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.

Invasion of the Poker Bots: Is No Online Poker Room Safe?

Theyre worse than poker sharks. Theyve taken over online poker rooms everywhere. In fact, theyre most likely sitting next to you at the table right now. They probably have most of your chips. Emotion doesnt get in their way. Neither does greed, exhaustion, or fear. Their tells are nil and, try as you might, you cannot put them on tilt. Theyre poker bots, and rumor has it, theyre fleecing you bare.

Poker bots are computer programs set up to play on behalf of (and instead of) an actual human being, according to a consistent and, presumably, proven strategy. Hearing of the possible presence of these borderline cheaters in your online poker rooms could be enough to make online poker players question whether to sit down at the online poker tables at all.

So lets start there. In a word: yes. Of course you should keep playing poker. As well explain, these poker bots are far from foolproof and even farther from unbeatable. Secondly, online poker rooms are in the process of making it harder and harder for a poker bot to even get through their virtual doors (think: cyber-bouncer).

You see, heres the thing: there are countless poker bots. Countless programmers with pound signs in their eyes have tried and are trying their hand at pitting technology against humanity. There are so many different types of poker bots to choose from, new ones cropping up on online poker rooms all the time, that it leads to but one crystal clear conclusion:

They cant all be unbeatable. This is both a caution against relying on them and a consolation to those players who fear being unwittingly pitted against them.

What about a table with more than one seat occupied by a poker bot? If you think it hasnt happened, doesnt in fact happen all the time, then youre kidding yourself. In an instance like that, some poker bots have got to lose. In fact, in each hand, only one can win.

In truth, each bot is only as good as its programmers. And to be clear, thats programmers with an s: theres the guy or gal who built the program and you, the user, who must determine the parameters (or settings) by which the poker bot will play. Thats two human variables affecting quite directly the actions of the poker bot. So, let us ask you something: Why not just play the darned game yourself?

Another thing to realize is that poker is not suited to mechanical play. Its a human game. Sure, a poker bot cant be put on tilt, but neither can a poker bot read a tell nor spot a bluff. Its questionable at best how beneficial a poker bot can be to ones game. Youre probably just as well off improving your game the old fashioned way: practice practice practice.

But this threat may not be a threat for long. You might think, why should the poker rooms care, since poker bots make just as much money for online poker rooms as real people? The answer: the real people are getting restless. And at the risk of having their flesh and blood customers retaliate against poker bots by boycotting online poker itself, the online poker rooms are starting to take notice of the problem.

Already, may online poker rooms are instituting software that identifies when a player seems to be using too much of a pattern in their play. Itll be a tricky road, since distinguishing poker bot play from human play is a tricky and therefore risky business. Nobody wants to make false accusations or, worse, take erroneous action, like blocking an innocent users account. But theyre working on it.

As a new form of competition arises — namely: who can build the better bot? — well find more and more online poker rooms hosting bot-only tournaments (dont laugh, some already have). Hopefully, an increase in this practice will encourage poker bot enthusiasts to create a niche for themselves (surely a profitable niche for the online poker rooms) and leave the rest of us ordinary folk to play against other flesh and blood human beings.