I was playing through a few hands of Texas Hold em last week sent to me by a student of mine and in actual fact I played through an entire session of over 700 hands. He was playing NL50 full ring and so nearly 90% of these hands were folds of course and so I could play through them rather quickly. He was playing very well for long stretches and ended up winning around $37 for the session. But there were two hands that caught my eye and I want to share one of them with you here. It was folded around to the cut-off who raised to $1.75 and the button and small blind folded.

Our hero called from the big blind with Q-10 which is a perfectly reasonable play. He knew that he had a playable hand and that the cut-off player was likely stealing but he had no information on him as he wasnt using a tracker which in my opinion is not essential at this level. The pot was $3.75 and they both had at least $50 in their stacks. The flop came 4c-4d-9s and our hero checked. The cut-off bet $2.50 and our hero called making the pot $8.75. The turn card was the 2c and our hero checked again and the other player bet $5.50 which our hero called making the pot $19.75.

The river card was the Jc and our hero bet $22 on the end and was snap called by the other player who showed K-K. Our hero lost $31 on the hand running a bluff but when I asked him why he had done what he had done then he informed me that he was running a bluff trying to represent a big hand. Now this may work out fine against highly aggressive players but your average NL50 player tends to be raising on sound values and especially in full ring.

But once we look at the risk reward ratio then this is where the situation gets interesting. The total pot at the end was $63.75 but when our hero made the river bet then there was only $19.75 in the pot at that stage of play. Up to that stage our hero had placed $9.75 in the pot and his $22 bet on the end made that $31.75. However the total amount that he hadnt contributed to the pot at that stage was a mere $10. So he risked $31.75 to try and increase his stack by just $10. In fixed odds terms then this is more than 1-3 you are taking here. You simply have to hope that your opponent has nothing or that he is not weak enough or misguided enough to call such a bet with a mediocre hand or that he simply doesnt just feel like gambling.

Our hero may have felt good raking in a $41 pot on the river if his bet didnt get called but the stark fact of the matter is that he had contributed $31 of that $41 himself. There is enough value in lower stakes full ring games without having to launch big bluffs like this. So in my opinion then in full ring games then big bluffs simply are not necessary and you should be avoiding them at all costs as a rule in this form of poker.