Sybilla Oritur

Image by keenbrown via Flickr

Contrary to popular belief among my high school peers – I do not think I know everything. I do think, however, that it is particularly interesting to learn about something radically new and differrent. Recently, a good friend of mine, Derek, stopped publishing his own blog which I followed religiously. I approached him to write a piece on online poker – a hobby of his I find intriguing and was apt to learn more about. If you would be interested in writing a guest blogger post for my website, please email me and we can work something out.

I was first attracted to poker by the Chris Moneymaker craze of 2002. My first experiences playing Texas Hold’em were in the Champlain Video Game Club room, playing for little tokens which represented no value. We tried to take it seriously back then, but as no money was changing hands, it was more for bragging rights than anything.

Let’s fast forward to 2007, when I first started playing online poker for money. My oldest friend, who is also a poker enthusiast, drew me into playing on Pokerstars.com for low stakes. I had a rough start, still being very much an amateur with little clue to the grander strategies of the game.

One thing I specifically wanted to do when first playing online was to develop bluffing skills. In my mind, knowing when to bluff is the only aspect of poker which keeps it from being a pure gambling game. When you can walk away with money when having the worst hand, then you’ve done something special. When you can do that consistently enough that you never go weeks at a time without winning a game, then you know what you’re doing.

To pull off a well-timed bluff, you need a hand which is bad enough that you are indeed bluffing, and an opponent who is afraid of you enough not to call your raise. Bluffing before the flop requires more explaining than I will provide today, so I will deal here with bluffing on the flop and the turn.

Assume that only you and one other player have decided to see the flop (the first three community cards). Also assume that it is your turn to act first, or rather, to check or bet. The three community cards have done relatively little for your hand. Firstly, control your emotions enough so that your opponent does not perceive your bad luck. Secondly, bet. Don’t bet a lot, but bet enough that your opponent will think you’ve hit a strong hand. With the number of cards in a deck of cards, the chances are more likely than not that they will fold right here, and you will have won the pot. However, this highly depends on the mentality of the other player, and their experience level. They might be a new player, and not have a proper understanding of when to fold or call. In such a case, bluffing them is dangerous, because they might call a majority of the time, and then get lucky later on in the hand.

Let’s now assume that the other player calls your flop bet. You know have a decision to make. Will you continue bluffing your strength on the turn, or will you be cautious and avoid them calling another bluff? This can very much depend on how much you have left to risk. If you are in trouble with your chip stack, then it could be either courageous or foolhardy to bluff again. If you do though, bluff more than you did on the flop. Generally speaking, any raise a player makes should be 50% to 100% of whatever the current pot is. Anything less than 50% is usually considered a joke, and anything over 100% is usually more than you need, and could hurt a lot if you don’t have the best hand. So the turn comes and again it doesn’t help you, but you perceive that it doesn’t help your opponent either. Bet again, and hope that they fold. If they call, its very likely you have the worst hand, and you should probably not bet the river.

The concept of bluffing is very much based on the concept that making a hand is more rare than missing your hand. Also, when playing with people of experience, you can very much play on their fears that even though they have a hand, that you have a better hand. I can not tell you how many countless times I’ve had the best hand, and then saw it go down in flames. I now fold more hands because of it. Always keep this in mind at the table, as bluffing can be a pretty common occurrence. You need to be confident in your bluffs, confident when you hit a hand, but not so overconfident to observe when you might be beat.

About the author: I’m a student in history, currently finishing up my degree at Concordia University. I met Heather there back in 2005, in a Middle-East history class. We became fast friends (it was hard to get away from all her talking).