Number of players in cbet bluffing

There are a number of different variables that go into making a good continuation bet bluff spot. Even though, at the lower levels of no limit, most of your money is won through getting maximum value with the best hand, probably the most frequent situation that occurs in NL comes from being the preflop raiser and missing the board post flop.

Because holdem is a game of two cards most people will actually not connect with the flop. The very good players know exactly which situations are good to continuation bet bluff and which boards they may be able to fire multiple barrels. I go over a number of these factors in the podcast titled "CBet Bluff Matrix" on CrushLivePoker.com but I want to briefly review what I think is the most important factor and probably simplest variable here--number of opponents in the hand.

In general if you are new to continuation bet bluffing the more players in the hand the harder it will be to get through everyone with a bluff. The sweet spots for cbet bluffing are when the pot is heads up or you face two players. Once there are more than three players in the hand the sheer number of cards that your opponents hold lends itself to situation where a bluff will be unlikely to get through. Now this is not always the case as a lot of board textures are not the same. You also can sometimes look stronger when you bet into a multi way pot because it seems like to your opponents think that the pot is “protected”. If you have the guts to fire twice, especially into more than one opponent on the turn, you look even stronger.

However, if you are entirely green to bluffing post flop do not forget that the most important factor in cbet bluffing is the simplest—number of players in the pot. If you find yourself commonly trying to bluff more than three people after the flop then you are probably doing something wrong