If you have no show down value, must you bluff?
A while back I was watching Marc from Hungry Horse YouTube talk through a hand, and on the river he said something to the effect of, "When we have no showdown value, we bluff."
Believe it or not, this was a new concept for me. I had previously thought of bluffing on the river in the context of triple barrelling, or just picking spots to do so. And I very rarely bluffed on thr river. Unknowingly, I had this huge leak in my game, though somehow still was a winning player. But just chickening out and very rarely bluffing rivers with air.
But this idea, that having no showdown value at the river is just a standard bluff situation was totally new and helpful to me. Now, everytime I get to the river with no SD value, I say to myself "With no showdown value, you must bluff". And so I consider doing it every single time. And when I am heads-up, I now do it at a very high frequency. Pot-sized bluffs only need to work a smidge more than 50% of the time to be profitable right?
I think this has been an important change/addition to my game, and over the last few months it's definitely added more profitability for me. Thinking of it as just "This is what you are supposed to do in this situation" has given me more courage to do so compared to before when my thought was more "Should I bluff here or not?"
Is this just common knowledge? If so, it's crazy I never had this concept before in all my playing experience.
5 Replies
We should be more apt to bluff when we have no showdown value but we should not consider bluffing mandatory when we have no showdown value.
We still need to think about bluff targets in V’s range, what value we can rep, and blocker effects.
One example where we may not want to bluff a river despite having no SDV is a missed flush draw. We would be blocking the hands we may get to fold and unblocking paired hands that are more likely to call.
And by definition, having showdown value implies that we may win the pot without bluffing, so it is common sense to some extent that hands with no SDV are better bluffing candidates.
I think that is dangerous statement without context. In low stakes, you'll get a lot of comments, "I know I'm beat, but I have to call" and watch your bluff go away.
Be careful about over-bluffing with missed draws, or when there are obvious missed draws on board. I'm more enthusiastic about it in situations where I just have a pair and know it's no good, but my hand unblocks V's folding range, it's unlikely V has the nuts based on the action, and we could have the nuts based on the action.
Also, in low-stakes, we have to know V can fold made hands. Below 2/5, my default read is that Vs cannot until proven otherwise.
