Inducing the Bluff
Most of the time in poker you hear about how being aggressive wins the money, and in the long run this is true, but in my last few weeks playing no limit online with a wide variety of donks, I’ve thought a lot about the skill of ‘inducing the bluff,’ or getting the player with no hand to bet hard at you.
Most of the time you hear this as ’slow playing,’ when you make a huge hand and you let others catch up or try to knock you off thinking you’re weak, but what about when you don’t necessarily have the nuts, but know that an average holding (like say top pair) is likely good against a super aggressive player, and that if you act weak they will bet at you.
I’ve been in several spots this week where I’ve flopped a decent top pair (say, J or Q) with a weak kicker in the big blind and taken it heads up against an extremely loose aggressive player, who when I check on the turn or river, will fire pot sized bets to try to make me lay down. Feigning weakness with a hand like that against a normal player will often not help you, and even frequently cause you to lose the pot, but when someone is going wild (as at least once a week I tend to run into someone like that at the .50/$1 no limit tables), inducing the bluff with top pair can sometimes get you paid when betting out will just induce a fold.
This tends to work pretty well against players who are ‘acting of control’ a little bit, though you have to be ok with getting donkey punched.
Outside of bluffing, there’s nothing quite as sweet though as winning a pot when you didn’t even have to wait for a big hand.
Tags: inducing the bluff, slow playingRelated Stories
POSTED IN: online poker
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