There are a number of ways to play poker. You can play based on the cards that you have. You can play based on the cards that you think your opponent has. You can play based on the cards that you think your opponent thinks that you have.

All poker plays fit into one of these three categories.

The first is a Value bet. You bet when you have good cards, you don’t bet when you don’t.

The others are forms of bluffs – indicating that you’ve hit a hand that you haven’t being the most obvious. Consider a Continuation bet. You have shown strength pre-Flop, so after the Flop you bet again, because your opponent thinks you’ve got a good hand. A Check-Raise, where you check, then reraise your opponent when he bets, works by misleading your opponent about the strength of your hand.

Think about this for a moment. If your opponent thinks that you have a strong hand, he can’t bluff – since he thinks you’ll call. So if you can convince your opponent that you have a strong hand, then he is limited to making Value bets.

But also, this can tell you a lot about your opponent’s bet. If he thinks you’ve got a good hand, and he bets at you anyway, it’s unlikely to be a bluff. So don’t call it with a mediocre hand. Misleading your opponent about the strength of your hand is critical to playing good poker, but remember when you are interpreting his play that he’s not acting based on your cards, but what he thinks your cards are. Remember this, and you’ll get bluffed off fewer pots, and you’ll lose less chips to monster hands.

Also, keep an eye out for ‘frightened’ players. If a player loses a few hands either to bad beats, or to poor luck, where he had a strong hand, but someone else had a stronger hand, he may start to expect a strong hand from his opponent. If you find this to be the case, then represent strength. You’ll get less value from Value bets, and more value from bluffs.

Another thought is showing cards. Many top players don’t like the practise, as it gives away information for no benefit. But you can present a false image very effectively by showing a few hands. If you are playing conservatively, then if you do bluff successfully, show your cards at the end. People will remember, and if you play legitimate hands similarly, they are more likely to call (particularly the player you bluffed). It may even be worth deliberately losing a few cheap hands early on, by bluffing when you know you’ll be caught!

Similarly, if you are playing a lot of hands, you can reduce the chances of people calling your bluffs by showing your strong hands from time to time.

This raises another important point about your table-image. Even if you are playing conservatively, people may think you are a loose, aggressive player if you get a lot of good hands in a rush. They don’t know that you’ve got them, unless you show them. Understanding how other people think you are playing is a valuable piece of knowledge, as it can give you insight into how they will respond to your activity. If people think you have been bluffing when you haven’t, then don’t bluff – they are liable to call you!

These strategies don’t work against weak players, who don’t even try to assign playing styles to their opponents, or take those styles into account when deciding on their course of action. There are plenty of players, particularly on low-value tables, who will play the cards in front of them, and not even notice what other players are doing.

There are also players who play multiple tables at the same time. This is not a good idea, if they are playing against other players who know what they are doing, as they can’t read how other players are playing, or keep track of how their play appears to other people.

If you run into players who are playing multiple tables, you are far more likely to get away with bluffs, as they won’t remember that you’ve bluffed them before, and they certainly won’t have seen you bluffing other people, or noticed how many hands you are playing.