15 Bluffing Techniques to Use While Playing Poker

by Bodog Poker | Oct 28 2009

If you play Texas Holdem on a regular basis, either online or offline (with friends or competitively in land-based tournaments) and with some amount of success - then you probably have your own arsenal of poker bluffing techniques.

Here are 15 additional bluffing techniques for you to consider the next time you sit down to play a little poker...

1. Continuation bets are the most common form of bluffing. They're simply a bet that's made following the flop if you were the one forcing the action pre-flop.

2. Bluffing in position. Another common bluff is to bet at a pot that no one has shown any aggression in if you're in a late position. All of your opponents have likely missed the flop in this situation.

3. When playing against a good player you want to make your bluff bets look like value bets. That way the good player will give you credit for the hand because they think you're trying to get action.

4. Calling early action with the intention of bluffing on one of the later streets makes it look like you've been trapping your opponent with a monster hand, and will only get action from very big hands.

5. Don't over bet or go all in to bluff an opponent out of a hand. These types of moves send up red flags to a skilled opponent and you may get action from medium strength hands that don't believe you.

6. Go all-in when the board is showing the absolute nuts like a Broadway straight. The bet will scare away novice players who don't realize that the pot is guaranteed to be split.

7. Create false tells for opponents to pick up on that will throw them off of your holdings. The more confusion you create, the tougher it is for someone to put you on a hand.

8. Use your table image to your advantage by getting your opponents to think that you're a certain type of player, and then play them differently than they would expect you to play.

9. Try to steal the blinds while in late positions and try to re-steal when late position raisers attempt the original steal; especially when the blinds have grown big.

10. Force the action around the bubble in a multi-table tournament. Players don't want to risk their chips when they're so close to the money, and a simple raise can pick up a pot.

11. When calling a short stack all-in, you should try to isolate that opponent from other players. Just raise the bet and most opponents will go away and leave you heads-up.

12. In a live game you have to have a poker face. You don't want to give up a physical tell that you're on the bluff, or it will cost you dearly.

13. In online poker action, the fast raise is good way to throw your opponent off what you might be holding. The speed of the raise looks like you're holding a monster hand.

14. You can bluff hands from early positions when you hold semi-bluff opportunities like flush and open-ended straight draws. You can control the size of the bet by doing this as well.

15. You can bluff at hands like bottom pair just to find out where you stand in the hand. You may win the pot or you may get called or raised, but you'll at least know where you stand with your weak holdings.