If you’re a limit player, and a small-stakes limit player at that, chances are you’re either a compulsive maniac or a tight play-by-the-book bore. I’ve never been the former, but I’ve spent a fair share of time being the latter. A couple of things happened to me, however, that forced me out of that mold. Specifically, I started playing limits above $1/$2 - playing $2/$4 (6-max) and sniffing at $3/$6 (full ring) has opened my eyes to a couple of things: “There’s money to be made in stealing pots with the worst hand”, and “others are doing it to me.”

There are two things to be said about this.

#1: There IS such a thing as bluffing in limit. Don’t listen to those who say that there isn’t - because it’s just not true. What there isn’t, is bluffing someone off of a mediocre hand - but a terrible hand that happens to beat yours, on the other hand, is easy to get people off of.

#2: This is not an argument to play higher limit. This, also, refers to a common sentiment among players - the fact that “good players do better at higher limits because they respect your raises.” And, in truth, this one is a lot worse than #1. If you’re currently playing $.25/$.50 or so, and you’re frustrated that you can’t get people to lay down their lousy pair of sixes despite betting the flop, the turn and the river with your unimproved AK, trust me when I tell you that you shouldn’t head up to higher limits and expect to show any profit. What will happen there, instead, is them raising you on the river with queen-high and force you to fold your ace-high for maximum loss. Yes, these players sometimes fold when you raise, but the difference between them and the microlimit players is that here, they fold the worst hand, which does not gain you anything.

Now, since bluffing is only sometimes successful (which doesn’t make it a bad play, however, it’s all pot odds) in limit, where people will call with a lot of different hands, you must ask yourself if all those “successful” bluffs you believed yourself to have pulled off truly were bluffs, in the sense that you actually made a better hand fold.

For instance, you raise with an unimproved Q-high on the river, and the guy who’s been betting the whole time just folds. You smile inwardly as you take home the pot, but… Are you sure you had the worst hand? Q-high is no monster, by any means, but it’s possible that you just stole the hand from a stealer. In fact, most successful bluffs will be just that - stealing from stealers.

Chris wrote a good article - Introduction to Bluffing - recently, that is well worth a read. If you want to get really serious about it, I recommend Matt Lessinger’s “The Book of Bluffs.” It’s pretty well written and covers a wide variety of scenarios. It’s not the best poker book every written by any standards, but he does cover situations that you can learn something from.

Happy raising!