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When trying to win a poker tournament, almost all pros will tell you, you need to win hands when you don’t have the cards. When you pull this off you are “making a move” in poker terms. Let’s take a look at some of the ways a player does this.

The types of moves range from simply stealing the blinds, to complex bluffs. We will be looking at examples where we probably, or definitely, don’t have the best hand. In these hands, we will try to convince our opponents to fold.

When you are the first to act, any raise with a weak hand is an attempt to steal the blinds. When the blinds get big, you will have no chance to win the tournament without stealing some of the blinds. This is the nature of tournament poker.

The check raise bluff is based on the strength of check raising. You’re in the big blind, with 78 of diamonds. You call a raise. The flop is AJ4 with no diamonds.

You check your hand and your opponent bets the pot. Now you pause for a moment, and re-raise. This bluff will usually get a fold right here. If he doesn’t fold, you will fold to any other betting.

You can also use the semi bluff. You have KQ of hearts. You have called a raise.

The flop shows J74 with two hearts. When your opponent raises you have to decide how to play this. I think here you can go all in, and put your opponent to the test.

If he folds, this is fine. If you get called you still can win. You have at least nine outs. This is a typical semi-bluff.

Here’s a different type of bluff. You are on an open ended straight draw and have called a raise on the flop and the turn. You are first to act and the only chance to win the pot is to get a fold. Your opponent has raised twice so this is tricky, he might be very strong.

Now you make a small raise. This is designed to confuse your opponent into thinking you have been slow playing a big hand. This looks like a value bet that is begging for a call. This play requires your opponent to understand that the bet represents a strong hand that you have been disguising.

These are just a very small sample of the bluffs you can try. You need to creatively win chips some of the time. You can’t expect to get enough big hand to avoid this need.

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