The goal of star poker players is to play their hand while fooling their opponents into what hand they actually have. Plays like check raising and bluffing are ways that players try to fool their opponents. Basically, players try to be tricky and lie with their cards. If every opponent of a player knew what cards he had, he would never be able to win. There are two main ways, although they do not know it, that players try to fool their opponents: using Deception and using Manipulation. The problem is most players do not even know the difference between a deceptive play and a manipulative play.

Manipulative Playing

Most manipulative plays are rather obvious plays to thinking players. An example of a manipulative play is to min raise an opponents bet on an A-9-4 board when holding AA. You would be expected to do something like this with AA, so the opponent would never think he was up against AA. What the player with AA is doing is making the cost to call for his opponent very cheap, because he wants his opponent to call. The player with AA is manipulating him into a call, hoping he catches something like 2-pair on the turn, or a reraise.

Deceptive Playing

A deceptive FullTilltPoker play is a play where you make a certain move with a hand, such as a 3-bet pre-flop, with a wide variety of hands. For example, 3 betting with AA as well as 3 betting with J-10 suited are prime examples of deceptive plays. 3 Betting with a hand like J-10 suited is deceptive because that same player would make the same 3-bet with many other hands that are better, and some that maybe even a bit worse (like 55). The deception about this play is that since the player will 3-bet with such a wide variety of hands, it is impossible to put him on an exact hand when he 3-bets. Therefore, the 3-bet is deceptive. The benefit is that the opponent cannot put the player on a hand, but the downside is that sometimes the player will not get the action he wants with his big hands.

Players want to use manipulative plays against non-thinking players that fall for the obvious plays, and make deceptive plays against good, thinking players that will not fall for the manipulative plays. When a player has to decide whether he should be deceptive or manipulative, he must take into consideration things such as the level of stakes he is playing, the poker site he is playing on or if he is playing live.