colly191091

I just read an interesting piece on bluffing at the Microstakes... I've found myself bluffing for big pots quite often, is this a leak of mine? Do you agree with the following statement?

I would have thought a lot of weak tight / money scared players at these limits would be easy to push around in big pots with marginal hands

Your stack is a weapon, and the pot is a shield. A bet is more threatening when there's lots of money behind: your weapon looks dangerous compared to the shield. When the shield is big, your weapon doesn't look so scary.

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colly191091

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https://www.pokervip.com/thread/view?forum=general-discussion&slug=bluffing-in-big-pots-at-the-micros&nav=56c34fdfd39043cd758b45b0

I don't play micros so I can't comment on the EV of big bluffs here, but I think you might have misread the quote, not sure.

The quote says the pot is a shield. Big pot=big shield=they SHOULD call often when someone bets into it. Once the pot is big, they should be more committed to it, both in terms of their hand strength and due to pot odds.

The weapon is your stack size, or perhaps better thought of in this example as SPR. The concept of leverage also plays a large role into how scary a bet should look.

So what should look scary according to this quote isn't a turn shove of 60 BB into an 80BB pot. What should look scary is a flop bet of 15BB into a 10BB pot, when you also have 80BB behind.

Recreational players at the micros aren't paying attention to your stack size. And it can be hard to bluff these players off a big pot. Like everything in poker it depends. How much of their stack have they committed? Are they likely to call down with 2nd pair when you rep the flush? I think the quote makes more sense in tournaments where players may pay more attention to your stack size. But I also think you can bluff at the micros, in the right situations.

I spoke a lot about this in my recent crushing the micros videos and I feel it is still relevant and doable and falls under everyday strategy. Basically it all comes down to understanding

- Villains skill level
- Board texture
- Ranges
- What we rep
- How hard (not profitable) it is for villain to call with his range.

Once we figure out all this it is open season but it can come down to bullet point 1 a ton in the micros - if everything makes sense for us to have the nuts but the player is playing level 1 and just calls all the time then we fail.

I would add that we can do all these things and often quite easily versus certain player types, but if our own ability is lacking we are going to mess up more often than not and just end up spewing stacks.

Know your enemy, but know yourself to. Be brutally honest about your ability to make such moves, it's easy to get tilted by big pots (and definitely in pots afterwards) and the fold button gets broken.

Thanks for the replies dudes!

Here's the full excerpt on the topic

If a bluff is designed to fold out better hands, it follows that at the micro's, you should almost never bluff in big pots. Why? Because there is a lot of money already in the pot. This is only possible if villain has shown to you that he has no intention of folding, because he feels his hand is strong. This means that his range is probably made up of more nut type hands than air or marginal hands.

Also, there is a thing called pot odds that you probably know (I remember knowing advanced concepts like "rangemerging" before actually grasping what valuebetting was). The bigger the pot, the less scary a big bet is for villain, because he has great actual pot odds, and almost no reversed implied odds, because your stack is already partly or largely in the pot. You have no weapons left.

The pots where you should bluff are the small ones, where you can feel villains hesitation: "Am I behind or ahead? Is it worth it to call this for this smallish pot?" Villains will talk themselves into folding small pots a lot more often. Why? Because your stack is a weapon, and the pot is a shield. A bet is more threatening when there's lots of money behind: your weapon looks dangerous compared to the shield. When the shield is big, your weapon doesn't look so scary.

@Pwll

Know your enemy, but know yourself to.

Definitely gotta keep this in mind! I'm confident in my ability but sometimes find myself fighting to much for big pots which leads to spew

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