I am generally a pretty honest person. Primarily this is because I try to have good morals, but I also find dishonesty to be really hard work. When you tell a lie you have to remember the lie and who you told it to so that you don’t trip yourself up and get caught out. It’s just too much effort for me and I try to live a simple life being comfortable in my own skin. Which is why when I started playing Poker seriously recently I had a lot of difficulty with Bluffing properly and Bluffing is a BIG part of the game of Poker. This flaw in my game was seriously holding me back for a while...
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To me it initially felt like Bluffing was being dishonest so I wasn’t really comfortable with it. At first I tried to manage my own physical behaviour by stonewalling with a Poker Face when I bet big so that I didn’t give off any obvious Tells when I was trying to Bluff, but I still couldn’t land my Bluffs successfully. My opponents would regularly call me down and I was convinced that I was giving off a Tell somewhere in my behaviour or mannerisms. It was tough going and so I stayed Tight, but that led to me also getting Bluffed myself out of a lot of Pots.
As I got more experience I learnt that one of the areas I needed to improve was Hand Reading and I gradually came around to realizing that it wasn’t my behavior or mannerisms that was giving me away, but I was Bluffing in the wrong places by telling a story that didn’t make sense to my opponents. It was last weekend that I had a bit of an epiphany and a few elements of my game came together all at once and it sort of Clicked into place.
It started with another element of Poker which I had understood the basics of, which is Bet Sizing – in terms of placing bets in proportion to the Pot and the Equity that you might have on the Pot. When I put my knowledge of Bet Sizing together with my attempts at Hand Reading alongside my understanding of Player Types and Ranges, the penny dropped and I realized that Bet Sizing is an important part of the conversation between players that helps significantly with good Hand Reading. Then with some better Hand Reading I could find those spots where I could Bluff an opponent with a convincing story AND I could more effectively spot my opponents Bluffs at the same time!
Another big realization was that successful Bluffing is not even about what cards I might be holding, but what my opponent is holding in combination with what THEY think that I am holding and so my improved Hand Reading has helped a LOT with that. I've known for a while that managing my own Table Image is important overall, but in a specific hand you can tell a story with your Bets that can make a convincing Bluff very hard to call. So, armed with this newly developed Poker skill I am now Bluffing more and landing them more often than not. Last night I won another tournament at a new venue that I am playing – which is now the 3rd week in a row that I’ve won that particular tournament. It’s now no longer a question of IF I am going to get to Vegas but WHEN. Wish me luck!