Pokerwebpages.com → Pokertricks
Obviously, if you are up against an opponent who never bluffs on the end no matter how the cards have come down, you should never call him if your hand can only beat a bluff.
Against players like this you can only call if there is a chance that he is betting a decent poker hand that just doesn’t happen to be as good as yours.
Against most players, there is some way of determining the chances that he is bluffing on the end based on reading hands.
The most common type of situation where your opponent maybe bluffing is where he has been forced to bet every round because of the sequence of the cards. In other words, say you have caught in order 3-8-J-6.
If he only has a ten low, he might try to make you throw an eight low away. An even better example (where the order of both hands is important) would be where he has
and you have
If he happens to have two pair and a king low he almost certainly will bluff in the hopes that you only have a jack low. Interestingly enough, in this situation you have an almost automatic mathematical call since the chances that he can’t beat a jack low, assuming he would bet every time on the end, are going to be better than the odds you are getting.
One time to make a bluff-catching call against many players is where they appear to have an automatic check, but bet anyway. For instance, if a player is good at playing poker and has
and you have
and he bets that nine-eight into what is an obvious draw to a good low hand you have to start getting suspicious that maybe somehow he doesn’t even have the nine that, it appears, he almost has to have, because if he did have that nine or eight, he has what seems to be an automatic check.
The fact that he has bet makes it appear that he might not even have the ten beat and is forced to bluff. This is a good opportunity to call him.
Of course, when real experts poker game play against each other, the expert will frequently bet the nine or eight in that spot knowing that his opponent will feel this way about the hand and call him with a ten, but against the typical player this situation literally cries out for a call.