Bluff-raise is a proven winner

The play I’m about to show you made at least $100,000 for a friend of mine who used it repeatedly about 10 years ago.

Just this one play, used over and over against opponents who weren’t prepared to deal with it, made a fortune for him.

Games aren’t as easy now as they used to be, but deployed against a typical small-stakes player in a live, no-limit game, this play can be just as powerful today as it was back then.

I used it recently in a $2-$5 game in Las Vegas. A player limped into a hand, and a regular opponent made it $20 to go from one off the button.

I called on the button with K♦ Q♥. The blinds folded, and the limper called. There was $67 in the pot with about $600 left in the stacks.

The flop came J♦ 6♣ 2♥. The limper checked, and the preflop raiser bet $30. I raised to $90, and both players folded.

That’s the play. You bluffraise the preflop raiser’s flop bet. Here’s why it makes money.

Let’s say the preflop raiser would raise about 20% of all hands after the flop. For reference, that’s good suited hands like A-2 suited, J-9 suited or better; pocket pairs 5-5 or better; and offsuit hands K-10 or better.

Given that range of preflop hands, the raiser will flop top pair or better on a J-6-2 flop a little more than 30% of the time.

Without at least top pair, it’s fair to assume most $2-$5 players in Las Vegas will fold to the raise.

The preflop limper is even less likely to have top pair or better, so maybe we can assume this player will call the raise about 20% of the time. Given these assumptions, the chance both players will fold is 80% of 70% of the time, or about 56%.

The raise risks $90 to win the $97 in the pot, which is a bit better than even-money odds.

And yet we can expect it to work more than half the time. The bluff shows an immediate profit.

When you throw that I could get called and still win (by catching a king or queen on the turn, for instance), it’s even more profitable.

It’s so simple, there has to be a catch, right? The catch is that it works better on certain flops than others. A flop of J-6-2 is hard to hit, whereas a flop of, say, 8-7-6 is much easier to hit with a broad array of hands. So the play is good on the former flop and not on the latter.

I’m also making two assumptions: The preflop raiser will bet most flops and will give up easily without a good hand if raised.

But if the assumptions hold (they often do), and the flop is right, this play can help you to win a lot of easy money.