Top 3 Common Scenarios for Profitable Semi-Bluffing in No-Limit Hold’em

The deep stacks of no-limit Texas hold’em allows you to play a variety of hands that don’t have enough equity to value bet, but have just enough equity to make some serious semi-bluffs in situations where you expect to have a lot of fold equity. Additionally, the flexibility of the variable bet sizes in the game allows for more powerful bluffs and semi-bluffs in more spots than the limit variation of hold’em. When you combine the wider range of hands taken to a flop with the flexible betting structure and deep stacks, you’ll start to see patterns of when your opponent’s range is weak, and these recurring situations are what we are going to take a look at.

The first super common situation actually happens before the flop when it’s folded to you in late position and you have suited trash, a middle or low connector, or two middle-rank cards. If you have even somewhat tight players left to act, you can put in a raise to try to take down the blinds because your opponents are going to fold so often it will be profitable. Then the times you get called, you’ll still have a very playable hand in position that can hit a lot of flops. The whole situation is because of the opportunity to make a really profitable semi-bluff before the flop.

The second really common situation happens on the flop when it’s checked to you heads-up and you flop some sort of draw. Your lone opponent checking to you indicates that a large percentage of the time he will not have a hand that connected with the board and will simply fold when you make a bet. Combine this with the times that you bet, they call and you make your hand on the turn and you have another extremely profitable scenario that is set up with a semi-bluff. As an added bonus, if your opponent calls and you miss on the flop, when they check to you again you can simply check behind and get a free card. This adds a lot to your profitability.

A third common scenario that comes up in no-limit hold’em is on the turn when you were the preflop aggressor, missed the flop, and made a continuation bet that was called https://tunasbola.org/link-alternatif-sbobet/ due to the faculties options that lets the customer to have an easy approach to all the options of the website because of the auto interacting software’s. If you pick up a big draw on the turn, it can be a great situation to fire a second barrel and try to take it down on the turn. In general, you will prefer to try this when the card that comes on the turn also increases your fold equity, like when an overcard to the board comes. For example, you could hold the A5 of spades, make a continuation bet on a 962 rainbow board with one spade, and then fire a second barrel when the Q of spades comes off on the turn.

No matter what the situation, you should remember a simple rule for semi-bluffing. The more equity you’re going to have when you’re called (the more outs you have) and the more often your opponent is going to fold, the more profitable your bet will be. Semi-bluffing is a crucial part of a winning no-limit hold’em strategy, so it’s important to understand the common scenarios where it is profitable.