Poker Strategy with Ryan Fee: Using Blockers When Bluffing

High stakes players have a secret to successful bluffing: blockers. Most of you have heard this term before, but probably in the context of preflop. In this article, we will examine how considering blockers postflop can actually make our bluffs work more often. To do this, we will look at an example hand from one of my recent sessions.

What are blockers?

The idea is actually quite simple: given the cards in your hand, we make it combinatorially less likely for our opponent to have a hand that includes one or both of the cards we have. In hold'em, there are 1,326 possible starting hand combinations; there are sixteen combinations of each two-card "combo" (e.g., 10-9 or KJ), and six combinations of each paired combo (e.g., AA or KK).

Thinking about ranges combinatorially helps when learning about or using the concept of blockers. For example, let's consider AK preflop. If we are dealt this hand, it is 50% less likely that our opponents will have AA or KK (since the number of AA/KK combinations is reduced from twelve to six). Therefore, we shouldn't be too worried about facing AA or KK when our hand blocks these hands.

Using blockers effectively is a very powerful tool when selecting hands to use as bluffs, both pre-flop and post-flop. If we select hands with the correct blockers, we can decrease the likelihood of our opponent continuing in the hand.

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Using Blockers to Build Bluffing Ranges

Let's look at a hand I played recently and think about how we can use blockers to pick the most effective bluffs.

We raise from the button and the big blind (BB) calls.

Flop – :Ah :Ts :7d

BB checks. We bet. BB calls.

Turn – :2s

BB checks. We bet. BB calls.

River – :2c

BB checks. Which hands should we bet with?

To answer this question, we need to have a good idea of Villain's open raising range on the button, as well as the BB player's calling range. Using Poker Ranger (a program for evaluating ranges), we'll take a closer look at what these ranges look like and how they should affect our own strategy further down the line:

On this board, which is A-10-7-2-2, it is not difficult to decide which hands we can value bet for three streets from the button (AJ or better), which are the hands shown in dark green (98 combinations of value hands). However, to make ourselves more difficult to play against, we need to ensure that we also balance our betting range with the number of bluff combinations. If we do not do this, our opponent can easily exploit us by folding all but his strongest hands to our bets. By balancing our range with value and bluff hands, we limit our opponents' ability to exploit us and make ourselves much more difficult to play against.

It is better to bluff with some specific hands

It is best to bluff with hands that block the hands that our opponent will check-call with on the river (those in dark green shown in the BB calling range matrix). By choosing to bluff with these hands, we are using blockers to capitalize on reducing the number of combinations that are available for our opponent to check-call. Hands that are good to use as bluffs in this scenario are highlighted in pink below:

These hands are effectively chosen for us to bluff with for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they block out some of our opponent's hands that contain AX that definitely call multiple streets. For example, if we choose to bluff with J-9, there are ten fewer combinations of AJ and A-9 in our opponent's range. Additionally, these hands perform well as bluffs because of their ability to make very strong hands on the river. J-9, J-8, and 9-8 are all capable of becoming the nuts on an AT-7 board, while still blocking out hands in our opponent's calling range.

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Using combinations to ensure a balanced range

While it is not always necessary, we can use combinations to ensure that our range is perfectly balanced. In the example above, if we bet the pot on the river with our value and bluff hands, we need to have two value hands for each bluff hand in order to match the pot odds that our opponent is being offered (2:1). Given that our value range consists of 98 combinations, our bluff range should consist of approximately 49 combinations to be perfectly balanced in this situation. The bluffs highlighted above in pink total 52 combinations, which means that we will have to fold exactly three of them to remain balanced. Remember, in practice, remaining perfectly balanced is not always the best play (especially at low stakes).

Using blockers to build your bluffing ranges is the best way to ensure that your bluffs will be as successful as possible. Remember, if your hand blocks a number of combinations in your opponent's calling range and has little showdown value, it is more than likely a good choice to include in your bluffing range.

Article translated and adapted from the original: Poker Strategy With Ryan Fee: Using BIockers When Bluffing