Bluff

Why not just play your hand against what you believe other players have, and let the cards determine the winner? That seems to be a rather straightforward question and the poker professionals will be quick to answer. Without bluffing there is no poker. If you are going to play serious poker at any level, you will have to deal with the bluff because everyone is doing it!

Bluff in Poker: It's All in the Books

In many instruction books on poker, the information on bluffs and bluffing takes up about as much space as other crucial subjects such as pot odds, card odds and reading the cards on the board. Pros Jennifer Harman, Lyle Berman and Doyle Brunson devote three pages or more to bluffing in their chapters on various versions of poker.

Books on poker and gambling theory have dozens of pages that blend the idea of bluffing into a specific poker situation. Some books have sections of 15 pages or more just on the concept of bluffing. There are also entire books on bluffing, such as The Book of Bluffs by Card Player Magazine columnist Mark Lessinger. A quick search for “bluff” online turns up hundreds of thousands of sources.

Bluff: What is That?

We’ve made our point. Bluffing is poker. Poker is bluffing. But how? Why?

Poker is not all tricks and acting. But it is also not all mathematics. Knowing the odds of hitting a winning hand and being able to compare those odds to what the pot is offering are very important. Math knowledge and figuring odds will only get you so far. In fact, pros like Dan Harrington, Mike Matusow and others know that poker is a people game. The card and the chips are just ways of keeping track.

Two great examples of bluffing:

Mark Lessinger – From his Twelve Bluffing Proverbs:

If you were able to win uncontested with Ace-Ace, you could have won in the same manner with 7-2. It was all about convincing the other players that you had two Aces.

Mike Caro – famous quote:

At a party, everyone has a plain brown paper bag. Each player is supposed to go out to the pasture and bring in a big cow patty. When everyone is at the table again, players bet that they have the biggest one. If you can convince the others that you have the largest, by making a bet that everyone is afraid to call, you can win! That’s when you show them the empty bag!