Jeff's Life In Retrospect

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; it’s all in how you play.

If you’re playing No Limit poker especially you’re 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. There’s 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 doesn’t merit it, of course). You can try a bit of “coffeehousing” or blustering over the chat window, but if your opponents aren’t reading the chat window (or have that feature turned off) you’re wasting your time.

One way to heighten the impact of a bluff is to do it quickly and confidently. Though they can’t see your face while you’re 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.

You’ll 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 you’re 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); it’s considered a bluff because it’s currently a garbage hand, but since it could turn into “the nuts” or the best hand possible at that time, it’s 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 don’t think you can win this round with the cards you’ve got, then by all means you can try bluffing. But if you sense you’re being bluffed, make sure you can beat it before you go ahead and call it.

I have never thought it a good to use plastic to shop online or make money transfers. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer to pay by cash. And believe me, I take it very seriously when the Federal Trade Commission tells me that identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the US. I shred my mail, delete mail pertaining to my bank accounts and never write down confidential information like PIN codes. I’m ready to take the war to the enemy.

This stance took a pleasant beating when I was surfing the internet the other day. While I am curious about online casinos, by habit, I have never played at any of them. This is not because I believe gambling to be evil; just my paranoia about online fund transfers. A general Google search the other day threw up a few site listings. Out of curiosity I went on to check out what these sites were about. By the time I was through with the payments sections of a couple of them, I realized the big bad world on the Internet was not so bad, after all.

Technological advancements have ensured online transactions today are secure and iron-clad. Hackers belong in history, now, right up there with the bogey-man and all your old wives tales. Imagine my surprise when I found that in addition to having over a 100 games to choose from at the various sites, I had an equally astounding number of choices when it came to making online transactions.

Online transactions at these sites are as safe as the gold in Fort Knox, thanks to the latest in encryption technology. Most sites accept orders from browsers that communicate using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), ensuring your private information remains just that – strictly private. The Security and Privacy policy link on the sites gives you comprehensive information on how your security is safeguarded.

To make deposits at the casinos, you can use you credit/debit cards, bank draft/personal checks, wire transfer or a number of alternative payment methods. These methods include, Neteller, Central Coin Banking, Eco Card, FirePay(Surefire), MoneyBookers, Ewallet Xpress/900Pay, Click2Pay.

While the casinos have a limit on the least amount you can deposit, the number of payment options is mind-boggling – MasterCard, Visa, Delta, and Visa Electron cards. Credit card payments take 2-5 minutes to process. The service time is fast as well in the case of electronic transactions – two to five minutes for a credit card transaction. In the case of wire transfers, the time period is slightly longer – around two days. Checks take the longest, at 10-20 days.

Not only do you have secure transaction means, the casinos are committed to a policy of detecting and preventing fraud in all aspects of its business. Customer satisfaction is the magic watchword these days, and at most online casinos, that certainly seems to be the case.

Compulsive gamblers tend to be bright, energetic, competitive, adventuresome individuals. In short, they may have the characteristics of an otherwise ideal employee. There are no obvious physical signs. Unlike some drug or alcohol abusers, there are no needle marks, breath odor, slurred speech or staggering gait. Like alcoholics and drug addicts, compulsive gamblers typically deny any problem until they hit rock bottom and are desperate for help.

One of the clearest indicators of a serious gambling problem is borrowing money to gamble or to pay off gambling debts. This is the heart of the security issue, which is the gambler’s need for money. Another significant indicator is any effort to conceal one’s gambling from spouse, children, friends, or co-workers, e.g., hiding betting slips or lottery tickets. This indicates some shame or embarrassment about one’s behavior.

Other indicators of a potential or actual gambling problem include: gambling as a way of escaping from problems or relieving feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or depression; needing to gamble with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired excitement; and repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop gambling

A study that compared the gambling practices of compulsive gamblers with social gamblers found that the single most striking difference was the amount of leisure time devoted to gambling. Compulsive gamblers were more than five times as likely as social gamblers to devote at least one quarter of their leisure time to gambling or preparation for gambling.

Children of problem gamblers are at greater risk than others for developing a gambling problem themselves. One study found that 50% of the children of pathological gamblers were also pathological gamblers. In one group of 50 female members of Gamblers Anonymous, 40% reported growing up in a household where one or both parents were addicted to either alcohol or gambling.

Gambling is an addiction and if you think you are a compulsive gambler you should seek out professional help.