Poker Tips

Introduction

As mentioned in a previous article on raising at poker; you need to learn the best times when to raise and when not to, if you are to make any real progress as a poker player. Indeed this article picks up where the last one left off in considering the art of raising to bluff or semi-bluff an opponent.

Raising and free cards

Any time a semi-bluff raise gets called you could well find yourself in with the chance of getting a free card in the next round. However, should you be tempted to raise just to try and get a free card there’s a couple of things you need to be wary of – the cost of going for the raise and your seat position. Unless you’re in the last seat position checking, in order to stall proceedings in the hope of that free card, just could be perceived by your opponents as a weakness, which if you are going for a bluff as well just might be the poker tell they were looking for. But, even more importantly, all a player with a better hand seated behind you has to do is bet – and your free card has flown out of the window. The other point here is – just how free might a free card be? Getting a free card means getting something for nothing; so your free card will only be a free one if the cost of the raise is lower than a call in the next round would be.

Raising to gather information

We’ve all seen the TV shows where a detective in a spot asks a seemingly innocent question, to trick someone else into giving away more information than they intended. As a poker player you can pull a similar stunt, seemingly innocently going for a raise to get information from your opponents. However, and just like the detectives, you can only pull this one occasionally or you’ll soon be tumbled. Best played in a heads-up situation your opponents response to your raise is where you’ll get the information from. If they then call, the chances are they’re holding a pretty good hand themselves that’s giving them lots of confidence. If they re-raise, then they’re as good as telling you they’ve got more than a good hand themselves but something they consider to be well worth squeezing you for every cent they can. If they fold, it’s pretty irrelevant really but it’s as good an admission that they had a poor hand as you’re likely to get, but at least you take their money easily. Of course the opponent might fold even though they’re not sure just how strong their hand is, a sure sign of weakness here that you can exploit in later games if you pick up on it. One final point to watch for when raising to gather information, be on the look out for the player that re-raises just to try and bluff or semi-bluff you!

Using the raise to deliberately remove other hands

You should never feel bad about messing with other peoples hands. Remembering that you don’t actually want to frighten off all the opposition by raising, making them fold before the pot’s swelled up a bit; there are times especially if you only have the second best hand when you might well want to drive off inferior opponents. It all comes down to the percentage chances of you winning the pot, let’s say with five players the lead hand has a 50% chance of winning, you have a 30% chance and the rest have diminishing chances. By eliminating the weaker players with a raise – you raise your chances of winning. OK, so it might now be a 60:40 chance against you, but the odds are still more in your favor than they were. Invariably in raising you’re seeking to get rid of a better hand if you sense there’s one out there. If there’s a couple of them, especially if they end up behind you in the betting, then a raise just could see them folding next time around rather than risking a call. This could then put you in front of the drawing player whose bet now stands little chance of producing them any return. But, if you think the players behind you might stick it out and call your raise – then don’t raise in the first place.

Not raising, then call or fold?

Depending on your hand, raising can often be preferable to folding or, even worse, calling. With several players still in the pot but whilst holding not the best hand, as mentioned above, by raising you could just drive out other players with stronger hands, which will almost always be more profitable than simply folding. However, be careful of not being caught out by a drawing hand behind you. If they look unlikely to leave when you raise, then in effect it’s not even worth your while going for the call – time for you to fold on this occasion