Bluffing is an integral part of online poker and especially in high-stakes poker games. The levels of aggression in these games means that bluffing and being bluffed are common themes! Short handed and heads up play demand aggression but then again, you must do your fair share of bluffing in full ring games as well and even in situations where you feel bluffing should be at a premium.

Limit hold’em has a very big presence in online poker and there are many people who think that full-ring limit play is devoid of bluffing opportunities. There are ample bluffing chances that crop up in limit play and you must be alert to them otherwise you will be in serious danger of missing out on vital profit opportunities that will form the bread and butter of your earn rate.

Let us look at an example to show exactly what I mean. The game is $10-$20 full-ring limit hold’em and you are playing online poker. Here you have the Jc-5c in the big blind and three players limp in so you see a free flop. The flop comes 10h-6c-3c and you decide to bet into three opponents with your flush draw and overcard.

Your bet gets called by one of the limpers but raised by the button, both you and the limper call. The turn card is the 7s giving you an inside straight draw to go with your other outs as well. You check and to your surprise so do both of your opponents. The river card pairs the seven and now the betting is on you.

Here, many players would neglect to bet here in the big blinds situation. They would fear having two opponents with no hand and a player who raised on the flop. These are all valid arguments but your bet represented something on the flop and that was top pair. Your opponents checking this back on the turn indicates players who may be drawing.

The limper who called your flop bet and then called the turn raise could have merely been getting pot odds. Online poker is jam packed with situations like these and you need to be aware. The play of the flop raiser smacks of someone who was raising to get a free card and when they checked the turn then this seemed to be indicative of that.

You cannot win by checking as a jack high will not take this pot but you are getting very good pot odds to launch a bluff. Many novice players forget about the pot odds when looking to launch bluffs in limit play. They also neglect to take into account the play of the hand up until that stage as well.

Here it was a combination of the pot odds and the situation that indicated that a bet was in order and is all part of online poker strategy. If the flop raiser had followed through and bet the turn then you would have been forced to call and your initiative would have been lost in the hand. You couldn’t really then bet the river into this player and would have been merely making a pot odds call on the turn.

Online poker in all of its various forms is rich with variety and bluffing is what makes the game as exciting as what it is. But try to bluff intelligently and not blindly.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Over time you will be dealt the same amount of good and bad hands as your opponents. This is encouraging for less experienced as there is no reason why profit cannot be obtained just like the top professionals because they hold two cards just like you! The difference between a winning and a losing player is how they maximise the win rate from the hands they are dealt, particularly in a poker tournament where you never get enough good starting hands. In this article we are going to look at stealing the pot when the flop texture is in our favour and how to do it.

When you are sitting with an opponent you should be classifying their starting hand range. If they are playing around 10% of starting hands you can narrow their hands down to almost an exact range of hands. AA-22, AK, AQ, KQ and AJ is their likely range. Focusing on tight opponents with a likely hand range we are able to distinguish many flops that are likely to have missed them and we can in turn steal the pot. Playing one hand per round, or 10% of starting hands is a tight approach and we can assume they will probably not call a continuation bet and turn bet with air (no hand or Ace High). This gives you a real advantage to steal blinds and antes towards the middle of a tournament.

When you hold a premium but none pocket pair hand an Ace will only hit the flop less than half of the time. This means that if you are making continuation bets every time your opponent knows some of the time you cannot always have hit the flop. This means they are likely to call one continuation bet a lot of the time with no hand to see what you do on the turn. Stealing the pot on the flop therefore must be timed carefully so your betting actions are not predictable. You should check some of the flops so that the steal attempts are not lost in what your opponents perceive to be a predictable bet. Variation is your deception.

Stealing a pot on the flop is a strategy best used in tournaments where the blinds account for a higher percentage of your stack. With the blinds at 200/400 with 25 antes your potential win on a ten handed table for one steal is 850 chips. With a tournament stack of under 10 ‘M’s (how many rounds of poker you can survive without playing a hand before being blinded out) this causes a 10% increase in your chip stack minimum. In cash games the blinds are lower relative to the stack size therefore steals are still useful but not nearly as important as having a hand. An advanced strategy is to raise with nothing into a continuation bet on a good flop, but this is highly dependant on accurate reads and is situation dependant on your opponent and your own table image.

Flop textures to steal from include rainbow flops with no obvious draws or flushes with low cards. For example if you hold AJ and are called by one opponent and the flop comes down 5 3 9 with three suits your play here would be to make the continuation bet. Your opponents are likely to hold a hand similar to yours in strength. If they hold a high pocket pair or a set you will be quickly re-raised or called. Even a call is enough to win the pot as you have an easy check fold on further streets. Do not try and steal the pot on the flop or turn if there are obvious flush draws, straight draws or a lot of high cards that would hit every starting hand e.g. 10, K, A unless you either have a tell or good information to determine that in this spot your opponents holdings are likely to be weak.

To make this strategy pay you take what knowledge you have of your opponent’s tightness, the flop texture and your own hand to carefully choose the right moments to steal the blinds and antes and maintain your chip stack. As 1983 World Series of Poker Main event winner Tom McEvoy says “You must survive long enough to get lucky” and this strategy keeps you in the game for that moment of truth where you risk it all to win it all.

By Malcolm Clarke