Poker Myth: Bluffing
poker exposure on the screen (both big and small) is a great way to raise awareness of it, but it can bring on a series of misconceptions at the casino. Coinciding with the need to keep viewer’s attention is the need to cut to the most exciting, tension-building moments. It makes for entertaining television, but real poker is not a heart-pounding death race, it’s a game of patience, timing and wise choices.
One of the biggest misconceptions that watching poker on television can propagate is that you need to bluff all the time if you want to win. Bluffs are exciting and fun to watch, but if you bluff all the time, people will pick up on it and start calling you out. Bluffing is useful, but only when the table odds are positive. In the low-limit stages of a poker tournament, for example, you should rarely bluff. Placing a bet without the best cards is always a risky proposition, and when the blinds are low, the pots are generally quite a bit smaller. It’s a good idea to save your bluffs for later on in the game, when the limits and the pots are bigger and worth the risk of trying to steal them.
