Bluff occasionally on hands that might improve to best

Too often, amateur poker players bet only when they have a strong hand. They assume that the way to win in poker is to wait for a premium hand and then pile their money into the pot, hoping some oblivious chap pays them off.

In reality, if you put a significant amount of chips into the pot only when you’re holding premium hands, your opponents will rarely pay you off if they’re even remotely competent.

Suppose your opponent, sitting on a stack of 100 big blinds, raises to three big blinds from middle position, and only you call from the button. For the fun of it, let’s say that you make a blind call without examining your cards.

The flop comes 8h 7h 4d. Your opponent makes a bet of four big blinds, which is a little more than half the size of the pot.

Some players would only raise in this spot with 6-5, 8-8, 7-7, 4-4 or 8-7. While it’s a natural instinct to want to raise with these premium hands, your opponent can easily fold her entire range, meaning that it’s going to be very hard for you to get value froma raise.

One way to avoid running into this problem is to bluff from time to time. The hands that are best to bluff with are those that also have some chance to improve to the best hand. In this case, the best bluffs are flush draws and straight draws. If your goal is to be balanced (as it often should be), you can actually raise with about two times as many semibluffs as value hands, because many of your semibluffs will improve to premium hands on the turn.

So, in this situation, in addition to raising with your premium made hands, you should raise with many of your draws, such as flush draws or 10-9 for an open-ended straight draw. If you have a tight image, you can coax your opponent into playing poorly by folding too often, because she will incorrectly assume that you are raising only with premium hands. If your opponent is a calling station, that’s fine too, because your premium hands will get paid off, and there will be a decent percentage of times when your draws are completed by the river.

If you bet the flop and your opponent calls, it is usually wise to continue betting on the turn with most of your range. This will make you difficult to play against, because your opponent will have no idea whether you have a premium hand or a semibluff. The same holds true for the river.

It’s important that you develop a strategy to help you establish with your opponents that any action you take is not obviously strong or weak. If your opponents know that your flop bets are always strong, you make their decisions easy. You win when your opponents make mistakes, so develop a strategy that will lead them to make as many mistakes as possible.

Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and coach with more than $6 million in live tournament earnings.