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As our understanding of poker has changed and poker theory has become an important part of many players’ learning process, concepts like blockers have become incredibly important.
When watching hand analysis videos and coaching materials these days, it seems like everyone talks about blockers a lot, but not everyone fully understands how to use them.
If you are completely new to poker theory or have simply learned poker a different way before, the idea of blockers may be new to you.
So, we will delve into the idea of blockers and explain what they are, when you can use them to your advantage, and how to use blockers correctly to achieve the desired results.
Before we can delve into any strategy, we need to explain the idea of blockers itself and where it comes from.
In poker, the word blocker represents a card that you are holding in your hand that is relevant to the board in that it is also part of many hands in your opponent’s perceived range.
You can hold blockers to an opponent’s value range or their bluffing range, and in theory, this increases or decreases the chance that they are value betting or bluffing in a given situation.
For example, when facing a river bet that looks polarized (value or bluff), holding a key card that makes up many of your opponent’s value hands would mean they are more likely to be bluffing, and holding a card that’s a part of many of their theoretical bluffs would mean they are more likely to be value betting.
The concept of blockers in poker came completely from poker theory, or game theory optimal (GTO) approach to the game.
This style of play is taught by observing solver outputs and understanding why solvers suggest making certain bets, calls, and folds in certain spots.
If you look at solver outputs, you will notice that they rely on solvers heavily and will often make a call with a certain hand in a certain suit but fold it in all other suits simply because of the blocking effects the suits might have on your opponent’s range.
This is why players who study poker the GTO way often make their decisions based on the blocker effects as well, even ignoring some other elements of the hand at times.
When talking about poker solvers and GTO poker, it is necessary to understand that all solver outputs are based on the assumption that every player you are up against is playing a perfectly balanced strategy.
When a solver decides what to do on the river with a bluff catcher, it assumes that the opponent is making a bet with a perfectly balanced range made up of just the right amount of bluffs and value hands for the bet sizing they chose.
However, in the real world, players tend to be wildly unbalanced across the board, and this is especially true for players without a GTO background.
Most recreational players, and even pros who learned poker the old-fashioned way, will often severely underbluff most spots, while some wild players will severely overbluff across the board.
For these reasons, the impact of GTO concepts like blockers will also be significantly lower than it would be in theory land, as players will simply not show up with the right number of bluff combos on most flops, turns, or rivers.
One of the most common situations in which GTO players use blockers to make their decisions these days happens when they are choosing their 3-bet, 4-bet, and even 5-bet hands.
Back in the day, it used to be people would only 3-bet with very strong hands and only put the 4th or 5th bet if they had an absolute monster such as KK or AA.
These days, however, many players are trying to be balanced by including bluffs in their ranges on all streets, including preflop.
Let’s use an example to explain how using blockers before the flop would work.
In a $2/5 live poker game, sitting with an effective stack of $1,000, you raise the cutoff to $15, and the player to your immediate left re-raises to $55. The blinds get out of the way.
Facing this 3-bet, you know that you want to continue by 4-betting the strongest hands in your range, like AA, KK, QQ, and AK. However, the theory says you should also incorporate some bluffs.
Blockers are a very important theoretical concept when choosing the hands to bluff with. The solver will recommend you bluff mostly with hands like A2s, A3s, A4s, and A5s, and there is a good reason.
Holding an Ace in your hand dramatically reduces the number of value hands your opponent could have when they 3-bet. The number of AA, AK, and AQ combos is now significantly reduced, which means your bluff is more likely to work.
The number of value hands in your opponent’s range is reduced as follows:
The selection of the other card is also interesting. Solvers like the suited cards because that adds a bit of equity and playability to your hand, while having a small card means you can make low straight draws and straights on some boards, as well as pairs your opponent will never have.
We expect the opponent to continue with hands like AJs, KQs, KJs, etc., so having a 2, 3, 4, or 5 means we can make a pair and simply take it to showdown on some boards and still have the best hand.
All the reasons mentioned here are why you will see celebrity poker players like Rampage and Mariano almost always 3-bet and 4-bet their low suited Aces in the live games they play on stream, often with quite a bit of success.
Another important way we can use blockers in-game is to bluff catch with marginal holdings in spots where our opponent could be bluffing.
In theory, holding cards that block our opponent from having the nuts or other strong hands means we should be more likely to make the call.
Assuming our opponent is balanced enough to be bluffing at an appropriate frequency, calling river bets with hands that have strong blocker effects should work like a charm.
Let’s take a look at an example.
Playing in a $2/5 cash game with an effective stack of $500, we raise the button to $15, and the player in the big blind makes the call.
The flop comes As9hTh. The BB checks, we bet $20, and the big blind check-raises to $75. We make the call and see the turn card of 3d.
The opponent continues betting for $100, and we call once again, taking us to the river of 5c. Our opponent empties the clip and goes all in for their remaining $310 into the pot of $380.
Our opponent is representing a very strong hand like AT, A9, or possibly TT or 99 they decided not to 3-bet before the flop, which is a fairly narrow value range.
On the other hand, they could also be bluffing with hands like QhJh, Jh8h, 8h7h, or AhXh, as well as some other straight-draw combos.
When choosing which hands to bluff catch with here, we want to pick hands that block our opponent’s value range but also unblock their bluffs.
Holding an Ace, a Ten, or a Nine ourselves would mean the number of value hands in their range is significantly reduced, as there are so few of them to begin with.
On the other hand, holding any of the hearts in our opponent’s bluffing range, especially cards like Ah, Jh, and 8h, would all make our hand less likely to be good.
A hand like JsJh would probably be one of the worst bluff catchers, as it does not block any of our opponent’s value hands while blocking several key draws they could be bluffing with.
On the other hand, a hand like Ac6c, which blocks the two pairs combos while unblocking all the flush draws and straight draws, would become a good bluff-catching candidate.
Of course, it is also important not to overdo bluff catching against river bets, especially when facing players who are not likely to be bluffing enough in situations like this one.
One final example of a situation where blockers can come in quite handy in poker is when we are trying to push through a big bluff of our own.
In this situation, we want to be holding the key cards that would be a part of some of the strongest hand combinations possible on a given board.
Let’s take a look at an example once more.
Playing in the same $2/5 game we were before, we sit on an effective stack of $500 and open from UTG to $15. The player in the cutoff calls, and everyone else ends up folding, taking us to the flop heads up.
The flop is KhJh9s. We fire out a continuation bet for $20, and our opponent makes the call. The turn brings the 8s, and we bet $55, which our opponent again calls.
The river brings the 2h, and we have a decision to make. We will obviously want to bet our strong hand like flushes for value, possibly check-calling with straights, but which hands do we bluff with?
In this situation, the board has changed quite a bit on the river, and our opponent is still reasonably likely to have a hand like one pair or two pairs, with combos like KQs, KJs, JTs, and KTs all potentially in there.
For the purposes of bluffing this river, we would prefer to have a blocker to the nut flush, which means hands with the Ah make for ideal bluff candidates.
Furthermore, any Q or T would be a welcome sight, as these cards block our opponent from having straights they will call to bluff catch with on the river.
Our two best bluffing candidates are offsuit combinations of AQ and AT, which contain a single heart, preferably the Ah.
By firing a big bet on this river, we are very likely to get our opponent to fold all one pair and most two pairs hands, which means we will often win the pot against anything but the very nuts.
Once again, it is important to remember that while this play works perfectly in GTO land, in the real world, some players will make a snap call with KQo and simply say, “I just thought you were bluffing.”
It is important to know that balancing your ranges is only necessary against good thinking players and those who play based on GTO, while against most others, making more exploitative plays will be the better way to go.
When playing poker at the highest level these days, understanding blockers and the way they impact strategy is very important, as most players are playing a very balanced strategy.
On the other hand, in most low to mid-stakes games and against most players, blockers don’t really help you as much as you might think and could even get you into more trouble than they help you.
While blockers should not be the only thing that you think about when making big decisions in poker, having the key cards in your hand when pulling a big bluff or making a big river call will definitely only help your cause.
Yet, when trying such plays, make sure that all the other elements align as well, and don’t give your chips away to a player who is never bluffing or never going to fold just because you had the right blocker.
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