What does a bluff mean? What is bluffing? Why do you bluff? What are the ideal bluffing situations in Texas Holdem games? I'm going to do my best to answer those questions in this No Limit Texas Holdem strategy article. This is just an introduction to bluffing, and I will concentrate on actual bluffing strategies in future articles. I still recommend reading this through, so there will be no misconceptions early on.
More about bluffing: Texas Holdem Bluff Tells.
What Bluffing Means
Bluffing means betting with a "not-likely-a-winner" hand - basically a hand that you know will lose if it eventually gets to showdown. When you hear someone saying "player X is on a bluff", that means he's betting with the worst hand (and that is usually a bad hand, too). Don't confuse bluffing with bad value betting, though. When you bluff, you're intentionally betting or raising with what you think is worse/bad hand.
There's a semi-bluff, too. I guess the name explains a bit of it, but basically when you're betting or raising and you're behind, but there's still a chance of hitting the best hand, that's when you're semi-bluffing. Semi-bluffing can be profitable against players who fold most of the time when they have nothing, but against players who are somewhat calling stations and don't like to fold even with complete air, there's just less folding equity. More about this subject in future articles, but now you know what a semi-bluff means.
Why to Bluff
I've heard players saying "I don't care about winning, I just want to make the best bluffs in the world." Well, I'm not going to tell help you with that, since it's really just childish and stupid. You should understand, that bluffing just for the sake of bluffing is wrong - your goal in poker should be to make as profitable plays as possible. Not to prove yourself you can bluff your opponent out of a pot but eventually he takes your money. Decent bluffing skills aren't worth much if you lack in other necessary skills.
Something useful to remember is; you can't outplay everyone all the time. The best player in the world couldn't outplay everyone all the time. So stop thinking like that and get out of whatever bluffing obsession you might have (if you inspire to be the best bluffer in the world or stuff like that). Make it your goal to be the best poker player in the world and work towards that. Bluffing is just one kind of betting and/or raising in poker, and Texas Holdem. You'll have to bluff sometimes in order to make your poker game more profitable, but your game isn't going to be profitable by *just* knowing how to bluff.
We don't bluff "when that's the only way to make our money back", unless it's a profitable way at the same time. I've probably repeated this a thousand times already, but bluffs should make your game profitable, either rightaway or at least make things good for future. We all make mistakes and misjudgements, but that should be your goal.
Ideal Bluffing Spots in Texas Holdem
Generally, we're looking for spots where your opponent will believe in your strength, he's going to fold because he thinks you're playing with a strong hand. While that can be said generally, there isn't really a general answer to what kind of moves & patterns your opponent will believe. How your opponents reacts to different tells, betting patterns and other stuff you do in online poker games is simply very much individualistic. This is why you should be running tests on your opponent to see how he reacts to a few "main" things that you can do when you're trapping, value betting and/or bluffing.
New players tend to bluff when it's very obvious, hence why these bluffs get picked up majority of the time by more skilled players. Bluffing in "good" spots works in these games, and by good I mean spots where your opponent can't believe anything else than that you're going to have it. You can value bet very marginal hands in these games because A-high will call many bets that look like a bluff.
Then we get to next level where making the "obvious" bluff isn't going to get called all that much because it's simply too obvious. And after that, I think, we'll get to the level where individualistic thinking becomes the way of thinking for majority of players and there's really no general rule to what kind of bluffs will work. So what are the ideal spots for bluffing? It depends on stakes and opponents. You should always target individualistic thinking and gather as much information together as possible (on your opponents), this way making much more justifiable decisions than what you would do if you played in a "general" way. We'll get to some examples in "betting patterns" article.
When it comes to bluffing, there are so many things to consider. All the way from betting patterns to clicking tells, bits of history and hand reading abilities. I think, now, that you have read this article, you'll have the idea of what (successful) bluffing is about.
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