The Bad Bluff
Bluffing in Texas Hold’em is practically mandatory at all levels of the game, with the general exception of when you are playing low-limit poker against really inexperienced players. Bluffing adds another way of winning chips to your arsenal, something that will come in handy when the deck starts to run cold for extended periods of time, which will inevitably happen more than you want it to. However, firing a random bet at the pot isn’t a very effective way to pull off a bluff and you’ll just end up donating chips to your opponent’s stack.
Unless your opponent has absolutely nothing, the bluff you make needs to make sense to the situation. There are a lot of players that will show a lot of weakness throughout an entire hand and then out of nowhere they’ll fire a pot-sized bet on the river. These half-assed attempts to pick up the pot will not work very often against keen, experienced players that have a good read on your poker ability. They’ll end up calling you with extremely marginal hands like third pair.
Whenever you’re about to bluff, ask yourself if you would fold if the situation was reversed and someone was betting into you in this position. If you’re heads-up against a very weak/tight opponent that auto-folds to any bet unless they hit top pair, then by all means continue to put pressure on that player by betting into them as often as possible. The same can be said for continuation bets, you’ll almost always want to fire one of these out after the flop as long as your position is good and there aren’t too many other players in the pot.
Always be aware of how your opponent has played the hand as this will give you a lot of the information you’ll need to figure out whether or not a bluff can work. If you really feel like your opponent has a drawing hand and didn’t catch the card they needed, you can now make an educated bluff based on situational information. If you’re opponent raised before the flop though and the board comes A-Q-J, you won’t want to make any bluffs toward this hand as it is very likely that you’re opponent made his hand or even worse, flopped a monster.
Firing off random bluffs will only work against weak players and players with no hand. Stay aware of how the action is progressing from hand to hand and build up knowledge of every player at the table. All of these little bits of information will make it far easier for you to make smart bluffs as opposed to slinging in chips in the wrong situations.
By: Chris Iaquinta
