Just a quick note on a play I’ve been seeing a lot heads up.

The flop comes something like QQ7 rainbow and the pot is, eg, 160. Player A bets 222 or some other ridiculous amount (a weird over-bet).

Player B folds because weird over-bets are usually someone trying to get a big hand paid off and that’s a scary board (imagine you hold AJo there and it’s too early for you to have a read on the guy — what hands could he have started with that you can still beat). Player A shows his cards: 52o — a giant bluff!

Play continues until at some point Player A makes a similar bet in a similar situation.

Player B sees the weird bet again. It’s weird enough to ring bells… Had nothing last time… This time Player B shoves!

Only now Player A has it and takes down a huge pot with a monster of a hand.

I won’t lie — I’ve been Player B in this situation a couple of times. The second time it happened I noticed my hand calling without asking my brain first — the muscle memory of the bluff was too strong for me to stop! There’s some kind of anchoring effect that really weird bets have, so showing a bluff after one seems to program Player B to disbelieve similar bets in the future.

Neat stuff. The defense is to see it coming and fold the second time! The second weird bet also tends to be bigger, I suspect because Player A is more confident of his hand and so less concerned about losing chips. Risking 222 early to set someone up for a 444 value bet later is a good deal, because even if you fold or have to show a bluff and lose the 222 Player B is still programmed to lose 444.