Low Risk, High % Bluffs

When looking for bluff opportunities, we should identify situations where our hand looks "inevitably" strong and our opponents will therefore have an extremely difficult time making a call. Sometimes we can accomplish this by taking a hand that we assumed was a lost cause and using a favorable board texture to represent a hand we wouldn't otherwise have been able to. Just such a scenario happened for me a few days ago:

Seat 1: UTGplus1 ($116.90 in chips)
Seat 2: Donzo ($101.20 in chips)
Seat 3: Dealer ($179.45 in chips)
Seat 4: Small Blind ($74.95 in chips)
Seat 5: Big Blind ($100 in chips)
Seat 6: UTG ($117.30 in chips)
Small Blind: posts small blind $0.50
Big Blind: posts big blind $1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Donzo [Kd Js]
UTG: folds (timeout)
UTGplus1: folds
UTG: Seat re-join
Donzo: raises $3 to $3
Dealer: calls $3
Small Blind: folds
Big Blind: folds
*** FLOP *** [2h 7h 7d]

We're dealt KJ in the cutoff and open to $3. The villain calls on the button and the blinds fold. The flop is 772 with two hearts. As this flop misses most of the villain's button calling range, we make a standard continuation bet and the villain calls.

Donzo: bets $5
Dealer: calls $5
*** TURN *** [2h 7h 7d] [8h]

The turn brings an 8 and a 3rd heart. While we could continue betting here, we really aren't sure what the villain has. They could have called the flop with a 7, a 2, an overpair, a flush draw, or ace high. If they have an overpair, they're likely to call at least one more bet and they're never folding a 7. And if they were just calling with a hand like AT-AK and are holding a heart, they're likely going to at least call one more street to try and hit. Consequently we check, expecting to fold if the villain bets, but they check behind.

Donzo: checks
Dealer: checks
*** RIVER *** [2h 7h 7d 8h] [6h]

The river brings a 6 and a 4th heart. At this point we could check and give up, as there's almost no chance that we can have the best hand here after the villain's flop call. However, we can consider a bet here due to the information given to us by the villain's turn check. In a situation that brings a 3rd heart, an overpair is almost always going to bet the turn to get value from single heart flush draws, as is a 7. There's a small chance of 88 for a turned boat, but not enough to be worrisome. Furthermore, if the villain had called the flop with just ace high while also holding a strong heart, it's likely (though not guaranteed) that they would use that extra equity to bet the turn, rather then letting the river come for free. As a result, the likelihood of the villain having trips, a boat, or a strong flush is significantly diminished. We decide to make a small bet of $7 into $17.50.

Donzo: bets $7

The size of our bet accomplishes two things: 1) The bet size is very small and consequently looks like an an enticement to call a flush. 2) Due to the small size of our bet, we don't need the villain to fold that often for the bet to be profitable. In fact, our bluff only needs to work about 28.5% of the time to be profitable:

$7 / ($7 + $17.50) = 28.5%

At these stakes particularly, unless a player just feels like donking off money it is going to be very difficult for them to make a call here without a flush and possibly difficult even with a weak flush. As a result we can feel confident that our bluff is going to work here often enough to make it profitable. The bet does work and the villain folds.

Dealer: folds
Uncalled bet ($7) returned to Donzo
Donzo collected $16.65 from pot

Rather than being intimidated by "scary" boards like the one above, we can figure out how likely they are to help our opponent and then use them to our advantage to pick up some money that might have seemed impossible to win.