Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Again, don’t make this play against good players.
Again, don’t make this play against good players. Also, don’t make this play more than once, as most players will realize that you left your opponent with a few extra chips when you wanted him to call. You may think you can bluff with this play later, but it’s tough to tell how each opponent will react to such a bet once he’s seen it. You are probably better off just going back to normal bets.
Blocking Bets
Blocking Bets A blocking bet is a small bet made with a weak hand, such as 7-6 on a K-J-8-6-2 board, with the intention of folding to a raise. Blocking bets are information bets. We learned earlier that bets for information are usually pretty bad because the information you get is often not accurate. Making a blocking bet against a good player is almost always a bad play. If you have a weak hand with showdown value, you are much better off using that hand as a bluff catcher. A blocking bet has some value against a weak player, but using these weak hands as bluff catchers is usually more +EV. Suppose you raise 9-8 from middle position to 3BBs out of your 200BB stack. The button calls. The flop comes 9-5-2. You bet 4BBs and he calls. The turn is the J. You check and he checks. The river is the A. Betting for value makes little sense here because your opponent will only call if you are beat. A blocking bet in this instance would be around 4BBs. The problem with betting so small is that it induces bluffs while getting little value out of worse hands. Check-calling is almost always the right play here because most opponents will at least consider bluffing the river and you will usually only lose a bit more when you call incorrectly.