Poker Tips

Introduction

Never mind what you might see in the movies, if you’ve ever watched true poker professionals playing a game of poker then you’ll have a true understanding on the art of poker bluffing. Being able to bluff at poker isn’t just a question of being able to sit at the poker table all steely eyed or acting all nonchalant. Oh no, the true art of poker bluffing is actually about knowing when it’s really worth your while to bluff and being able to draw your opponent in to you so that they think they know your mind-set and then hitting them with that curved ball.

A perfect bluff

Too much bluffing and you’ll lose your stack

Imagine you’re in a final game of the WSOP and you’ve got roughly double the stack of your opponent at around 300,000 chips. Qd, 4d and the 3c come up at the flop, your opponent bets 30k chips – what do you do? Perhaps they’re chasing a diamond flush or perhaps a straight? You’re happy with your hole cards and so call the bet. The turn shows Ad, alarms bells should now be ringing and then go ballistic when your opponent puts in a bet of 95k – doubling the pot and almost breaking themselves in the process. Surely they’ve got something or they wouldn’t make that bet and surely they’ll go all-in at the river come what may? You can easily call it and take things to the river but the pot odds suddenly don’t look so good, also if you lose it you’ll no longer have the upper hand in stack size – what do you do? Caution gets the better of you and you play tight throwing in your hand. Your opponent grins and taking the pot pushing his stack much nearer to the size of yours, taking great delight in showing you their hole cards at he same time – the 10 and 9 of Spades! You’ve been suckered by a quite brilliant bluff – which is exactly what Baldwin did to Addington in the 1978 WSOP – going on then to win the final head-to-head, whereas only minutes before Addington had been the favorite.

Don’t over bluff

She lost even her shirt by too much bluffing!

In truth there is a great myth grown up around the idea of bluffing at the poker table. Sure, as we’ve just seen above, bluffing does have a place in the game of poker, but at the very top end of the game it’s a tactic that is used sparingly. Indeed bluffing is far more common in the smaller $1 to $5 games, even the smaller online poker games, than in the big money games. The reason is quite simple in that these are invariably limit games and full of rookies and inexperienced players – the very people who think the way to poker success is through bluffing. The reality, however, is that in a low value limit game you’re inviting your opponent(s) to at least call you – it’s got to be worth a dollar or two to see just what it is exactly you’re holding. Needless to say as well, the more times you’re caught out bluffing – the more likely it is that your opponents won’t fall for your bluff.

So how often should you bluff?

Sure looks like a perfect bluffer to me?

Believe it or not but there is a mathematical frequency to bluffing, which is the same as the frequency that will render your opponent incapable of knowing when to call or fold against you. In turn both of these frequencies come down to our old friend the pot odds. So, if the pot odds were, say, for your opponent to get 5 to 1 from the pot – then the chances against you bluffing should also be 5 to 1. So, for your opponent calling they could lose $20 five times but win $100 once. Similarly every 6 hands you stand to win $100 yourself by bluffing. However, to follow that mathematical rule would be an optimal way of approaching bluffing – but by its very nature bluffing needs to be a random event. So, instead you need to make the judgment as to when bluffing will result in an overall bigger profit for you and when it will not.