Lesson
Bluffing the Bottom of Your Range When They Show Weakness
River Bluffing · intermediate · 9 min
Tyler and Eric review river bluffing after opponents show passivity by checking through earlier streets. The lesson walks through a concrete EV calculation for a three-quarter-pot river bluff when the opponent folds 71%, then compares bluffing versus checking hands with different showdown value.
Key takeaways
- When an opponent has shown passivity by checking, look to bluff liberally on later streets rather than giving up.
- If the flop and turn check through and you arrive at the river with a bluff, betting the river is often preferred.
- For a three-quarter-pot river bluff into a pot of 1 with 71% folds, calculate EV as 0.71 * 1 - 0.29 * 0.75, which is about 0.5 pot.
- Compare the bluff EV to the hand's checking EV: if checking wins less than the bluff's expected return, betting is better.
- A hand with no showdown value, such as four-six offsuit in the example, should bluff when betting has any positive EV; a hand like queen-seven that wins about 33% by checking can still be a profitable bluff if betting returns about 50% of the pot.