The G-Spot: Phantom Outs

By Tony
Guerrera



You’re playing no-limit Texas Hold’em you need good poker
strategy. The board is KD 5D 2H, and you have AD TD. Your opponent bets
$20 into a $40 pot, and you call. The turn is the 6D. Your opponent checks,
you bet $30 into the $80 pot with your nut flush, and your opponent folds.

You weren’t paid off, but don’t sulk too much. You just got some
valuable information: your opponent seems apt to lay down hands against suspected
made draws. When drawing against him, you’ll need to reduce your implied
odds estimates. Drawing won’t be very profitable against him (if at all),
but a little creativity will allow you to make substantial profits from him…

Represent!

If your opponent associates a third diamond falling with you having a flush
and is willing to lay down his hand to a bet, does it matter if you actually
have a flush? Doyle Brunson said it best: “Poker is a game of people played
with cards.”

Poker is about much more than your
own hole cards. It’s about what hole cards you put your opponents on,
and it’s about your knowledge of what your opponents think of you. If
you know that an opponent will lay down strong hands to a suspected flush whenever
you bet after the third to a suit falls, then you don’t actually need
to have the flush. No matter what your hole cards are, you can play the hand
as if you have a flush draw…even if you don’t!

Cards that look to hit you hand (regardless of whether they actually do) are
referred to as Phantom Outs (I don’t know the first person to have used
this term, but I have a strong inkling that it’s my boy, John Vorhaus).
Phantom out bluffs are an important part of any advanced player’s arsenal.

Wield Wisely, And Know When To Defend

After learning about advanced maneuvers such as phantom out bluffs, it’s
enticing to try them in a wide situations…even those in which they won’t
be profitable. The key to using phantom out bluffs profitably is to use them
against opponents who are willing to fold. Those who respect aggression on the
turn and the river are your primary targets.

Because phantom out bluffs can be highly lucrative, it’s important to
know which of your opponents are capable of such trickery themselves. When holding
hands like top-pair-top-kicker against tricky opponents capable of phantom out
bluffs, adopt passive lines of play and allow your opponents to bluff themselves
into oblivion.

Tony
Guerrera is the author of Killer
Poker By The Numbers and co-author of Killer Poker Shorthanded (with John
Vorhaus).