Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
The purpose of the bluff is threefold:
The purpose of the bluff is threefold: 1. To confuse your opponents' playing styles. 2. To attempt to induce your opponents to throw in their hands because of your seemingly high-ranking hand. 3. To induce your opponents, aware of your bluffing tactics, to call many more of your better hands than they normally would have done. The following true story demonstrates the strategic value that the bluff plays in Poker. Doyle "Texas Dolly" Branson, winner of the 1976 and 1977 Las Vegas World Series of Poker, is in my opinion today's number one big-money bluffer in Poker, as was proven by the final two hands of the 1976 and 1977 Hold Em World Series of Poker Championship. The final hand in the 1976 tournament involved Brunson and a nonprofessional Poker player named Jess Alto. To reach the two-player finals, Brunson told me, he made five bluff plays, stole four pots, and was caught trying to steal the fifth. According to Brunson, in a high-limit table-stakes game, when you know your opponent has a good hand, that's the most successful time for a bluff because your opponent doesn't think you're bluffing at that time.
Getting back to the final hand
Getting back to the final hand of the 1976 World Series Hold Em Championship between Brunson and Alto—Brunson's table-stakes chips totaled $147,000, Alto's $73,000. Brunson's initially dealt two hole cards were the deuce of spades and the ten of spades, a pair of trash cards that Brunson would have folded at any other time but now —for the simple reason that at this stage of the tournament Brunson and Alto each had to make either a $1,000 opening blind bet or a blind raise bet of $2,000. As Brunson remarked to me, "If you sit around and wait for a good hand putting in that kind of money in every pot, you'll go broke faster than one can say John Scarne."