11 Dec 2024 Intermediate This material is for medium-skilled players bluff fold equity In poker, winning isn’t just about having the best hand — it’s also about making your opponent fold. This is where fold equity comes into play. Whether you’re bluffing, semi-bluffing, or shoving, fold equity is a vital concept that can turn marginal spots into profitable ones. If you plan to call a bet, it’s often better to make the bet yourself. This classic poker saying has a lot of truth behind it. By betting yourself, you create two ways to win the pot: By having the best hand at showdown. By making your opponent fold before showdown. In a broader sense, fold equity simply refers to how often your opponent will fold. What Is Fold Equity? Fold equity is a poker concept that describes the likelihood of your opponent folding their hand. In simple terms, fold equity is how often you think your opponent will fold. If you regularly watch high-stakes games, you’ve likely seen how fold equity shapes the entire game. High-stakes poker pros are so skilled at reading ranges that they can make moves with no hand at all, sometimes relying entirely on fold equity. Fold equity lets you win pots that you’d never want to play out otherwise! However, while high-stakes pros can sometimes rely solely on fold equity, we strongly advise against doing the same. To play this way successfully, you’d need incredible hand-reading skills. So let’s leave pure bluffs to the professionals. What you can and should do is start incorporating more semi-bluffs into your game. Let’s look at an example where you have no made hand on the flop, but you need to decide how to respond to your opponent’s bet: call, fold, or raise. Fold Equity Example Cash game $1/$2. Effective stacks: $200. You are in the cutoff with UTG limps, MP folds. Hero raises to $10. Three players fold. UTG calls. Flop ($23): UTG bets $15. Hero? Based on what you know about this opponent, he is likely betting here with , , and some weak draws. What should you do? At this point, you likely don’t have the best hand. With one overcard and a gutshot, your pot odds aren’t good enough to call. This eliminates the call as an option. Folding is safe, but it’s not the best play. Also, you want to be the one using fold equity to your advantage, not letting your opponent do it. Now, let’s consider raising. There are a few reasons to choose a raise: Opponent’s weak range: His donk-betting range is wide and includes many hands that can’t withstand heavy pressure. Your perceived range: From your opponent’s perspective, you’re showing strength. You raised preflop and are now raising his flop bet. You represent a strong made hand. In reality, you have a weak draw plus an overcard. But because your perceived range is strong and your opponent’s range is weak, you can often take this pot down with a raise. Even if your opponent doesn’t fold, it’s not the end. You still have 7 outs to improve your hand on the turn or river. This is a semi-bluff, not a pure bluff. Additionally, you have backdoor flush and straight draws, which provide opportunities to barrel on various runouts. It’s important to understand that fold equity calculations are useless if your opponent simply never folds. Many players fail to realize this. Fold equity is the likelihood of your opponent folding. If they’re not going to fold, there’s no point in factoring it into your decision-making. The Math of Fold Equity For a more concrete and mathematical approach, let’s assign approximate probabilities to your opponent’s actions. Using our example, we input the opponent's range into Flopzilla to get some data. What do we know about his hand? He limped from early position, called your isolation raise, and donk-bet 2/3 pot on a flop. I’d put him on a range like: [TT-77, KQs, Q9s+, J9s+, T8s+, ATo, KQo, QTo+, JTo, T9o] — a relatively wide. Against this range, you’re an underdog with 40% equity. However, since a significant portion of this range is weak, your opponent will often fold to your raise, preventing them from realizing his equity. It’s impossible to determine the exact percentage, but we can confidently say he’ll fold often enough to make your raise more profitable than folding. Conclusion Fold equity is a fundamental poker concept. It won’t magically make you unbeatable, but once you start considering how often your opponent will fold to your bets or raises, you can turn marginal situations into profitable ones.
