How to Bluff at Poker Successfully:

Bluffing makes poker what it is. Without bluffing poker would be just another form of betting against odds and nothing more. In fact, it is played this way at the professional level, and the better player knows to calculate odds, the more he wins. However, professional poker is all about money and is much less entertaining than poker with bluffing, normally played at amateur level. Nevertheless, inappropriate bluffing may result quite expensive, therefore it is more than advisable to develop a bluffing strategy that will not only add excitement to the game, but will also let you win.

What you need to understand is how bluffing affects your chances to win. In poker, aggressive betting represents a strong hand, and logically a player with a poor hand should fold if he faces aggressive betting. So, if none of the players at the table has a good hand, it is quite possible that the bluff will be successful. On the other hand, if one of the players has a good hand, your bluffing will fail, because this player will call or even re-raise your bet. Therefore, bluffing is more effective when other players have pure hands. How can you know this? First of all, you do not have to start bluffing in the first round, so you can see how other players bet and evaluate their hands according to this. It is still possible that their hands will improve in the following rounds, but probably not by much, so if you see that betting is not very intense in the first round, you can take the risk to bluff in the second one. A perfect situation is when many players fold before you start your bluffing. The fewer players there are in play, the lower is the chance of them having strong hands.

The most complicated question is what to do when you see that your bluffing is not working, meaning that other players keep calling or raising your bets. There is not much you can do. You can either keep bluffing and most probably lose a lot of money or fold and still lose everything you have bet until now. As well as the positive effect that lets you win with a poor hand, bluffing has a negative effect that makes you lose much more money than you would if you were not bluffing when your bluffing fails.

Bluffing is not lucrative by its nature, and the ability to win with a poor hand is not the main advantage of bluffing. A more advantageous effect of appropriately used bluffing is that it makes your play unpredictable. If you play all your hands rationally, other player will soon find out what hands you have when you bet, what hands make you call and what make you raise. If you buff from time to time, you may lose some money on these bluffs, but the next time you will bet aggressively with a strong hand, your opponents may think you are bluffing and you will win a lot of money.

However, bluffing too often is not good either. Players will understand your tactics and will never buy your bluffs, so, you will lose more than you will win. You should bluff OCCASIONALLY. How often? Well. As far as you want to make your play unpredictable, you should not define any mathematical scheme for bluffing. Bluff when you feel like bluffing, but do not abuse. This is the only way a bluffing strategy can be defined.