Balanced range: 25% of these bets can be bluffs, so 24 value combos support 8 bluff combos (one bluff per 3 value bets). The caller needs 25% equity to call.
Bluffing in poker is betting or raising with a hand that is probably worse than your opponent’s, so that a better hand folds. The calculator above takes the pot, your bet and how often they fold, and returns what a pure bluff needs, what it earns and how many bluffs your value bets can support. It opens on a half-pot river bluff that needs a fold 33.3% of the time and earns +1bb against a player who folds 40%.
A bet made to win the pot by a fold rather than at showdown. A pure bluff has almost no chance when called: a missed draw on the river, or six-high after the flop missed you. A semi-bluff is behind now but can improve, such as a flush draw on the turn, so it wins two ways. The opposite of both is a value bet, made with a hand that wants a call.
More often the bigger the bet. A pure bluff breaks even when the opponent folds bet ÷ (pot + bet) of the time: betting 5 into 10 risks 5 to win 10, so it needs a fold one time in three. Equity when called lowers that bar, which is why a draw can bet where nothing cannot. Our fold equity calculator prices any bet with your own equity and fold guess.
| Bet | A pure bluff must work | Bluffs in a balanced betting range |
|---|---|---|
| 1/3 pot | 25.0% | 20.0% |
| 1/2 pot | 33.3% | 25.0% |
| 2/3 pot | 40.0% | 28.6% |
| 3/4 pot | 42.9% | 30.0% |
| Pot | 50.0% | 33.3% |
| 2x pot | 66.7% | 40.0% |
Often enough that the caller cannot profit by calling everything, and no more. This is standard game theory: on the river, the share of bluffs in your betting range should equal the equity the caller’s call needs. A pot-sized bet offers 2 to 1, so a third of those bets can be bluffs, one for every two value bets. At half pot it is one bluff for every three, as the table’s last column shows. The calculator turns that into combos: 24 value combos betting half pot support 8 bluff combos. Our GTO guide explains where the rule comes from.
Bluff more than that and a caller wins by calling. Bluff less and they win by folding everything but the nuts. Against most real opponents you then shift one way: fewer bluffs against players who call too much, more against players who fold too much.
Often. A solver does not label a raise as a bluff, so we counted a 3-bet as one when the same player folds it to a 4-bet, and a 4-bet as one when it folds to a 5-bet all in. We used the same exported 6-max ranges at 100 big blinds that our charts use, weighted by combos. In PlusEV’s solver ranges, 44.0% of 3-bets fold to a 4-bet, and 44.1% of the opener’s 4-bets fold to a 5-bet all in.
| Raise | Bluff share, average | Lowest spot | Highest spot |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-bet (folds to a 4-bet) | 44.0% | 33.5%, big blind vs button | 52.7%, big blind vs cutoff |
| 4-bet (folds to a 5-bet all in) | 44.1% | 35.7%, under the gun vs big blind | 50.3%, cutoff vs button |
That is more than the river rule would allow. A 4-bet to 20 big blinds over a 7.5bb 3-bet adds 17.5bb to an 11.5bb pot, about 1.5 times the pot, where a river bet that size can hold 37.6% bluffs. The gap is equity: a preflop bluff that gets called still sees five cards, so it is never as dead as a missed river draw.
Broadway hands, far more than suited aces. Pooled over the fifteen 3-bet spots, hands with two cards ten or higher carry 51.4% of the 3-bet bluffs, and king-queen and ace-queen offsuit alone 17.4%, while ace-two to ace-five suited carry 7.2%. King-queen offsuit 3-bets 42.5% of the time on average and folds to a 4-bet 97.5% of the times it does. Ace-jack and ace-ten offsuit fold 98% and 100%.
Ace-five suited, the textbook 3-bet bluff, mostly does not give up. It 3-bets 74.1% of the time across the spots, and facing a 4-bet it folds 26.6%, calls 37.6% and 5-bets all in 35.7%. Seven-six suited 3-bets 17.9% of the time and calls a 4-bet 94.3% of the time, so it is not a bluff either. The hands that fold are the ones too strong to fold to an open but too weak to go further.
The 4-bet bluffs are where the suited aces belong. Of the opener’s 4-bets that fold to a 5-bet, 61.8% hold an ace: ace-queen offsuit carries 22.2%, ace-two to ace-five suited 17.6% and suited kings 21.6%. The reasoning, that an ace makes the opponent less likely to hold aces or ace-king, is the subject of our blockers guide.
A little. We played 400,000 six-handed hands through the solver’s strategy for all six seats, with card removal, and split every raise by whether the raiser held an ace. In PlusEV’s simulation, an open holding an ace takes the blinds 49.6% of the time against 47.8% without one. Holding an ace adds 0.8 points to how often a 3-bet wins at once (51.7% against 50.9%) and 2.6 points to a 4-bet (46.9% against 44.3%).
So a blocker shifts the odds by one to three points, not ten. It is a reason to pick one bluff over a similar hand, not a reason to bluff in the first place.
When the story holds and the opponent can fold. This section is standard theory rather than our data. The best spots share a few traits:
Size the bluff first, then check the price: bet ÷ (pot + bet) is how often it has to work if you have nothing. Keep your bluffs to about the share the table above allows, and fewer against players who call too much.
Before the flop, the solver ranges PlusEV drills 3-bet and 4-bet as bluffs with hands that can be folded without regret, and more than two in five of their 3-bets give up to a 4-bet. The PlusEV preflop trainer drills those spots hand by hand, so you learn which of your raises are bluffs before you make them.
Betting or raising with a hand that is probably not the best, so that an opponent with a better hand folds. If they fold, you win a pot you would have lost at showdown.
It depends on the bet size. On the river, a pot-sized bet can be a third bluffs and a half-pot bet a quarter. Before the flop, 44% of the 3-bets in PlusEV's solver ranges fold to a 4-bet.
When the opponent can fold, their range is weak, and your bets tell a believable story. Bluff one opponent rather than several, and prefer hands that can still improve when called.
A bet with a hand that is behind now but can improve, such as a flush draw. It wins when the opponent folds and also some of the times they call, so it needs fewer folds than a pure bluff.
Mostly from the betting, not the face. Ask whether their line makes sense for a strong hand, which draws missed, and how often this player bluffs. Physical tells exist but are unreliable.
It depends on the bet size: one bluff for every two value bets at a pot-sized bet, one for every three at half pot and one for every four at a third of the pot. The calculator above does the count for any size.
Less often. Many low-stakes players call too much, so pure bluffs lose against them while value bets win. Semi-bluffs still work, because they can win when called.
Hands that lose at showdown but block the opponent's strong hands or can still improve. Before the flop, the solver's 4-bet bluffs hold an ace 62% of the time, and its 3-bet bluffs lean on broadway hands such as king-queen offsuit.
