Bluffing - A "How To"

So, I know it's been a while since my last post, but I've been having a mediocre week with hold'em. I only took home about 1/2 of what I normally make weekly, and it kinda frustrated me, but so be it, that's poker. One notable hand was my AA verses pocket 4s. I shoved when the flop came 6 2 J (rainbow) with one pre-flop all-in already in the pot. I had the guy with pocket 4s covered, and I put him on a small pocket pair, yet he for some reason called me (He looked a little frustrated, so he may have been having a bad day, who knows). I turned over my aces, he said "okay so I need a four" and started calling for one loudly. turn was a blank and guess what the river was? The case 4 (someone else said that they had folded a 4 pre-flop). Anyhow, at least I'm not down for the week, right?

One thing I forgot to mention about asking "How much do you have behind?" is what people called "Implied Odds". For a full definition, check out the poker glossary linked on the left hand side of the page, but in brief it's basically an "okay, how much money can I potentially get from you, or how much money can I potentially lose if I hit air the whole way?" The glossary will probably be able to define it absolutely perfectly for you, so I'd recommend looking there for more info.

Okay, so the title of this post is a little misleading. I'm not going to teach you how to bluff, or even really talk about strategies on HOW to bluff, I'm just going to refer you to a player named Tom "Durrr" Dwan. He's young, about my age, but the difference between he and I is that he made 38m (Yea, that m stands for million) dollars last year playing Poker, whereas I... well I didn't make 38 million dollars. Anyhow, I've been watching a lot of High Stakes Poker lately, online, and it's sorta changed my opinion of this guy. I used to really think he was just a showboating kid that played too much online poker - well, okay, he is - but he can sure as hell back it up. Check out some of the bluffs, semi bluffs, and traps he performs here: http://tv.gsn.com/shows/highstakespoker/ . At the end of one of the episodes (I can't remember which one, but it was fairly recent) he bluffs at a 628k pot with 9 high and TAKES IT!. I give a lot of credit to Phil Ivey, though, another player I really don't like (and is considered the world's best overall poker player - this includes all forms of poker, not just Texas Hold'em), who actually considered calling with a pair of sixes. Check it out if you're interested. It's a really long hand, but the final result is spectacular. Anyhow, that's it for now. Goodluck at the tables.

Nick