Ah, bluffing. When you get it right, you feel like a master strategist; when you get it wrong, you feel like a doofus. Bluffing is lying, to put it plainly. To be more specific, bluffing is lying about the strength or weakness of your hand. There is a common school of poker strategy that teaches to play every good hand as if it were a bad one and every bad hand as if it were a good one. Now while that may be a bit too simplistic to be applied across the board, it speaks to a sound underlying principle — you can win with a good hand and you can win with a bad one; its all in how you play.

If youre playing No Limit poker especially youre going to need to know how to bluff (and as a bonus consequence, how to tell when others are bluffing). Bluffing is generally more effective in No Limit poker than in Limit poker because in Limit poker, you can only raise so much at once, and you can only raise so many times in each round of betting.

A player in a Limit poker game is much more inclined to call a bet or a raise with a mediocre hand than a player in a No Limit game, and the main reason why is the size of the bet or raise. In No Limit poker, you can call All In at any of your turns and set the whole table on tilt. Theres just no equivalent in Limit play.

Now to extend the conversation on bluffing to the online poker arena, there are far fewer methods of bluffing online than there are offline. The main way to bluff online is to place a humongous bet or raise (when your hand doesnt merit it, of course). You can try a bit of coffeehousing or blustering over the chat window, but if your opponents arent reading the chat window (or have that feature turned off) youre wasting your time.

One way to heighten the impact of a bluff is to do it quickly and confidently. Though they cant see your face while youre doing it, like they could if you really were sitting across the table from them, but they can gauge how long it took you to come up with this maneuver based on how look it took you to execute it.

Youll find 3 basic types of bluffs at the poker table, online or off:

The Stone Cold Bluff: Betting a huge amount right away with lousy cards; the choicest time to pull this is when youre the last player to act in that round of betting and not much action has happened yet;

The Semi-Bluff: Betting on a potentially winning hand that for now is worthless (such as four cards to a straight or a flush); its considered a bluff because its currently a garbage hand, but since it could turn into the nuts or the best hand possible at that time, its considered to be only a semi-bluff;

Representing the Flop: Bluffing in two parts – first, raise a small amount in the initial round of betting, making folks think you have the beginnings of an excellent hand, though it seems clear you need to pull something useful on the flop to make it happen; in this round, you raise just enough to get the majority of players at the table to fold. After the flop, then, go ahead and bet a ton (maybe even going so far as to go All-In) suggesting that you just pulled whatever cards you needed on the flop.

It takes nerves of steel to pull off a good bluff, but it takes even more than that to fold when you believe your opponent is bluffing. If your hand is weak, especially, then no matter how convinced you are that your opponent is trying to pull one over on you, you still want to walk away and save your chips for another hand. If you dont think you can win this round with the cards youve got, then by all means you can try bluffing. But if you sense youre being bluffed, make sure you can beat it before you go ahead and call it.

So you have read about playing online bingo, or maybe heard an online bingo site mentioned in your local bingo hall, and you are deciding to give it a try.

Before you rush out and sign up with the first online bingo site that you can find, read these tips for new players at bingo sites:

Will the bingo site’s software run on my computer?

Unless your machine is really old, or you are running out of system resources (like disk space or memory) there is really nothing to worry about. On the off chance that you do encounter a problem at a bingo site, just contact the bingo site’s Customer Support people. That is what they are there for to answer any of your queries regarding their sight.

Bingo site bonuses rules

Bingo site bonuses are a big deal these days – literally and figuratively – and you have no doubt encountered one that sounds really attractive. By all means, go for it but not before you have read the fine print.

Bingo site bonuses come in a variety and it is hard to keep track of what’s what. All online bingo sites will require that you play the bonus before you can withdraw it. Some bingo sites require you to play 2-times or 3-times the bonus, and on

Whatever you do, do not abuse the bingo site bonus offers. For example, do not re-register at a bingo site using another name in order to get the online bingo site bonus again. That is “bonus abuse” and the online bingo sites can get pretty hostile over such attempts at subterfuge. You can have your account frozen; your money withheld, you could be banned for life, or even reported to other online bingo sites as a Known Offender, etc. It is just not worth it.

Gambling scams were never as recognized and as widespread as when it finally came in contact with cyber space. Online gambling, although beneficiary for those gambling aficionados, allowing them to gamble and avail of the enjoyment at home, also has some of its downsides more specifically the existence of online gambling scams.

Online scams usually include the refusal of a certain game company to give you your winnings. Some gambling scams may even go as far as totally refusing to let you win with absurd probabilities, and then refusing to let you cash out the remaining money youve got left.

One way to avoid these scams is to know what they are. Here are two most prevailing online gambling scams that you should be aware of, and should be able to detect easily.

Illegitimate Bonuses

Some gambling companies even go as far as inviting their former scammed customers under the ruse of bonuses telling them how sympathetic they are about you being scammed, and offering a bonus if you play with them instead. Just think, where did they get your contact details? Well they got it from that short form you filled out when you joined the first scam casino, and theyre actually looking to rip you off again.

What do they do? When its actually time for you to claim your bonus, they say that you are ineligible to receive the bonus.

To avoid being re-scammed, never fall for these types of offers. Even if you havent been scammed yet, theyd still send you a bonus offer then refuse to give it to you once youve deposited your money. A good rule of thumb with online gambling, if its too good to be true, then it probably is.

Piracy

One way to know a legitimate online casino is its affiliations and memberships; one such is the Interactive Gaming Council (ICG). However, logos provided by such organizations can easily be copied on the net, and what scammers do, is they imitate, sometimes, go as far as duplicating the design of a legitimate casino to pass off theirs. It is a good measure to look up the name of the online casino on the members list of the certain organization. ICG and others usually provide an easy to browse and search members list on their web sites.

To make sure that the casino youre subscribing to is legit, type the company name and the word review in the search engine and read about them, youll more or less get an idea of how they work.