The art of the super-bluff

The world of six-max online cash games has changed a lot over the last few years. The enormous fish-pools of yester year no longer exist, and increasingly the players who make the most money are the ones who can outplay their fellow thinking players. And in no part of the game is this more obvious than in pre-flop aggression and the use of re-reraises, also known as four-betting.

The strategy of three-betting has become increasingly common in the last two years, to the point that it’s now widespread across the entire regular player pool. We can probably blame this on coaching sites and also on the proliferation of forum strategy discussions. Given this increase in three-betting pre-flop, it is important to devote some time to thinking about how best to respond and whether or not we should increase our four-betting frequency. However, it’s important not just to blindly ramp up the aggression, as you need to look at the positive and negative aspects as well as the overall metagame implications.

FOCUS ON VALUE

Perhaps the best place to start thinking about four-betting frequency is by focusing on the concept of value. For the sake of simplicity I will be talking about standard $2/$4 and $3/$6 games with relatively small player pools. So with that in mind ask yourself this question: which hands would you always four-bet for value, assuming you never flat-call a re-raise?

Obviously you’d four-bet A-A and most likely K-K, but after that it becomes more situational. Now you have to start thinking a bit. What position is the villain in? How does he view you? Do you have much history? How often does he re-raise? Is it a squeeze play? These considerations allow you to form an accurate idea of what the villain’s range is and how best to exploit it.

If you are four-betting for value it means you have assessed your hand to be ahead pre-flop and you think that the best way for you to obtain value is by putting more money in pre-flop. It might be a simple situation. You might have Aces and get re-raised by a total nit who has a minimum re-raising requirement of Q-Q. You also know his default line is to call any all-in pre-flop with this range.

If you know this information then it’s pretty obvious that shoving and getting called by a worse hand is the best line. Flat calling with your A-A only increases the chance that he might fold once you see a flop; for example if he has Q-Q and the flop comes King-high. So obviously in this extreme example, four-betting pre-flop is the best course of action.

SITUATIONAL FACTORS

A few years ago this kind of dilemma was made easier by the fairly standard pre-flop play of most players. Back then 90% of the online regulars would only re-raise pre-flop for value with the very cream of their premium hands. It’s a tad more difficult now when you are playing opponents who re-raise a decent amount of the time pre-flop, but not always for value. But these players can be exploited. They are being too aggressive and as such they can be targeted. It just takes a little look at the controlling factors, namely position, action, image and equity.

Let’s say you open-raise under the gun and your image is reasonably solid. A loose fish flat-calls in the cut-off and a mediocre loose-aggressive player on the button opts to three-bet. You know he likes the squeeze play and you know he re-raises light with some positional awareness. So this is a great spot for a light four-bet. Your cards are almost irrelevant – but there are some considerations.

First of all we should immediately deduce that conditions are good on all fronts, both in terms of how strong we think his hand range is and also in how he will view our four-bet. We know he is a reasonable player but not especially smart, so we don’t want to overcomplicate the situation. All he has seen is a raise from an okay player, a flat-call from a fish and the fact that he has the button and a playable hand. From his perspective this play will win the money in the middle or isolate the fish a lot of the time.

His range is at its widest on the button, and even wider in this case since it’s a squeeze play and a fish is in the hand. The great thing about this situation is that it’s very rare that he actually has a good hand here, let alone the great hand he will need to continue. We have opened under the gun, so our hand automatically looks strong. Given the betting, and assuming you get your bet-sizing right, he can only really continue with A-A/K-K/Q-Q and A-K. That’s not a lot of hands. If you think about how wide his range is, you can start to imagine how profitable this move can be.

While your cards are largely irrelevant given that this is a pure power play, it does help to have some sort of hand. Ace-x suited for example (where x is a wheel card – i.e. 2, 3, 4 or 5) is ripe for light four-betting here, as you’ll often hit or pick up a big draw.

HOW MUCH TO BET

Getting the size of four-bets wrong is probably the biggest single mistake low-stakes players make when facing regulars. Let’s say for example that you are playing in a $2/$4 game where the usual opening bet is $14 and the usual re-raise will be roughly something like $35 to $40. If you are a regular in this game, you need to make a four-bet that allows you to balance your range and get full value from your hands. What this means in practice is that you want to be able to bluff cheaply, give yourself room for additional bluffs on later streets and give your aggressive foes the illusion that they have fold equity when you have a monster. If you start varying your four-bets according to the strength of your holdings, it won’t take too long for players to get an edge over you. So with that in mind, how big should a pre-flop four-bet be?

This might surprise you, but given that the pot is already huge, it doesn’t need to be very big. It needs to sometimes induce a fold from a better hand and sometimes get called by worse, but primarily it needs to make a profit in and of itself in the long-term.

Continuing from our earlier example, if the villain on the button re-raises to $38, you can make it something in the region of $80 to $90. You definitely shouldn’t (in my opinion anyhow) just automatically press the pot button. Betting the pot is an expensive bluff and freezes out worse hands when you are four-betting for value. Betting $80 to win a pot of $60 is a lot more attractive than $110 to win $60.

PICKING YOUR SPOTS

I wanted to conclude this article by giving some thoughts on some good spots for light four-betting. Obviously the main criteria are the players involved in the hand and their respective images. As the button is the position where players most often re-raise light to isolate pre-flop, the blinds can be a great place from which to four-bet light. As you are entering the action cold, a four-bet from the blinds has a lot of credibility. It looks super-strong and is very difficult to combat.

As such, four-betting from the blinds can be incredibly profitable, though it is vital to have a clean image. You also need to recognise when the conditions are right – usually when a good player on the button is targeting a bad loose player. Recognise this dynamic and you can frequently abuse it.

On the other hand, coming over the top of an attempted squeeze three-bet by a player in the blinds can also be profitable. This is especially effective when the opening raiser is loose. This play can look incredibly strong if you limped in and then four-bet over a squeeze. Another spot you should look for is when a fish gets deep-stacked, as good players will try to isolate this player with a wider range.

SUMMARY

I hope I’ve given you something to think about when getting involved in pre-flop wars against strong players. Four-betting isn’t the only weapon at your disposal, but it can be a very effective one if used sparingly. Being a winning player is all about exploiting small leaks in your regular opponents. By keeping your image unorthodox and having a range wider than your opponents suspect it might make you a little bit tougher to play.