In Exercise 8 we continued our look at bluffing with a look at the basics of semi-bluffing and why it's so awesome to have equity against our opponents' calling ranges. Way back in Exercise 2 (which you should do before doing this exercise, along with Exercises 7 and 8) we looked at how to think about playing our range. Here we're going to look at one way to go about choosing your bluffing range which will hopefully get you started in the right direction.

We saw with Exercise 8 that semi-bluffing is better than pure bluffing when everything else is held equal, so for that reason we would rather bluff raise hands that have equity against our opponents' calling ranges than hands that don't. Since we'll have a bunch of hands in our own range to choose from, we should choose the favorable hands to maximize our EV.

For a quick example, suppose a Villain who is a little loose pre-flop c-bets 90% on the flop and you're deciding on a flop bluff-raising range after calling his bet in position with {AQ, AJs, KQs-65s, TT-22}. and seeing a heads-up flop of Qs8d5c. He c-bets, and you decide his range is weak and you want to bluff more than you would normally. Which would you rather bluff raise, JdTd or 22? 7s6s or AhJh? Th9h or 44? If you don't know, use PokerStove against a calling range on this flop and see which hands have the most equity.

Here is today's exercise. Go back to your hands from Exercise 7 and Exercise 8 and break down your bluffing range in each spot. Decide if the hand you bluffed with in those spots was actually a favorable hand to bluff with, or if you should have decided not to bluff instead. What percent of your range are you bluffing there?