Poker – The Bluff

A key aspect of playing winning poker (both online and offline) is having the ability to change up your game. It is not possible to simply grind away, playing perfect calculated poker and always expect to win. Sometimes, you'll need to change up your game-plan and run a bluff.

Before doing this, you really do need the ability to discern between whether your opponent has a strong or weak hand, based solely on his tells at the table. Of course, in online poker this is a lot harder, so you'll only seldom try it. Now, what you're going to learn here is exactly how to bet. As Daniel Negreanu said,

Bluffing is like telling a story. Your goal is to convince your opponents at the table that you're holding X, Y cards when you're really holding A, B cards. How do you do this? By telling your opponent a beginning, a middle and an end.

Bad bluff:
Check, check, check, check ... You get the idea. Everyone's checked every card (flop, turn & river), and now you're thinking about throwing in a position bet and try to steal the measly 45 $ pot. Do not. Just do not. Someone will call you, and you'll have lost money.

Good Bluff:
Ideally, you should start your bluff pre-flop. (Starting after the flop is fine too, if there are few players left in the pot already) Tell your story - you raise 3x the big blind, everyone folds with the exception of one other player.

It's now heads up poker; you're holding 3,8o and your opponent is holding A10d. Flops falls Q, 10, 3. You caught a pair, but so did your opponent. You throw 5,500 into a pot that's now 9,000. Your opponent calls. Turn: Q. Now, you can throw in another bet (remember, you can probably guess that your opponent does not have top pair or better, else he's got that re-raised with his nice kicker that he would * have * to be holding) or you can check and see what he does. Checking is the wrong move - you'll show him weakness and he'll probably bet to see where his two pair is at anyway (and then you'll either have to fold or re-raise him to save / win your money) Throw out your bluff (which will always be the final bet in this situation), and you'll chase your opponent out of the pot.

Bluffing definitely does require you to catch a lucky flop sometimes. But, more important, you just need your opponent to catch an unlucky flop. We know this through general odds: it is far more likely that your opponent is going to completely miss the flop than it is for him to catch top pair and try calling you down! Give it a try!

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Source by Boris Bender