Inducing Folds
by Varying Your Bet Sizing
and Other Tactics

Inducing Folds - Having a tight image is the most effective way to get your opponents to fold to your all-ins in a Super Turbo. But there are also some other things you can do to get a few more folds from your opponents and thereby increase your winrate.

One is to occasionally raise instead of simply shoving all-in.

For example, you are on the bubble and it has been 4-handed for several orbits. You have open shoved your small blind 2 or 3 times and the big blind has folded each time. Now the blinds are getting pretty big and you and that player are roughly tied for 3rd place and you both are pretty far behind the two chip leaders.

Then the following hand occurs.

Inducing Folds Example Hand: The stacks are 1050,900,360 and 390. Blinds have just increased to 50/100. You start the hand with 360 in the small blind. You are dealt Q5. Both the big stacks fold, and it's on you. This is a mandatory all-in given the situation, but if you simply shove all-in like you've been doing on this player's big blind, it's probably going to seem like you are shoving any-two-cards, and your opponent is going to be enboldened to call you pretty wide, even on the bubble. And you would definitely rather him fold even if he has something like J7 or 98s (hands that you're ahead of with your Q5).

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This is a good spot to throw him a change-up. Instead of shoving all-in, wait a couple seconds and raise to 295 (leaving 65 chips in your stack). This can throw his read off and accomplishes these three things.

1) It forces him to have to reraise you in order to go all-in, and even though the reraise is just a formality and is essentially the same as calling if you had gone all-in, there a natural aversion to reshoving with a hand like K5 or Q9. These are two hands that it might be easy for him to call you with if you simply shove on him in the same monotone way you've been doing. But making a non all-in raise will sometimes create enough doubt in his mind to nudge him into folding if he has a close decision.

2) It makes it harder for him to calculate the pot odds. If you simply go all-in, he's going to see that the pot is 460 and he needs to call 260 - pretty good odds against someone who is probably shoving any-two-cards. But if you make it 295, now he sees the pot is 395 with 195 to call and 65 left in your stack. Now try to figure out the effective odds of getting all-in, especially if you are playing many tables. Confusion leads to doubt. When people are in doubt, it's natural to want to play it safe. Playing it safe means folding. Good for you.

3) It makes him suspect you actually want action. He might wonder why you wouldn't just shove all-in and try to look strong. Why 295 instead of 300? Is this an attempt to make it seem cheaper (like a car dealer asking $19,950 instead of $20,000)? A lot of players actually do raise smaller with their monsters to try to coax action. Your opponent has seen this many times and he certainly doesn't want to shove over you with Q9 and get posterized by something like KK. And even though he may suspect you are doing exactly what are doing, he'll often play it safe and make the fold.

It's very important not overuse this tactic for inducing folds. If players see you making these not-quite-all-ins a lot, they are going to know you aren't only doing this with big hands. If a baseball pitcher throws a change-up on every pitch, the hitters will easily adjust. Same idea here.

Your raise doesn't have to be 295. You could make it 250 or the standard 3x raise to 300. It's up to you. Just make sure it it's enough that he's not tempted to just call and see a flop. You're trying to induce a fold - not a call.

It's also possible to induce folds from opponents by making them think you call a lot - even though you don't.

And another tactic to induce future folds is Snap Calling (Reverse Poker Tells)

Another effective trick to induce folds is the occasional use of the Slow-Fold.

And there will be times when, instead of inducing folds, you should actually be trying to induce calls

Here's how you can accomplish it.

go from "Inducing Folds" to Inducing Calls article

And for another trick for getting them to fold see ...

The Limp and Go