Learn how to bluffing poker players in the table | How to Bluff Online
How to Bluff Online
Online poker is a little more complicated when it comes to bluffing — you can’t see your opponents and other venues of communication are very limited. That said, there still are options:
- Use response times as your tells. If a slow player suddenly starts responding quickly, they may have a plan;
- Establish a character. If you are visibly careful and then suddenly start raising on a visible flop, most people will think that they are missing something and fold;
- Look for other patterns. They commonly won’t be real — after all, you won’t be the only one with a character — but it’s still good to know when your opponents are going out of their element.
Once again, bluffing is not a straight-up science. It’s an art of patterns, regularities and deliberate breaks within them. But it is also the most beautiful part of poker, where different players get to express themselves in unique ways.
As we have clearly established in the previous part of this series — Bluffing in Online Poker: How To Not Get Fooled — bluffing is more of an art. It’s a combination of acting, quick wit, and innate charisma, and it can’t exactly be taught.
That said, there are certain tricks that will give you some insight into how bluffing works. We are going to discuss the three most simple and effective ones.
The Short Stack Bluff
Going all-in is one of the most overdramatized moves in poker — to the point where, if somebody does it, you have to assume they have a good hand. Newcomers to poker think that this is some sort of ultimate move and fear that they will scare their opponents away.
The reality is much simpler. In professional poker, whenever the player with the shortest stack goes all-in, it is perceived as a sign of weakness and desire to get it all over with. Therefore, such bets almost always get called — and that is something you can use to your advantage. Just make sure not to overdo the expression of boredom when you do it.
The Second Hour Slip
Tired people make mistakes. And hours-long games of poker are not just tiring — they are exhausting. By those two observations, most people would expect a mistake from a visibly tired player — and you can absolutely use it to your advantage.
Remember fake tells we warned you about in the first part of the article? You will need one. Just don’t start showing it from the moment the game beings — that’s a rookie mistake. Wait until you are in the finish straight, then slowly let the tells ‘slip’. And if you won’t overdo it, you will get to deliver the glorious carnage at the table.
The Straight Man
The best part of poker is that everyone knows about bluffing — and everyone assumes that their opponents are actively designing complex Poker strategies to bluff them. Therefore, a simple act of not bluffing and playing square will generally put your opponents on the edge.
The trick, of course, is to put them into a false sense of ease. If you only always go aggressive with a strong hand, fold with a weak hand, and have been upholding this throughout the entire game, you can fool the entire table by ruthlessly raising the stakes while holding a pair of twos.