Texas Holdem Bluffing
Bluffing is poker’s magic elixir. It’s the sleight of hand where high art and drama reside. It’s the place where myths are made. After all, what’s a western movie without a poker scene with one player trying to bluff another out of a big pot?
To those who do not play poker or who have only a nodding acquaintance with it, bluffing is where those folks focus most of their attention when they think about the game.
What is Bluffing, Anyway ?
Ask most poker players to define bluffing and they’ll tell you about betting a weak hand with the hope of driving other players out of the pot. After all, without bluffing, poker would be a boring game. Bets would be made and the best hand would win. Always. The cards figure to break even in the long run; without the possibility that someone is bluffing, then each player would have the same expectation – and when all was said and done, no one would win any money.
But some players win most of the time and some players lose most of the time. And it’s often bluffing – or more precisely the possibility that one’s adversary might be bluffing – that goes a long way toward separating the winners from the losers. Bluffing, after all, is merely a form of deception – and deception is an essential component in winning poker. After all. if your omonents always knew what cards you had they’d be tough to beat. Deception is the art of kkeping others off balance. Like amisdirec<on play in football, or a baseball player hitting behind the runner into an area vacated by the infielder on a hit-and-run play, deception is a required skill for any poker player.
Different Kinds Of Bluffs
Bluffing comes in several forms -the reason for bluffing frequently depends on the cards you hold, what you think your opponents have in their hands, and what you think they believe you have.
- Betting – or raising – with a helpless hand. With this technique, you have a weak hand but act as if it’s a strong one. The maneuver is reversible, too: You can act weak when holding an extremely powerful hand in order to lure opponents into a trap.
- Betting or raising on the inexpensive betting rounds. You use this bluff in order to get a free card later on in the hand -when the cost of bets double.
- Betting with a semi-bluff. Noted poker theorist David Sklansky, who coined the term, defines the semi-bluff as ” . . . a bet with a hand which, if called, does not figure to be the best hand at the moment but has a reasonable chance of outdrawing those hands that initially called it.”
With a semi-bluff, as opposed to a bluff with a helpless hand, a player has two ways to win: His opponent might think the bluffer has the hand he’s representing and release his own hand. If the opponent calls, the bluffer might catch the card he needs and beat his opponent that way.
Importance of Bluff
Some players never bluff . After you figured out who they are, playing against them is easy. If they bet once all the cards are out, you can safely throw away your hand away unless you believe that your hand is superior to theirs. If it is, you should raise.
Other people are habitual bluffers. When they bet, you have to call as long as you are holding any reasonable hand. Although habitual bluffers will also make real hands every now and then, the fact that they bluff far too often makes your decision easy. By calling, you’ll win far more money in the long run than you would save by folding.
Keep ‘em guessing
We have no easy answer about players who bluff some, but not all of the time. Opponents who bluff some of the time are better poker players than those found at either end of the bluffing spectrum. Better players, of course, can keep you guessing aboot whether or not they are bluffing. And when you’re forced to guess, you will be wrong some of the time.
That’s just the way it is. Of course, you might be able to pick up a tell (a revealing gesture) and know when your opponent is bluffing, but that’s not too likely in most cases. The sad truth is that players who keep you guessing are going to give you much more trouble than predictable opponents. In most low-limit games, players bluff much too often. After all, when you play fixed-limit poker, all it costs is one additional bet to see someone’s hand. And the pots are usually big enough, relative to the size of a bet, to make calling the right decision.
Here’s an example: Suppose the pot contains $90, and your opponent makes a $10 bet. That pot now contains $100, and the cost of your call is only $10. Even if you figure your opponent to be bluffing only one time in ten, you should call. By calling, the laws of probability suggest that you’d lose a $10 bet nine times, for a loss of $90. Although you’d win only once, that pot would be worth $100. After ten such occurrences, you’d show a net profit of $10. As a result, you could say that regardless of the outcome of any particular hand, each call was worth one dollar to you.
The threat of bluffing
The threat of a bluff is just as important as a bluff itself. A good player – one who bluffs neither too often nor too infrequently, and seems to do so under the right conditions – has something else going for her too. It’s the threat of a bluff. Does she have the goods or is she bluffing? How can you tell? If you can’t, how do you know what to do when she bets?