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Floating the Flop (with the intent to steal)

• 09.06.2025 7:40 am
• headhunter
• 0 Comments

In today's game of poker a player has to know multiple skills to be successful. If you just sit there and wait for the nuts every time, you aren't going to be make money in the long run. Eventually people will stop paying you off. Bluffing is an important component to pick up.

There are a few ways to perform a pure bluff, when you have absolutely nothing and still win the pot. One of the most popular ways is floating the flop. Floating is when you intentionally call a bet on the flop from the pre-flop aggressor with the intent of picking up the pot later with a bet or a raise.

A call here starts to make your opponent think. He may put you on a draw and if that draw card hits, the bluff becomes that much easier. If the flop isn't scary, this may scare him even more because he will start to wonder what you had that was worth a call. This is exactly where you want your opponent to be.

The preflop raiser will be leery of your bet on the flop and might be scared to bet again. His continuation bet didn't have the effect he had hoped. This happens often with inexperienced and scared players. Once they check the turn to you, this is a great place to throw up a bet to scare your opponent out of the hand completely because they don't have a second bullet to fire.

Exploit their weakness and turn their chips into your own. If he fires a second bet on the turn, you might want to reconsider your position and fold your hand. Your opponent could have a strong hand and you could be drawing dead.

Position is very important when floating the flop. It's much harder to do in early position because you are giving away too much information if you have to act first every time. If you try this from early position, you are more risking more chips into the pot. This requires you to call a pre-flop raise, check and call a flop bet and betting the turn or check- raising on a bluff. This is a much riskier move and should be entered cautiously. Not many players can pull this off from early position.

As you can see, pulling off this bluff has its benefits and probably one of the easier bluffs to execute.