Three barrel bluffing

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 24 February 2010 / Leave a Comment

The three barrel bluff is one of the moves you need to be able to make against other high level thinking players, and require all of your skills and courage to pull off well.

There is perhaps no trickier opponent in pot limit and no limit games than one who is able to three barrel bluff well. The ability to fire at all three streets with air or a missed draw makes your opponents life incredibly hard, as they desperately struggle to work out when you have it and when you don't.

If you watch any of the truly great big bet players, such as Phil Ivey or Patrick Antonius in action, you will quickly see that they are constantly firing bets at a much higher frequency than they would if they only ever had hands when they did. This style of play allows them to quickly dominate their opponents, with the unending hail of bets making decent decision making nearly impossible.

They seem to get action with their bad hands, yet move people off their weak ones with an unnervingly high frequency, and their opponent's knowledge that they are more than capable of firing all three streets creates a sword of Damocles over them - with the result that they are never sure quite what to do with their marginal hands.

So far so good, but the down side of this style of play is also quite simple - if you are not extremely good at opponent observation, board texture analysis, likely hand ranges, and bet sizing, this style of play quickly switches from extremely dangerous to just very spewy, with your over aggression quickly ended by a few well timed traps from your opponents. Being able to make these sort of moves at the right time is extremely hard on the whole, and behind any of the great big bet players is an extremely keen mind and very rigorous work ethic.

These are the plays needed to succeed at the very highest levels, and they carry with them the need for a skill set of the highest calibre. These are not moves that carry much clout at the low stakes - no one responds to them and they are just a waste of money.

The three barrel bluff is one of the moves you need to be able to make against other high level thinking players, and require all of your skills and courage to pull off well. Getting action on big river bets is crucial to succeeding in big bet games, and against observant players the only way to generate that kind of action is to let them know you are capable of firing all streets with air.

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