Bluffing after N junk hands

[eastbay]

Cris Brown's post about getting 70-some junk hands in a row echoed my occasional frustration with how to play when you get nothing to play with.

Sometimes I think I should start bluffing if something like 40 hands in a row are junk. Just represent AA and see what happens. Hell, you're going to lose anyway unless you try something.

Of course, I usually end up getting something like A9s and pushing that as AA, and I usually end up getting called since I only have 5-6BB left by that point anyway.

I don't know, just wondering if anyone else has some kind of rule like this when they consider a bluff mandatory.

[CrisBrown]

Hi eastbay,

There are two philosophies on this. The first is that it's better to go out on blinds than to go out playing junk. To some extent, that's valid.

On the other hand, I stayed alive to 5th place in that tourney by betting junk as if it were gold in key spots -- e.g.: all-in resteal on J9o in BB vs. a min-raise from the SB -- where I didn't feel like anyone could call me. In every case I was short-stacked enough that my only play was all-in, but that was enough to get others to lay down what were doubtless better hands.

I've more than once stayed alive through such tactics until I could finally catch a good hand to double through on and get back into contention. Of course, that didn't happen today ... but that's poker.

And to finish the story on the JTo that I went all-in with from the SB, only to discover the BB had AA ... the flop was Q-9-4 ... so I had 8 outs to win and double through. I didn't, but it wasn't for lack of muttering at the screen.

Cris

[LetsRock]

I think you have to have a real passive table to consider this type of move. It can work better if you started out playing some very good hands aggressively and they saw what "you played". After this, you can sometimes get away with pure bluffs. But, I've found that somehow, the big stacks always get and ace or PP big enough to keep you honest so it's hard to get pure junk to clear the table.

[mrbaseball]

[ QUOTE ]
Sometimes I think I should start bluffing if something like 40 hands in a row are junk. Just represent AA and see what happens. Hell, you're going to lose anyway unless you try something

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you need to be bluffing somewhere in that sequence of 40 hands whether you have any cards or not. I recently had an epiphany of sorts and find that way too many people in these tournaments only play the cards and never the players.

It can be tough to get good reads online but I still think when the opportunity arises you have to play hard with nothing. Waiting around for big pockets often means you wither and die. Position and situation and stack sizes is often more important than the cards you hold if you ask me. Use those other things if the powerful pockets aren't showing up.