Bluffing

Bluffing is one of the most exciting poker moves. Whenever you successfully pull off a bluff, it feels exhilarating, as a matter of fact, it feels much better than simply taking down a pot on a legit hand at showdown. The reason is, most people feel like the pot is theirs by right, when they show down a monster, so basically all they get is a confirmation of something they already knew. Hence the tilting when they suffer a bad beat.

Anyway, the fact alone that bluffing successfully feels so good, doesn’t mean you have to abuse it. Remember, it feels just as embarrassing for you, and disheartening for your bankroll, when your attempt fails.

Shooting out a successful bluff against good opponents is by no standards an easy feat. Good players read their opponents, and for better or for worse, they are capable of keeping a bluff-abuser honest. There is a certain degree of strategy behind every successful bluff, you can’t just steal the pot whenever you feel like it…The most basic factor you should take into account when bluffing is your position in relation to the dealer button. If you are in position (you’ll act after your opponents) you’ll have access to information that will radically increase the odds of your bluff’s success.

For example: after the flop, there are only two people in the hand (the rest got sieved out by your preflop bet), and they check the pot around to you. In this situation, even though there is a possibility that one of them is slow-playing a monster, the only reasonable thing you can do is to fire a second bullet, one that you reckon is of reasonable size to force both players to fold. If you succeed, you’ll take down the pot without a showdown. This is a clear example of a bluff. In this scenario, there are two possibilities: 1) you have a reasonable starting hand, but the flop absolutely misses you, leaving you with squat. You fire the second bet, having collected the information you needed from your opponents, and they fold. This one’s a regular bluff, which you might have been able to pull off from early position too, but it would’ve been much more risky, and you may have ended up feeding the pot for an opponent on a good hand.  

2) The flop left you with a draw (a 4-card flush for instance). In this case, your bet is a semi-bluff. Even though you’d definitely like to see your opponents fold, your scheme won’t turn upside down if someone calls you. You still have some pretty solid odds for completing your flush on the turn or the river, and if you do make it, you’ll probably take down a huge pot on it. Both bluffs and semi-bluffs are preferably done from position. Do not underestimate the importance of bluffs meant to steal blinds either. In the middle stages of STTs and even MTTs, these bluffs and semi-bluffs fired from position are absolutely necessary if you intend to survive.  

If the bluff does go wrong, and someone calls your A-high on bottom pair all the way to showdown, even though you were fairly certain he was going to fold, don’t handle the situation like most people would. What 9 out of 10 poker players would do after such a turn of events is to get pissed and start slamming the rookie (or whoever it may be) who called some impossible bets all the way to showdown, on rags. The matter of the fact is, that according to poker-theory (which says that whenever you play a hand as if you were able to see your opponent’s hole-cards, you gain value, and whenever you play it otherwise, you lose value) the calling station didn’t even commit a mistake that time: he played it right. The person who made the mistake was – like it or not – you. You need to make reads on your opponents, and within the guidelines set by these reads, build up a whole scenario surrounding your bluff that is a 100% believable for your opponents. A bluff is not a bluff when all it does is that it makes your opponent throw his rags away. It can only be called truly successful, when you manage to make your opponent fold the better hand.