Bluffing
A woman came up to me the other day at The Palms and complained to me that in her regular home game whenever she bluffed she always got called. She asked me if I had any advice for her and my reply was, “Then don’t bluff!” I felt like I was telling the punch line of the old joke where the guy goes into the doctor’s office and says, “Doc, it hurts when I lift up my arm like this.” And the doctor replies, “Then don’t do that.” But I was dead serious. The woman then gave me a quizzical look and said, “But then I am not playing poker.”
Here is where I got serious. Just because you are not bluffing does not mean youa re not playing poker. There is a commonly held belief that the bluff, the sexiest part of poker, the part where you win a pot despite having the worst hand, is what poker is all about. That without it you are not playing the game. But this is patently untrue. Poker is about tailoring you game to suit the context of the game you are playing in. It is about figuring out the optimal strategy to take the other players’ money at the table. If that optimal strategy does not include bluffing and yet you insist on continuing to bluff because you think that is what poker is about, then you are playing poorly. You are giving away equity where none should be given. And that is not playing good poker. It is quite the opposite in fact.
Bluffing is all about advertisement. The equity in bluffing comes from two places: The first is the equity in the bluff itself at that moment and the second is in the future equity the bluff gives you. The equity in the bluff itself has to do with the probability that the bluff will win the pot right there. In general, bluffs are negative equity plays if you only take into account the immediate equity in the bluff itself. Bluffs are meant to be about break even to slightly losing plays because you expect to get caught a certain percentage of the time. In fact you want to get caught because of the second type of equity, future equity.
The value in bluffing mainly comes from people catching you so that you will get paid off when you actually have a good hand later. If you never bluff and you are playing with attentive opponents then when you enter a pot they will know you have a very strong hand and never give you any action. This means you will not make money with your good hands against attentive opponents if you never bluff. We bluff to keep our opponents guessing so we can get paid off when we have the goods.
So what about our heroines home game? If there is future equity in bluffing then why did I tell her to stop in her circumstances? It is because you have to tailor your game to what will be effective for the way the game plays. This woman plays in a game where opponents are clearly calling every hand to the river. I knew this because she said that she always gets called on the end when she attempts a bluff. Assuming she is telling the truth then that means opponents are loose calling stations and bluffing opponents like that is just throwing good money away. If your opponents are already giving you action then why would you ever need to advertise to get the action you are already getting.
Consider yourself like Coca Cola. When Coke buys advertising the buy itself is obviously negative equity in that they have to right a check right there. But they know there is future equity in the buy since it will presumably get you to buy their product instead of , say, Pepsi and the buy will generate more future purchases than the money spent on the advertising. This makes advertising for them an up equity play. But what if Coke was the only soft drink in the world and everyone was crazy for soft drinks. When you walked down the aisles of the supermarket, the only soft drink available to purchase was Coke. Then would Coke spend any money on advertising? Of course not. They would be writing that check for no reason since the public would be buying their product already. In world where there was only Coke, Coke would never advertise.
A loose game full of calling stations is just like a world where there is only Coke and no Pepsi. Your opponents are already buying your product. When you raise they call. When you make a good hand, they call. They call when you haven’t played a hand in an hour. They call when you have played the last 5 in a row. They don’t care. They don’t even notice. They just play their cards, and not well at that. If your opponents aren’t watching you, if they are paying no attention, then advertising to them is ridiculous since they won’t notice the ad in the first place. Bluffing these types of opponents has no future equity since it doesn’t increase at all the likelihood they will call you, they are already doing that.
To makes matters worse, if you are playing with calling stations then the equity in the bluff itself is almost non-existent. Bluffs don’t work against opponents who call all the time so there is basically no equity in the bluff itself since it has a very low probability of being successful and therefore will not even be close to a break even play which is what you want from a bluff. So then the only reason to bluff would be in future equity and, well, we already established that there is none.
In a tight game, the situation is exactly reversed. The equity in the bluff itself skyrockets since the bluff has a high probability of success against super tight opponents. Not only that but those opponents are going to be paying attention to you and be reluctant to ever pay you off. Against opponents like that you are living in a world where the Coca Cola you are selling is competing against Pepsi, RC, 7 up, Sprite, etc. You need to advertise to get some business. You need to advertise that you are willing to play weak hands in order to get opponents like that to pay off your real hands. Now bluffing makes all the sense in the world.
These of course are two extremes and most games have a mix of tight players and loose player. But the rules of bluffing still apply. Just pay attention to the type of opponent you are in the hand with. Tight opponents should be bluffed, loose opponents it is a wasted play on. Always keep in mind the type of person you are in the hand with and figure out where on the bluffing scale they fall: Are they someone who is unlikely to be bluffed because they love to call and, thus, create a situation in which there is little equity in the bluff itself and no future equity in generating more calls in the future? Or are they someone who is likely to be bluffed because they are very conservative and, thus, the equity in the bluff itself is high and there is a high need to advertise to that opponent for the future hands?
Poker is not a game of only the obviously sexy stuff. Yes, winning with the worst hand is exhilarating. It gets the adrenaline going. It makes you feel smart and powerful and brilliant. But that does not mean the game is not poker without it. If you are in a game where bluffing is a wasted play, more than that a hugely losing play then insisting on bluffing just because you think you are not playing poker without it, well, that is exactly not playing poker. Poker is about adjusting to the game you are in and sometimes that mean letting people come to you, letting them impale themselves on your chips as you run the nuts into them before they know what hit them.
Now that is sexy.
Très instructif