Gambling Rules & Tricks

Most players don’t use bluff induction enough in their game. Instead they focus too much on their own hand strength. They will often double barrel on Axx or Kxx boards with top pair medium kicker. While this play has its place and is often provides a solid place to bet again on the turn often a higher expected value play will come from checking and allowing your opponent to bet. Consider, your opponent has already called one bet, he has a hand why not let him try to push you off your medium strength hand instead of betting and allowing him to play better. With the increase in post flop playback over the past year in online games bluff induction has become an increasingly important tool. Although being able to make re-bluffs and replay-backs can help you deal with playback as well it is often easier and safer to use bluff induction as your main tool to stop your opponents from making too many bluff flop raises and floats.

Bluff induction is not just a powerful tool for the reasons I have already mentioned. If we are able to read our opponents hands well and can make good big calls we can use our bigger hands and even our weaker hands to induce bluffs. Instead of betting on the flop with a weak top pair perhaps we check and let our opponents do the betting in the hand for us. Or perhaps we check the flop with a good hand in order to get opponents with weaker hands to call value bets on later streets. No matter the specific situation bluff induction can be a great tool in order to extract value because it leaves your hand values more open ended then continuously value betting.

The point of bluff induction is two fold. First we attempt to minimize the pot size with a medium strength hand in order to see a showdown and prevent ourselves from getting all-in with the worst of it or be bluffed off our hand. Second we try to give our opponent some rope and hope he makes a misplay and puts money in the pot with a bluff. When you are making a bet it is always important to understand the purpose of the bet and how your opponent will see it. Each bet, check, or raise you make needs to have a purpose and as you play it is important to define that purpose for each hand you play. Often the biggest mistakes in poker are made when we take medium strength hands too far. We inflate the pot size for our hand and then get into trouble on later streets when our hand becomes 2nd best or our opponent already had a better hand.

One of the most paramount skills for a no limit player is the ability to make a stark contrast between his bluffs and value bets. The power of bluff induction comes in the middle, often when our hand is only just strong enough to value bet but too good to turn into a bluff. These are situations where we are neither bluffing nor value betting because our hand strength is mediocre.