Usually, it pays to be a bully at the poker table. Especially in the big-bet games, where you can use the sheer size of your bets and your stack to steamroll over opponents, regardless of what cards you actually hold. When it's works, it's a beautiful feeling, a powerful rush.
Put another way, poker players can have many images at the table. Good poker players will cultivate a particular image and use it to their advantage. Great players can cultivate several different images and switch them around. But no table image is more glamorous, more intoxicating, than that of the super-aggressive poker bully. However, there's a potential dark side to this image - for the bully himself. Anyone who's familiar with Greek mythology knows the story of Narcissus. Handsome and proud, Narcissus spurns all of his suitors. One day, he gazes into a pond and falls in love with his own reflection. Mesmerized by the beautiful image before him, Narcissus cannot tear his eyes away from the creature he sees in the water. So powerful is the hold this image has on Narcissus, that eventually he is driven to madness and kills himself.
Believe it or not, something similar can happen in a poker game. A poker player can get too attached - one might even say fall in love - with his own table image. And no one falls into this trap more often than the poker bully. It's the sexiest image in poker, and a bully who's infatuated with his own bully-ness won't know when to back off, when to shift gears. Because sooner or later opponents will get tired of being pushed around; they'll dig in and take a stand. Smart bullies can recognize this and know when to being it down a notch. But a poker Narcissus can't see past his own image, and like Narcissus he is doomed to selfdestruct in the end.
Specifically, such players are prone to bluff off too many chips. Now, this isn't about well-thought-out bluffs directed at weak opponents. It's not about bluffs that have outs. This is about 100 percent pure, hopeless, stubborn bluffs. Bluffs that can't give up and just admit that they've been caught. I-can't-back-down-and-show-weakness bluffs. Bluffs that are made with no real thought behind them other than to be aggressive for aggression's own sake. And while one hopeless bluff may not seem like much to risk, the losses can add up fast.
Let's say you're in the middle stages of a no-limit tourney. You're an aggressive player with the biggest stack at the table. It's folded to you in the cutoff, and you raise with Q-9 offsuit. Both blinds call. The flop comes king-rag-rag with two clubs. It's checked to you and you make a continuation bet of half the pot. The big blind calls. The turn is a red blank and it's checked to you again. Do you continue the continuation with a big bluff on the turn?
Sometimes, firing out another bluff on the turn (or river) is a brilliant move that earns you a nice pot. Sometimes it's a stupid kamikaze move that evaporates a large chunk of your stack. Knowing the difference is what separates a smart bully from a love-drunk Narcissus. It takes experience, the ability to read your opponents, and the ability to put them on hands with some accuracy. You need to think things through. In the above example, if you're going to bluff again, do it because you're putting the big blind on a draw, or because you've seen him fold in a similar situation before. Don't do it because, having taken the lead in this hand, you can't imagine giving up. Don't do it because you're in love with your own aggressive image. Love is blind, deaf, and dumb, and it has no place at the poker table.
