For those who don't know a semi-bluff is leading out (or raising) with a hand that figures to be beaten at the moment but has potential to win. Usually this is done with drawing hands post-flopsuch as open ended straight draws, flush draws, two overcards etc. You could categorize raising with something like 78s pre-flop on the button a semi-bluff but it's really more of a steal attempt and is irrelevant to this post.
For those of you who have read my EV blog this will also discuss EV further in depth in another aspect of the game, for those who haven't feel free it's in my blogs as well as the article section of the school here. Here is an example of when to use the semi-bluff:
First, you have to understand that a flush draw is not a favorite to winthe hand and you want your opponent to fold when you use the semi-bluff. So, suppose you picked up KdJd in the cutoff at a 1/2 tableand and called a middle position raiser for $8 (everyone folds and the pot contains $19. The flop comes Th8d4d.
The original raiser checks to you and you have a choice between taking a free card and trying a semi-bluff.If you take the free card you will hit your flush and win $19 one in every 5.1111111 tries, for this example we'll say it's one in every 5 tries. So, four times youwon'tmake your hand and one time you will (you're odds are 4:1). If you assume you're opponent will lead out with a pot sized bet on the turn you will be forced to fold if you don't make your hand. If you do we'll assume on average you can extract another half-pot sized bet on the river.
Therefore, taking the free card we lose the $19 in the pot 4 times and make $57 one time. Over 5 tries we've lost $19, over 100 tries we've lost $380 or $3.80 per try. Now, hypothetically speaking we'll say if we semi-bluff bet the flop for just over half the pot($10) our opponent will fold1/3 of the time. Instantly we win $19 once and have lost $10 twice if we don't make our hand .
However, knowing our opponent very well we are sure this will give us a free card on the river so now we have given ourself 2:1 odds of making our hand with $39 in the pot. We can also expect to make some money if we hit our draw, we'll say another $25 on average between if we make it on the turn or river.
Now we make $19+$10+$25=$54 one in every three tries being we have brought our odds up to 2:1 by giving ourselves a free card. Twice we'll lose $19+$10=$29.
Now over 100 hands we've made $19 -> 33 times for a profit of $627. Also of the remaining 67 tries 22 times we will win $54 for a profit of $1188 and the remaining 45 times we lost $29 for $1305.
Total EV is equal to $1815-$1305=+$510 or $5.10 per try. So overall we have raised our EV $8.90 in the hand by making this move.
Now, quickly, suppose there is no chance of him folding (so you understand the bluff aspect). Now you lose $29 67 timesfor a total of $1943 and win $54 a total of 33 times for $1782. Net profit is -$161 or -$1.61 per hand. We still gain by the fact that we've given ourselves a free card but this will not be the case against every opponent. Also the exact numbers are a little bit off as I just realized I used different implied odds in each example.
Hope you enjoyed and further understand the game of poker.
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