How To Bluff Online Poker
Online Poker Bluffing. You are representing a big pair or that you caught a piece of the flop, and your show of strength might prompt the rest of the table to fold, giving you the pot right there. However, even if someone does call your bluff, you have outs. An ace or king on the turn or river gives you top pair, and if a queen hits. Bluff Magazine provides the poker industry with the most comprehensive and sought after poker rankings and poker news content. Welcome to the online version of the world's largest poker magazine.
In today's hand I'm up against an absolute fighter in a $3,000 no-limit hold'em World Series of Poker event. He was very active and splashy, and knowing that about him I tried to induce him to bluff against me in a spot where I had what was likely the better hand.
It folded to me in middle position where I had been dealt and raised 2.5x to 1,000, and only my aggressive opponent in the big blind called. He had me well covered with about 60 big blinds to start the hand versus my 35 BBs.
The flop came and my opponent checked. As I discuss in the video below, a good default play here is to continuation bet on the small side, and that's what I did here by betting 1,000 into the 2,600 pot.
My opponent responded with a check-raise to 3,000 — a good development, from my point of view. At this point I had to decide what the best option would be to get my loose opponent to continue to be reckless.
What would you do here? Call? Reraise? If reraising, how much?
I'll let you see what I decided to do and how things played out from here, and listen to my analysis of both my play and my opponent's in this hand.
Learning how to induce a bluff is a skill you simply must master if you want to succeed long term.
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $7,000,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. Sign up to learn poker from Jonathan for free at PokerCoaching.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
Everybody needs an account at one of these online poker rooms! They're the biggest, the best, and we get you the best poker bonuses. Check out our online poker section for details on all the online poker rooms around.
Tags
tournament strategyno-limit hold'emaggressioninducingbluffingbluff catchingpostflop strategyrangesrange readingJonathan LittlevideoRelated Players
Jonathan Little
Some players — and it’s only a few of them, to be sure — never bluff. After you figure out who they are, playing against them is easy. If they bet once all the cards are out, you can safely throw 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
No easy answer exists concerning 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 about 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 may 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?
These answers don’t come easily, and even top-notch players are not going to have a terrific batting average in most cases. As a result, the threat of a bluff combined with the bluff itself, is designed to help a player win some pots that she would otherwise lose and to win more money in pots where she actually has the best hand.
After all, if you have the best hand and come out betting, your opponent won’t always know whether you’re bluffing or not. If a lot of money is in the pot, she’ll probably call. Cherry gold casino no rules bonus. That’s the less costly error. After all, if she were to throw the winning hand away and relinquish a big pot, that’s a much more costly faux pas than calling one additional bet.
How To Bluff In Poker
How To Spot An Online Poker Bluff
Bluffing and the threat of bluffing go hand in hand. A bluff can enable a player to win a pot she figured to lose if the hands were shown down. The threat of a bluff enables a player with a good hand to win more money than she would if her opponent knew she never bluffed.