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Bluffing

DON’T BLUFF!  Just kidding.  Well, almost. 

If you’re playing low limits online, then you should rarely bluff as the games in most cases are so loose that you’ll almost always have someone call you to the river.  The exception is mid/high limits where you’ll encounter better players.  Occasionally bluffing can be effective at the NL tables, even the $25 and below tables.  But even at the NL tables online, you’ll still encounter quite a few people willing to go all in with middle pair or worse.

Too many people watch the movie Rounders and then start to believe the cards don’t matter.  “Poker is a skill game, you have to out play the man behind the cards!  You have to put a man to a decision for his stack!” people will tell me.  Yeah sure, if you’re at the final table of the WSOP, or playing high limits at the Bellagio.  Playing low limits online at Party Poker?  Then it’s all about the cards and what you do with them.  It is a skill game.  You need know your outs and your pot odds.  You need to know when to fold.  For the games most people play, it’s rarely about staring down your opponent and bluffing your way into a pot.   

For bluffing to be profitable online, the pot odds must be higher than the odds that your opponent will fold.  Let’s say you figure that your opponent will fold 1 out of 3 times you bluff in the situation you’re currently in.  That’s 2 to 1 odds that your opponent will fold.  If your pot odds are higher than 2 to 1 then bluffing is profitable.  Bluffing is rarely successful against more than three players.  Bluffing is also much more likely to be successful against strong players.  As you raise in limits, the games tend to tighten up.  Then you can start to pull off a bluff now and then.  For instance, you're heads up and you’ve put your opponent on a straight draw.  A King falls on the river, a scare card.  You’re pretty sure your opponent missed his draw and doesn’t have anything.  In this case go ahead and bluff if you figure him to be a fairly strong opponent.  A weaker opponent will most likely call as they tend to call with anything.

A semi-bluff can be much more effective online than an outright bluff.  Let’s say you hold A7 with a flop of QT7.  By betting you could possibly win the pot outright.  We call this a semi bluff because if called, you’ll still have 5 outs to improve your hand.  A semi-bluff can often be profitable in games where bluffing would not be. 

In live games bluffing can help with table image.  If you’re caught bluffing a few times, then when you do have the goods you’ll get a lot of action.  Whereas if you haven’t played a hand in the last hour at a live game, and then you suddenly start betting like crazy, you probably won’t get much action.  On the internet table image almost isn’t an issue.  Players come and go so often that people won’t usually be there long enough to get a read on you.  When playing low limits online I recommend that you stick to playing solid poker and for the most part avoid bluffing entirely, with the exception of a semi-bluff now and then.  The game is not about staring down Johnny Chan and putting him to a decision for his stack.

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