Getting the tool box ready for tournament season is as important as getting a spring tune-up for your wheels. If you don’t do it, chances are you’ll run rough over the summer, lose compression, wobble, clatter, clank, hiss, spew, crake, and in the end breakdown on the side of a country road somewhere with vultures circling overhead and a tall toothless man in a threadbare plaid work-shirt loping toward you from a cornfield, brandishing a scythe. You don’t want to wind up like that, so perhaps sharpening your existing tools or acquiring new ones is the ticket to a smooth and comfortable summer ride. One of a poker player’s most useful tools, or hammers if you will, is the semi-bluff.

Aggression, as we all know, is key to winning at Texas Hold’em. There’s no way around it. And particularly in tournament poker, where chips represent your lifeblood and losing them means losing life, an individual can’t afford to get nickle-and-dimed to death by passively calling or limping into pots with less-than-premium holdings. No, you can get away with the junk in a cash game, where a mistake is easily resolved by simply buying in again. In a tournament, you have to play good cards, manipulate position and not get caught up chasing chimerical draws or calling raises with hopeful hands. Tournaments should not be training grounds for acrobatics or studios for ultra-creative artistes. One blunder and it’s over, baby.

The beauty of the semi-bluff, which is a tried-and-true weapon in many a great player’s arsenal, is that it gives you control of a hand when you have nothing more than a draw. You play it aggressively to give yourself two chances of winning: either taking down the pot right there or hitting your hand then putting the boots to your opponent. Say you’ve come in for a standard raise from the cut-off with Q-J suited in spades and the flop comes 10-9 of spades with 4 of clubs. You have an open-ended straight flush draw. Now you could play this softly and hope to hit your monster. But what if you hit a flush but not a straight flush, and what if your opponent has an ace of spades? And what if the river is another spade? Not likely, but poker can be very funny that way, as we all know. The unlikeliest thing, given that there’s even a small chance of it happening, often does. By raising and playing that draw aggressively you can make an opponent praying for a fourth spade pay an exorbitant price for his draw. Or you can make them fold.

And what if you don’t hit a flush or a straight? Your opponent must have a better hand than your miserable queen high, correct? Sure, you have plenty of outs, but how many times have you had plenty of outs and found yourself calling down to the river only to draw a blank and watch all your chips go across the table? No, this is the lamb’s way of playing, calling and praying and baaing when it all goes wrong. Bet that draw like you already have the nuts, with confidence and brio. Be a wolf. Let the scumsuckers around you feel your power. Then again, it’s important to keep in mind position, relative chip stacks, your standing in the tournament, the blinds, the bubble, the antes, all that stuff. Be wary if you come out bombing and someone goes over the top in an absurd manner. While it’s good to play your semi-bluff aggressively, you don’t want to get knocked out of the tournament on a draw, even if it is a big one, at least not until you’ve made the money.

Emile Frendo of the Honeymoon City is a semi-professional poker player and winner of the 2006 Pirate Poker Open Championship.