Are you stuck in poker purgatory? You log thousands of hands, study opening ranges, and watch training videos, but your bankroll graph remains stubbornly flat. You’re playing a solid game, but “solid” isn’t winning you money. You’re a breakeven player, and it’s one of the most frustrating plateaus in poker.
The gap between this stagnation and becoming a feared “crusher” at the tables is often not about learning dozens of new, complex plays. It’s about a single, profound adjustment in your core thinking. The one adjustment that changes everything is a
mindset shift regarding bluffing.
The Question That Changes Your Game
When you’re in a hand, what’s the question you ask yourself about bluffing? For most breakeven players, it’s: “
Is this a good spot to bluff?“. This framing makes bluffing seem like an optional, opportunistic play.
To break through to the next level, you must change the question. The crucial shift is to start asking, “
What are my bluffs in this spot?“. This reframes bluffing as a mandatory and essential component of every decision you make
Why You Can’t Afford to Be a “Sometimes” Bluffer
Viewing bluffing as an integral part of your strategy isn’t just a semantic trick; it’s essential for long-term success.
- Winning is Impossible Without It: You simply cannot be a consistent winner if you don’t know how to bluff in the right situations.
- Your Bluffs Fuel Your Value: The value of your strong hands is directly tied to your perceived bluffing frequency. If your opponents know you only bet big with the nuts, why would they ever pay you off? You can’t maximize the profit from your best hands without knowing how to play your worst ones.
- Bluffs are an Investment: Think of every bluff as an investment in your future expected value (EV). Even when a bluff gets called, it builds an image that will get you paid the next time you have a monster in a similar spot. In game theory simulations, correctly chosen bluffs often break even, with their primary function being to encourage opponents to pay off your value bets.
Many struggling players secretly wish they could get paid with their good hands while also having every bluff succeed. This is a fantasy. Opponents cannot call you down often enough to pay your value bets while also folding often enough for your bluffs to always work.
Myth-Busting: “But My Opponents Never Fold!”
This is one of the most common complaints in poker, but it’s a misconception. While some opponents might not fold in certain spots, they have to fold somewhere.
- If an opponent calls too much pre-flop, their range is wide and weak, forcing them to fold more often to a bet on the flop.
- If they call the flop, they must fold more often on the turn, and so on.
If you find your bluffs are consistently getting called on the river, it might be a symptom of a problem with your strategy on earlier streets. Perhaps your bet sizing is telling them a story that makes their decision easy. The goal is to construct the hand so your opponent arrives at the river with a range that isn’t so strong that they have no folding hands left.
How to Implement This Adjustment Today
- Change Your Thought Process: In every hand, actively consider which hands in your range are your bluffing candidates.
Be Ambitious: Don’t just bluff with total air. Aggressively search for non-intuitive bluffing candidates. These could be hands with a sliver of showdown value or missed draws, like pocket fours, ace-queen with no spade draw, or 6-5 suited with no draw.
Put Opponents in Jail: When you aggressively and creatively find bluffs, you put opponents in incredibly difficult situations, forcing them to make tough decisions with strong hands like top two pair. This ability is a key differentiator for players with high win rates.
Play Contrarian: Identify the situations where players in your games tend to struggle to find enough bluffs. Aim to find bluffs in those exact spots, especially if your opponents are known to over-fold.
The Results: A Healthier Bottom Line
Making this mental shift will have a direct and powerful impact on your winnings. It will dramatically improve your “red line” (non-showdown winnings) and, just as importantly, your ability to get paid off with your value hands as opponents start respecting your aggression.
Start today. In your next session, review a hand where you faced a tough decision. Did you actively think about what your bluffs should be in that spot? If not, take the time to study it. Use a poker solver to see what bluffs are theoretically sound and practice being more specific and ambitious with your bluff selection.
Stop waiting for the perfect spot to bluff and start building a strategy where bluffing is a constant. That is the path from breakeven to crusher.