All in or fold? Bluffing as a concept is easy for the free poker beginner to understand but a devil to master, even the best pro players blow it frequently.
Bluffing can reward you or demolish you.
When playing with real money, I would be extra careful when it comes to bluffing. I will discuss my ideas and concepts of bluffing in no limit money and free texas holdem poker.
Here is the first lesson of bluffing that I find works most of the time (if done right) It’s the gut feel after an opponent checks after the flop, turn or river that they have nothing so you can bet confidently.
The best way to demonstrate this is when you are playing someone heads up. If there are only two of you and you have top pair or top kicker, you are most likely to win. The reason is because the other person only has two cards out of the deck just like you so the chances are slim. When you bluff against a heads up player, make sure you know something about that player, so you know when to bluff at just the right time.
Next, you have to understand what is at stake when you produce a bluff. If you push all in and you know you do not have the best hand, you must consider the worst. You may get lucky, or you may not. Bluffing is similar to betting on red or black in roulette, it’s a fifty-fifty chance. If you are bluffing in fun free poker you may think it does not matter because it is not real, true maybe but you’ll never become a very good poker player with that approach and you will never move beyond the free poker level.
Bluffing is only part of the game but can never be mastered. Even the poker professionals would agree that even they still do not know when to make a bluff or not. Sometimes it is hard to tell if someone is slow playing you or they just simply do not have anything.
Third, another concept of bluffing is the persistent value bet method. During this method, you are betting on nothing from the flop all the way to the river hoping they will fold if they have chased their hand. If you bet the same amount on the flop and turn but bet a little higher on the river with your bluffing hand, the other person is most likely to fold their hand to you. But again, this does not always have the same outcome every time.
Finally, my favorite part of bluffing is when you try to produce a bet that seems like a bluff, but is not. The best bluff bet is the famous all in or the bet pot. Also, if you are playing with the same group of cash or free texas holdem poker players on a regular basis, you can change up your style by betting an amount they would not expect. The best way to get as much as you can get from someone out of a hand is to simply call all the way and go all in on the river, hopefully they will think you missed what you were chasing and they will call.
In closing, I hope you now understand a bit more about bluffing as a whole. It is one thing to be a poker professional but being a bluffing poker professional is an entire different world. Bluffing is either something you are good at or not. If bluffing works for you most of the time, you may be just lucky or you may truly have the gift of bluffing mastered. But just remember, the most important concept to understand about bluffing is that it will NOT always be successful.
If poker of bluffing is new for you be sure to get low or no risk practice in first. Try it on, test, fail, succeed and learn on free texas hold em sites before you start to try and bluff with real money!
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May 7, 2010
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