This creates a situation in your opponent’s mind that can lead to confusion-sometimes you have the cards, so when you’re bluffing, they might assume you’re strong, and fold. That bluff I described above? It should be very similar to how you bet if you have good cards and think there’s a good-to-great chance that you’ll win the hand. In most cases, you’ll either win the hand, or somebody will call and you’ll at least get to the see the turn (fourth card), which could improve what you’re holding. Someone might be playing possum with great cards, but it’s worth putting out a larger bet to see if you can exploit their weakness and scare them into folding. The same is true if you’re fourth to bet, for instance, but everybody checks to you. To bluff intelligently, on the other hand, is to understand when you have good position, to understand that on your average flop with a small group, chances are nobody is getting exactly what they want, and to make a calculated bet that looks ominous but won’t break your bank if somebody calls. That’s almost always a bad idea, even if you succeed here and there, because if you make a habit out of it, eventually you’re going to get crushed by someone with great cards who calls you out. A bluff is often poorly understood, and a lot of people think of a bluff as going all-in with terrible cards. In the scenario described above, you “bluffed” the other players in the hand. But there was no getting around it, so after a particularly bad performance late one night, I decided to quit. I consider myself a smart guy, so it was hard to admit that I sucked. Granted, it was no more expensive over that time span than a dinner out, or a couple of movies, so it wasn’t like I was breaking the bank, but it was frustrating.

fake dollars apiece, I found myself down almost 40.

Nevertheless, during the first few days of the quarantine, I lost early and often, to the point that even though the games were only five. I knew the game, and all its rules, so it wasn’t like hold ’em was completely foreign to me. For lack of my usual entertainment options, I began playing with a group of friends on Pokerstars (the group is about 30-strong, at this point), some of whom were newbies like me, and some of whom were very good, very experienced players that have played poker for a living in the past. I’m one of the rookies, and my game is Texas hold ’em.

It’s no surprise that in the past month, in the midst of our national lockdown, online poker has boomed to the tune of a roughly 43% overall increase, with a 255% jump in first-time poker players.

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