should always be interpreted relative to the size of your value region.
If you have 3 combos of potential bluff candidates but your value region is only 1 combo, then 3 combos is a lot. To be balanced you are gonna have to use them at a low frequency. However, if you have 6 value combos, 3 combos of bluffs is exactly how much you need to balance a pot sized bet. Therefore, you should use them all the time.
SUMMARY
Summarizing what we saw in this post, if you want to get better at bluff raising rivers, do the following:
- Make Range Tracking a solid habit in your thinking process at the tables – in other words, always be aware of your own range composition;
- To choose the best raise sizing for your bluffs, think of your value bets and how much you would raise with those. Then use the same sizing with your bluffs;
- Generally speaking, pairs from the board and A highs are good bluff raise candidates due to their blocker properties;
- Before constructing your range, visualize your opponent’s auto-fold region and auto-continue region. Don’t pick bluffs that interact with the auto-fold region, and amongst the ones that don’t, prioritize the bluffs that do interact with the auto-continue region – this will give you the best fold equity possible;
- When deciding how often to bluff, consider the size of your value range and how many similar bluff candidates you have. The bigger your value region, the more you should bluff. And the more similar candidates you have, the less you should bluff.
With these tips I hope that next time you face a bet on the river, you’re ready and confident to throw some bluff raises in. Good luck!
| For more information on how to construct river bluff raise ranges, check out this video from my channel
Thanks for reading. See you next week.
Until then – keep it simple.
Saulo