You’ve Myth busted. You’ve gotten beat by a micro-smith. You’ve made the text a liar. You’ve coined the phrase “poker bluffing” to describe a poor poker strategy. You even went so far as to suggest that it should be avoided at all costs, because “if you see a poker bluff it means that your opponent has pocket aces! You should play against weak players that have no outs and play against tight players that have position”. Now you’re thinking, “How can I bluff online?”
Well, there are several reasons why poker bluffing is not so effective online. This article isn’t going to argue with the pros that play the game, why it works or doesn’t work in a particular circumstance. Instead, it’ll show you why your poker bluffing strategy will likely not work very well when playing in a game of anonymous opponents.
One of the biggest problems is the fact that the game is played from behind your computer screen. It’s difficult to effectsuate your player’s psychology and get them to reveal their hand.
Another problem is the speed of play. It’s real easy to decide to call to see the next card, or to fold after raising the hand pre-flop. However, if the game is on auto-check/fold, you have no way of knowing if you’re holding a good hand or not, and there’s no time for discussion.
Now, in home games you can discuss your hand, and check your position, but it’s still just that: talking. In a tournament, you can’t discuss your hand, and you don’t get to see your opponent’s cards.
This is especially important when you’re playing “Heads Up”. The guy is going to call you with basically anything, unless you do something unprecedented. Thus, the language of heads up poker is limited to that which is unique to the situation: you are playing “head to head” Mega88, against “your opponent”.
Most players do not have a verbal equivoire to announce “raise”. Instead, they simply announce a “check” and they are off to wait for the next card. You want to raise? Say “Raise”. Or, check, then raise, such as in “PC”.
When you raise, you want your opponent to fold. But, when you check, your opponent acts as if he doesn’t have a problem with what you’re doing. You can’t push a leverage, when you do not have a hand.
You want to figure out what your opponent will call, pre-flop and post-flop. You want to know his starting hand points. You want to play your hand before figure out what your opponent will call. In fact, there are a couple of ways to accomplish this.
You can do what the pros do and guess his starting hand points. His face down cards are quite simple to count. On the button, with a small raise, most of the time your opponent will call. With a medium raise, a lot of the time he will call. Unless he has a huge stack, he is not likely to want to call.
You can guess, based on your opponent’s previous playing history, what cards he is holding. If you do, you can push your opponent off a hand, if he calls your raise. This will take a lot of practice, as your opponent is Not Going to exactly know what you are holding.
However, you can take some more time to consider what he may have. Since we are talking about middle suited connectors, cards that are not quite perfect, we can externalToEVA think about a scenario where your opponents raise with a hand like 8-8 in an attempt to get you to fold. If you notice that your opponent Overview Cards 9, you can OUTR, even though there are many ways for him to pair the card.
The first thing you want to be aware of when reading a starting hand article is that they will frequently be talking about money cards. You should not get your started thinking about your flush, or out straight. You want to use that article to learn about the hands of your opponent, as well as build upon what you already know.