More About Bluffs and Bluffing: Part I

In recent Card Player issues, Bart Hanson’s column Crushing Live Poker with Twitter mentioned that his opponents bluff too much, while Ed Miller’s column mentioned that his opponents don’t bluff enough. Since I generally agree with most of what these authors write, I was surprised to see such a complete divergence of opinion. In this series of columns, I’ll attempt to shed a little light on why I think this happened and give you some simple mathematical suggestions to help determine if your opponents (and you) bluff too often or not often enough.

My first thought was that one of them must be wrong. Opponents might bluff too much or might not bluff enough, but they are aren’t doing both. But then I realized that Bart and Ed are two different players playing in two different areas. It is possible that they each have different table personas, so their opponents may react differently to each of them. There is probably something about Bart or what he says and does, that provokes his opponent to bluff a lot. Ed’s opponents may view him as someone who won’t lay down a good hand and who reads them well, so it is generally futile to attempt a bluff against him.

It is also possible that the fact that they are in different locations means they play against a different pool of players. Bart’s Los Angeles small-to-medium no-limit hold’em (NL) opponents will often be players who have just gotten off work or are out for an evening’s entertainment. They didn’t brave LA traffic to come to the Commerce and fold every hand. They want a lot of action. Ed’s opponents in Las Vegas small-medium NL games include a lot of locals, many retired, who tend to play a weak-tight style. These nits aren’t about to risk a lot of money bluffing. Yes, LA has some nits and Vegas has some crazed tourists, but it is actually possible that their two contradictory assertions might be true.

Before we get too deeply into a discussion of whether you or your opponents bluff too much or too little, we should discuss what that means. Game theory enables us to calculate the “optimum” bluffing frequency. When a player bluffs at that optimal frequency, there is no strategy his opponent can follow that takes advantage of these bluffs. The opponent can call every time or fold every time or flip a coin, but nothing helps. If you bluff too much, you opponents gain by calling every time. If you bluff too little they gain by folding every time. In the real world, as opposed to the world of game theory, you want to bluff opponents who fold too much and avoid bluffing those who call too much. Some of my recent columns in the Chances Are series discussed optimal bluffing frequencies. In this series, I will review some of those ideas, but for now I have a mission for you. The objective of this mission is to find out if you have an appropriate bluffing frequency on the river in real world situations.

Your mission: For the next few weeks, when you decide to bluff, always bluff the same percentage of the pot. (I’d recommend all your river bluffs be 75 percent of the pot.) Try to track how many bluffs work, how many fail, and your net winnings or losing on those hands. In my next column, I discuss what your results mean. ♠

Steve ‘Zee’ Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful gamesplayer. He has been a full-time gambler for over 35 years. With 2 WSOP bracelets and few million in tournament cashes, he is easing into retirement. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at some major tournaments and playing in cash games in Vegas. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A in New York City -The Library near Houston and Doc Holliday’s on 9th St. are his favorites.