Bluffing the Flush

[rufus]

There are two aspects to a tactic like this:
Exploiting the psychology of a flush board.
The generic necessity of bluffing.

The tactic of semi-bluff to bluff on draw hands has merit in general. I expect that bluffing on all flush cards is a bit much however, so you can get burned if someone notices you're representing too many flushes. You could, similarly, 'OESD bluff' after a flush draw semi-bluff, although it's probably better to do that with an obvious straight-draw river like hitting Q with JT on the board.

The trick is that flush boards tend to be obvious, so players will tend to get the obvious representation.

Notably, this "damned if they call, damned if they don't" is precisely why bluffing increases your equity. Against a game-theoretically correct opponent, bluffs are actually -EV on the current hand, but force the opponent to make -EV call-downs against your legitimate raises.

[Bone_Daddy]

Thanks for the input, to date, although impossible to track in pt, I was making money at 2/4 by hitting and running with this, not using too often and only against players I've played less than 1000 hands with. At 1/2 I was getting called down, by umm, calling stations that could not let go of good hole cards. Sounds like if I keep this up at 2/4, it will be negitive ev in the long run, but a solid play on occasion.

[NotStudying]

Hm. Thanks for the explanation. It sounds to me like this is just a semi-bluff, no? I guess my problem with it is that the only people who could really get psyched out by the bluff is someone who holds a low flush or a high straight to your low(er) straight, right? I mean, who are you really scaring:

If you have a bona fide straight, anyone with three of a kind will fold if you represent it anyway;

The next step up from a straight is the flush, in which case, bluffing the flush won't scare out a full house or better;

So the only thing a flush-bluff gets you here is a contest against a low flush or a high straight. If that is the case, what is the benefit of a semi-bluff like this one and an outright bluff?

This raises interesting questions (in my mind, anyway, but I'm new at this) about the utility of a semi-bluff where your hand is so close to the hand you're representing. Seems like semi-bluffs are only any good if your actual hand is far away from the pretend hand.

I will not suprise me if someone says I'm barking up the wrong tree, so I'd love an explanation why that's so.