How to use bluffing and poker chip tricks
to trap, confuse, bemuse and
befuddle your poker opponents!
POKER TRAPPING One of the best uses of bluffing in any kind of poker is when you build up the impression in your opponents mind that it’s a tactic you use a lot. Carry out bluffing during small games where there’s not too much at stake and it’s not going to matter a lot to you if the bluff doesn’t work out. What you’re doing is setting a style your opponents may come to expect from you. The trick is to cynically make use of your opponent’s expectation when a premium hand comes your way and the pot is really going to count for something. Use your experience to feign weakness at the right moments as the game develops and set your “trap”. It’s likely you’ll finish the game heads up with someone who calls what he perceives to be another of your bluffs. Your trap snaps shut on him and the pot’s yours. The art is to make your traps profitable enough to more than pay for the bluffs along the way.
CHIPS WITH EVERYTHING
A poker playing hustler we know quite well practices online five to six hours a day and at weekends he selects a big time live poker game to visit. He’s happy to travel as far as necessary to find a virgin game where he’s not known. He’s pure Ed Norton. What makes him so impressive is he can do anything with a stack of chips. He can “knuckle roll” a chip across his fist which is fantastically distracting for opposing players who’ve never seen it before and exactly the reason he does it. All through the game he’ll be putting off the opposition by drawing on his armoury of poker chip tricks and skills. His favourite party trick is the “front to back chip shuffle” which is a great cover if he has a premium hand and he wants to really get the opposition’s attention away from his facial expressions and the plot that’s unfolding.
HOW TO DO POKER CHIP TRICKS
If you’ve always yearned to impress or distract in this way you’ll be pleased to hear it’s not quite as hard as you might think. A visit to 21ace.com will put you wise and run you through the basics. They offer video “walk- throughs” and break down all the poker chip tricks and stunts in a helpful and easy to follow visual format. The real trick is to “make it pay” while you’re playing live poker and make sure it’s the players you’re up against that get distracted…and not you!. Anyone out there who can teach us how to use “remote seeing”, a black art perfected by the Russian KGB and a special division of the CIA, should immediately go to dailystarpoker.com and fill us in, preferably in time for the 2006 World Series of Poker. Ta!
ALL THE ACES poker column:
Tuesday, October 18, 2005: Trapping Opponents by using Bluffing and Poker Chip Tricks
