Bluffing and Slow Play
Deception is a very important aspect of both live and online Texas Holdem Poker. By employing deception, a Texas Holdem player induces his opponents to act differently than they’d do if they could see his hand, or make them think that he has a particular hand, while what he has is totally different from what they think he’s got. Basically, deception is divided in two general branches: bluffing and slow play. Slow playing is a deceptive trick, when a player pretends to have a weak hand in order to attract more money into the pot, because if opponents see that a player is weak, they’ll pounce on any show of weakness. Bluffing is a form of deception that is roughly opposite to slow playing: betting strongly with a weak hand than rather betting weakly with a strong one. The opponents won’t call aggressive bets, unless they have very strong hands.