Earning the right to bluff.

When you first start a poker tournament, you normally have a wide range of playing styles facing you, from wild overbetters to calling stations. Unless you are able to isolate conservative players, making bluffs into this blend of players is usually a bad idea.

The first task when starting any new tournament is to get an idea of the type of players you are facing, this will help guide your playing style, especially when you have aggressive players at your table. Some players will call a lot of big bets on second pair or unlikely draws, outright bluffing without first knowing the texture of the table is definitely a high risk manouver.

Over time, a couple of things happen. Calling stations with non-premium hands will be chipping out as people adapt to their playing style. Wild players, barring a run of luck, will have quickly gone out. The tournament players that remain are now more likely to believe bluffs.

If, over this time period, you have been playing a tight game, and only betting out on reasonable hits or draws, hopefully earning some chips, other players will have starting noting your playing style. When you make it to showdown, win or loose, your cards are going to be reviewed by the other players. Make sure your bets made sense, you bet out when your king hits, re-raised on two pairs, etc. You want other players to believe that when you bet, especially big, you have a big hand.

The combination of loosing players that call far too many hands with your own tight play will lead to bigger bluff opportunities later on. It typically takes a very strong bet to take a player off of top pair, early on in a tournament some players are prepared to go all in. But later on in a tournament, with a player you have seen over 75 hands with, you may have earned the right for a huge bluff that takes a big pot down.

All bluffs should make sense, if you are in a pot and an ace hits on the turn, you can make a big raise here representing the ace. Your bluff stands a much better chance of being believed than earlier on in the tournament.

Early on in a tournament, even the most well executed bluff can be called by bad players. Earning the right to bluff certain players can take time, but can also pay off well in the critical mid tournament stages.