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Changing gears is an expression that you will hear all the time in poker. Essentially, changing gears means that you are altering the way that you play poker in an effort to throw your opponents off and force them to change their impressions of you as a poker player. It is not a poker playing strategy that is recommended for beginners because when people start adding deception to their game too early, they tend to put too much deception into their game too fast. The truth of the matter is that changing gears only requires a small but noticeable deception every once in a while. You don’t need anything more than that to add effective deception to your poker game.
When to change gears in a poker game? Well, if you are playing a small session, you might be able to change gears once early on and then never do it again for the whole session depending on the other players at the table. Remember that while general principles are good for poker, this game has no room for mechanical thinking.
In order to change gears effectively, you need to pick your spots and get the maximum level of advertising out of the minimum amount of actual change. This means that if you are an ultra-tight player and have a chance to pull off a huge bluff at the start of the session, you take that chance and then proudly show your bluff to throw your opponents off. If the players never leave the table for the session, you might never have to do it again because showing the bluff that one time will have planted the seed of doubt in their minds.
Remember that when it comes to deception, one or two big advertising actions are far better than one small one each round. You should be enough of a poker player by now to understand how the minds of poker players work. No poker player remembers getting bluffed out of the pre-flop pot, but every player will remember getting bluffed by the hammer on the river. Proper aggressive poker means go big or go home and you should apply that strategy to your deception as well for best results.
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