By the time you’ve reached a certain level of sophistication in your poker play, you’ve probably come to the realization that you can’t bluff too much of the time or hang back and never bluff either.

If you bluff too frequently others will quickly become aware of it and will call you with any hand that stands a chance of winning.

Because larger sums of money can be plunked down on the table in a no-limit game, bluffing has a greater tendency to succeed there. But when your bluff is snapped-off in a no-limit game, the cost is likely to be much higher than the one additional bet it would have cost in a fixed-limit game.

If you bluff too little, your opponents will realize that too.  They’ll realize you don’t have much of a hand when you check, and will respond by betting into you.  If you bet, your opponents will step deftly out of your way unless they have big hands too. Then they’ll call or raise. They’ll have a pretty good handle on the strength of your hand because by never bluffing you have become very easy to read. Any opponents who bluff some of the time—not too often, but not too infrequently either—won’t be as easy for you to read as you are to them, so guess who has the advantage?

You’re much better off when your opponents are undecided about whether you actually have the hand you’re representing.  If they don’t know, they’ll have to guess. And when they guess, they’ll be dead wrong a good portion of the time.  Every time an opponent errs in judgment, it pays off for you.  The trick is to create this confusion.

A semibluff is a bet with a hand that’s probably not the best hand right now, but a hand that stands a good chance of outdrawing any opponents who call.

A “good chance” excludes all the two, three, four, and five-out hands. While they all have a chance of improving to the best hand—yes, your pair of deuces can catch one of the two remaining deuces, improve from a lowly pair to a majestic set, and skewer someone’s pocket aces—for our definition, we’ll consider hands with more than five outs as those that have a “good chance” of improving.  While a hand with fewer than five outs has a chance to win too, it’s a longshot, not a good one.

Semibluffing provides two ways to win.  Your opponent can fold and you’ll win the pot—players refer to this as “fold equity”—and when you have a hand that doesn’t even contain a pair, winning the pot right then and there is never a bad idea.

But even if you are called, you have a reasonable chance of catching one of the cards you need to make your hand. And if you do, you will have improved to a hand that is better than your opponent’s, and you can keep betting on future wagering rounds. When you make your hand, you’ll be firing money at the pot with the best of it.

But to give you two ways to win, a semibluff can only be made with more cards to come.  If you bet the river with an unmade draw, you’ll only win if your opponent folds; you can’t win if he calls. But if you bet on the flop or on the turn, you can win if he folds and you also have a chance to win by improving.  

When you add up those two chances of winning, your situation might improve from a poor one to a good one, and that’s the beauty of semibluffing.  It’s that potent combination of fold-equity added to your chances of improving to a better hand than your opponent has on subsequent betting rounds.

Every good player has this weapon in his or her arsenal. It may be employed as a bet, as a raise, or even as a checkraise.

Though semibluffs can be quite varied, the most common semibluff by far is to bet the flop with a flush draw or a straight draw.  Here are some factoids about semibluffing:

If your semibluff bet causes your opponent to fold a hand that is favored over yours, you gain immeasurably.

If your opponent calls, he might be holding a hand that he would have bet anyway, so you lose nothing by doing the betting yourself, and you gain leverage if he has a weaker hand and might fold on this or a subsequent betting round.

When you think you’re semibluffing but actually have the best hand, your semibluff prevents you from giving a free card to an opponent.  Suppose you have a straight draw with Q-J, while your opponent has 8-7, and the board is T-9-4.  Neither of you has a pair, but you are in the lead.  A bet from you will make your opponent think twice about paying money to continue playing and perhaps beat you by pairing his seven.

Semibluffing adds deception to your game.  When you bet, your opponent can’t presume you have a draw and nothing else. You might have top pair with top kicker, or two pair, or even a set.  If the flop supports it, you might even have flopped a straight or a flush, or even a full house if the board is paired.  He can’t be sure.  This kind of deception is far better than a naked bluff with no chance of improving.  In that case, you can only win if your opponent folds. Now you can have your cake and eat it too.  Your bet might win right now, you can improve to a better hand on another wagering round, and you will deceive your opponent too.

Your opponent might not suspect that you’ve made a straight or a flush if you hit your hand because you bet on a round when that hand was not even possible.  When your opponent misreads your hand, he might pay you off thinking his hand is best. Because of this, you stand a good chance of winning a larger pot than you would have if you refrained from betting until it looked like you made a straight or flush.

By semibluffing on the flop with a straight draw or a flush draw, you might be able to get a free card if the turn doesn’t help you and your opponents “check to the raiser.”  That free card on the turn enables you to see the river at no cost at all.  If you make your hand, all the deception will be gone since taking a free card on the turn told your opponents that you were drawing. Once the draw hits, it will be obvious to most savvy opponents that you completed your draw. Still, you might be called by anyone with an otherwise good hand, or someone that thinks there’s a chance you’re bluffing, or anyone who doesn’t think much at all.

The beauty of semibluffs is that they can succeed as a bluff or allow you to improve to the best hand. It is this combination of circumstances that make this play so valuable.  

The flip side is that you shouldn’t semibluff if you are certain you’ll be called.  If you know your opponent is likely to call, the bluffing part of this ploy has been neutered.  Against an opponent who calls too often, you can only win if you make the best hand.  

You also have to avoid semibluffing anytime you’d prefer to take a free card.  You can’t have it both ways. It’s impossible to bet the turn and take a free card. Sometimes semibluffing is the best strategy. Other times the free card will be the way to go.  As a general rule, semibluffing works best when you are first to act.  If you are facing a number of opponents and are last to act, semibluffing may result in your being checkraised by an opponent. Now it will cost you two bets to draw for a card you could have obtained for free if you had checked behind your opponents and taken a free card.

Defending against the semibluff is not easy, and certainly not formulaic.  When an opponent bets or raises and you decide that he may be semibluffing, you must choose whether to fold, raise, reraise, call and bet the next round, call and checkraise the next round, or call and fold if the next round appears to help your opponent and not you.

Semibluffing is a terrific weapon and belongs in the arsenal of any good poker player.  Use it frequently, whenever conditions are right.  When you do, you’ll be bluffing an appropriate amount of time and doing so under conditions that are the most cost-effective for you: You’ll be bluffing with two ways to win.  Your opponents can’t easily defend against this play and neither will you. So use it when you can.  It will pay off in the long run.

Lou Krieger is the author of eleven poker books including Secrets the Pros Won't Tell You About Winning Hold'em Poker.