As you know, Badugi is a poker variant which is really about making the best hand at the table. There are some strategy options of course, but they’re rather limited. The bulk of Badugi strategy is about starting hand selection and bluffing. Now then, as we all know, fixed limit poker (or simply limit poker) features a betting structure which – according to some at least – cripples players when it comes to bluffing. Therefore, limit Badugi should be a game of starting hand selection only really. Fortunately that is just not the case, simply because the theory of limit poker being restrictive on bluffing is a mere myth.
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One should never forget that fixed limit was pretty much the only betting structure until not so long ago. Bluffing has always been part of the game of poker, ergo: bluffing must exist in limit poker too.
The popularity explosion of online poker was the event that gave birth to this myth. Following Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP Main Event win, thousands flocked to the online poker tables from world over, and they jumped head-first into NL poker. These people soon became accustomed to “dark tunnel” bluffs, and they automatically assumed, all bluffing was supposed to be of the “dark tunnel” type. Dark tunnel bluffs are also known as donk bluffs, and they consist of the bluffer shoving everything into the middle on rags. Such donk bluffs work pretty well in NL poker, because they completely ruin the pot odds for potential callers. The donk may decide to fire out such a bet at any one time, and if you sit down to the micro stakes NL tables, you’re almost guaranteed to come across at least a pair of such donk bluffers. Better players fold when faced with such a donk bluff, even if they strongly suspect the bluffer has nothing to back up his posturing. Due to the fact that the pot odds are mangled beyond recognition though, they decide to take the small hit and wait for a better opportunity to teach the dark tunnel bluffer a lesson. Such opportunities will come by sooner or later, so the donk bluffer’s life-span is by no means guaranteed at the NL tables either.
At the FL tables, things change. The donk will fire out his bet, but because he’s limited in regards to the number of chips he can get into the middle by the betting structure, he will indeed be prevented from ruining the pot odds. Good players who suspect that it’s a donk they’re dealing with, will make the call. What does this mean? It means donk bluffs are indeed condemned to failure in FL Badugi and in FL poker in general. Does it mean bluffing is altogether impossible? By no means!
In Limit Badugi, bluffing takes a lot more than a sudden adrenaline rush and a yearning to gamble. It takes careful calculus, board texture reading, opponent reading and posturing. In FL Badugi, bluffing is nothing short of a form of art. The good guy needs to weigh the situation carefully. He needs to put his opponent on a hand and he needs to build up momentum for the bluff, by taking advantage of the cracks and vantage points offered by the texture of the board. FL Badugi bluffing is like theatre: the good guy needs to set the stage and then he needs to sell the performance as well as he can.
In conclusion: the FL betting structure takes nothing away from the strategic intricacy of Badugi. If anything, it adds to it. A peculiarity of the FL betting structure is that it’ll make you play more hands on the same bankroll (and for the same profit) than NL. That means you’ll end up generating more poker rake too.