TIPS FOR BLUFFING IN POKER
MIX OF STRATEGIES You should always approach a game of poker by being equipped with few solid strategies (based on the game variant) that enhance your chances of winning the game. This is the bare minimum that every poker player needs to do in his / her bid to become a pro in Poker online for real money. However, you need to give equal importance to making your plays as per the behaviour and tendencies of other players on the table. Especially when small stakes are involved, you need to focus significantly on attacking the those exploitative tendencies of the opponents.
RE-ASSESS YOUR HANDS Consider that you did a bluff ‘raise’ at the ‘turn’ with your hands. It does not necessarily mean that when the ‘river’ stage arrives, you have to mandatorily go ahead with all your bluffs. You need to evaluate the situation and re-assess the hands in your range at every street, before deciding which ones to go ahead with for your bluff, by taking into consideration the bet size as well as the count of value hands in your range.
HAND READING SKILLS It is one thing to know your hand strength and hiding it from your opponents, but, it is an altogether different thing to understand the strength of hands of your opponents. Once you are able to hand-read your opponents like a poker expert, you will be in a better position to know whether your bluff will succeed or fail. You need to practice and develop your hand-reading skills regularly to become an expert at the same over a period of time.
MAINTAIN CONSISTENCY A common mistake made by many poker players is to suddenly change their bet size while trying out bluffs. For example, many players place the minimum possible bet with a bluff, with the aim of losing less if their bluff gets caught. But, by doing so, what they do is give a signal to the opponents that probably you do not have a strong hand. Instead, in such situations, you need to think as if you really had a strong hand and place the bet accordingly. This way the bet size would remain the same or similar – irrespective of whether you are playing with a high-value hand or bluffing. This will make it really difficult for opponents to catch your bluff.
POKER BLUFF AND SEMI BLUFF Earlier in this page, we touched upon the concept of having a backup while bluffing, which we termed as ‘semi-bluff’. This is not a pure bluff, but a bluff bet where you currently may not have a good hand, but, you are betting on your hand turning into a strong hand for the later stage (by the time the last card is dealt). If you are planning to play bluff poker, then, it is always better to make a semi-bluff instead of a pure bluff – because of the simple reason that it gives you a chance to actually win the hand at the final stages on the basis of the hand strength. Of course, it gives you the basic benefits of bluffing – where the chances of the opponent folding up will give you the win.
WHEN TO OPT SEMI BLUFF? While the standard rules we discussed above while considering whether to bluff or not apply here as well, there are some specific things you need to consider before you can decide to do this. In fact, most of the players fail to successfully implement semi-bluff, by betting when they should actually be checking, or by checking when they should actually be betting.
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