On Bluffing
Kenny Rogers says you gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away but he forgot the most important part of poker - knowing when to bluff! Now bluffing may not be the most universal skill as it’s not useful in a lot of gambling games besides poker and brag and a lot of people are actually horrible at it because they’re just unable to tell a believable lie. However most people can be taught to be reasonably good at bluffing, especially when playing with people who don’t know them well.
The first step to bluffing then is actually to develop a poker face, the idea is to keep your fellow players always guessing as to what kind of hand you might have. If you’re always fake frowning when you have a good hand and smiling when you have a bad hand they’re going to pick up on that. So you want to remain as neutral as possible regardless of the type of hand you have. Once you’ve developed your ‘poker’ or neutral face you want to become aware of any ‘tells’ you may have, like one gambler I know habitually scratched the left side of his nose when he had a good hand, tapping your fingers on the table when you have a bad hand etcetera. These are all ‘tells’ that you need to get rid of before you can bluff successfully.
Bluffing is tantamount in situations where you may have a hand that most likely isn’t a winning hand but you need the other players at the table to believe it is. You want them to think your hand is so great they have no choice but to fold. However if you do this every round and keep showing average or even bad hands then someone’s going to call your bluff for sure. You need to bluff sparingly so that people don’t pick up on the fact that you’re bluffing. You want to bluff subtly so people don’t realize you’re faking them out. So don’t all of a sudden start smiling over how great your cards are, you want to maybe grin a little and then stop, say something really positive unrelated to your hand like you’re all of a sudden in a good mood. But remember whatever you do has to be something you might normally do otherwise people will get suspicious and think you’re bluffing.
Of course the ideal time to bluff is when you’ve read your fellow players body language and know that they have bad hands so be sure to pay attention to their tells also. Knowing when to bluff and how to decipher body language is useful both in real time poker and poker via webcam.
