Semi-bluffing is your friend. In no-limit hold’em it’s hard to regularly make strong hands, so you’ve got to look at winning pots with marginal holdings, a few air bluffs and a lot of hands that you’re betting ‘on the come’. Semi-bluffing is when you bet or raise with a hand you don’t think is currently the best, but has a lot of chances to improve. The crux of semi-bluffing lies in the fact that there are actually three ways to win a pot: your opponent can fold now, you can turn or river a draw or you can turn or river a scare card and win with a bluff then.
Out of position
When playing out of position it’s often because you’ve called from the blinds with a range that includes suited connectors, suited Aces, small/medium pocket pairs and some Broadway K-Q type hands that you chose not to three-bet preflop. Out of position in a heads-up pot you should look to check-raise most tight-aggressive (TAG) and loose-aggressive (LAG) opponents a decent proportion of the time with strong hands, semi-bluffs and the occasional bluff. You can change the balance according to number of players and type. For instance, in multi-way pots you should decrease the frequency you check-raise-bluff because it’s far more likely someone has a strong holding. Also, against some opponents, such as maniacs, fish and nits, you should exploit their range correctly through solid ABC poker and reduce your semi-bluffing. Stack sizes also make a big difference. When you are-deep stacked you should be more conservative out of position and when the effective stacks are smaller you can be more willing to gamble with semi-bluffs.
For instance, after calling a three-bet with K-Q suited against a LAG player who has just 60BB behind, check-raising all-in on a flop of J-T-4 is a good play. Make sure when you check-raise that you can represent a wide range of hands, as some boards heavily polarise your holding which can make it easy for good opponents to outplay you. Phil Laak learned this lesson the hard way in the following hand against Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan.
In this example, if the board had more texture to it, something like 5h-7c-9h, Laak’s semi-bluff check-raise would elicit many more folds from durrrr because he can represent a wider range of strong hands. As it is Dwan knows that Phil’s range is basically Sixes (of which there aren’t many of in his preflop range), flush draws or an unlikely slow-played overpair. As such he calls Laak’s semi-bluff with the best hand, turns a full house and elicits a bad call from Laak when the flush comes on the river.