Bluffing is สล็อต 888 pg magic elixir. It’s the sleight-of-hand where high art and drama reside. It’s the place where myths are made. After all, what’s a western movie without a poker scene with one player trying to bluff another out of a big pot? This is the first of a four-part series on bluffing. Not only will we show you how, when, and why to bluff, we’ll also tell you about some of the most famous bluffs in poker history.
To those who do not play poker, or who have only a nodding acquaintance with it, bluffing is where they focus most of their attention when they think about the game.
Does this conversation ring a bell?
Non-Player: “You’re a professional poker player? Wow; you must have a real poker face.”
Professional Poker Player: “Why do you say that?”
NP: “Don’t you need a poker face because you have to bluff all the time?”
PPP: “Actually, bluffing is only a small part of the game, and good players don’t really bluff that often.”
NP: “Hmmmmmmm, It’s not like that in the movies.”
PPP: [shrugging his shoulders with the resigned weariness of one who’s had similar conversations far too many times] “Well, few things really are.”
What Is Bluffing, Anyway?
Ask most poker players to define bluffing and they’ll tell you about betting a weak hand with the hope of driving other players out of the pot. After all, without bluffing, poker would be a boring game. Bets would be made, and the best hand would win. Always.
Since the cards figure to break even in the long run, without the possibility that someone is bluffing each player would have the same expectation, and when all was said and done, no one would win any money.
But there are winning players and those who lose most of the time.. And it’s often bluffing ¾ or more precisely the possibility that one might be bluffing ¾ that goes a long way toward separating the wheat from the chaff. Bluffing, after all, is merely a form of deception. And deception is an essential component in winning poker.
After all, if your opponents always knew what you had, they’d be tough to beat. Deception is the art of keeping others off balance. Like a mis direction play in football, or a baseball player hitting behind the runner into an area vacated by the infielder on a hit-and-run play, deception is a required skill for any poker player.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF BLUFFS
Betting – or raising – with a helpless hand is only one form of bluffing. It’s not the only way to bluff. The process is reversible too. Rather than acting strong with a weak hand, one can act weak when holding a powerhouse hand in order to lure opponents into a trap.
Betting or raising on the inexpensive betting rounds in order to get a free card later on in the hand ¾ when the cost of bets double ¾ is another form of bluffing.
There’s also the semi-bluff. That’s a term coined by noted poker theorist David Sklansky, who defines it this way: “.a semi-bluff is a bet with a hand which, if called, does not figure to be the best hand at the moment but has a reasonable chance of outdrawing those hands that initially called it.”
With a semi-bluff, as opposed to a bluff with a helpless hand, a player has two ways to win. His opponent might think the bluffer has the hand he’s representing and release his own hand. If the opponent calls, the bluffer might catch the card he needs and beat his opponent that way.
