More about Bluffing: Part V

In the last column, I described the following situation. Years ago I used to play stud in a game with an older gentleman who loved this kind of act. Whenever the river card gave him a big hand, he’d sigh, frown and check. When he did this, I always hesitated and then checked it back, I asked you to figure out why I’d hesitate before checking on the river. (If you missed my last column or didn’t think about it then, take a little time now to figure it out.)

The answer is that if you act quickly and correctly in these situations, your opponent will figure out that his act isn’t working on you, and he will stop trying it. Since it gives you a good clue to his hand strength, you don’t want him to stop. If you think about betting and then check, especially with a weak hand, he’ll feel like he had you fooled. You might accompany your check with a misleading statement as well. For example, if you seldom bluff, you’ll want players to think you bluff a lot. Say something like, “I wanted to bluff, but I bluff so much that people always call me.”

This brings me to a very annoying trend in poker, over-officiating. When I’m in Vegas, I play at Bellagio more often than anywhere else. The other day, a dealer warned a player about talking during a heads-up pot. It seems that they had instituted a no-talking rule. This is pure idiocy! Talking is part of poker. It always has been. Every poker movie or TV show features players who talk. Talking is part of the fun of poker.

The rule is, or at least should be, that a player is entitled to say or do anything that may cause his opponents to make a mistake or give away information about his hand. You want to get them to make mistakes, and you want to learn enough to avoid making mistakes yourself. This is especially true in a heads-up situation. You are allowed to hesitate with no problem. You are allowed to ask questions, and draw any inferences you want from the answer or lack of an answer. It should also be obvious that any conclusions you draw based on your opponents’ behavior or statements are at your own risk. Your opponents are exactly that — they are opponents, and they’re trying to get you to do the wrong thing.

Mike Caro and Joe Navarro both have written excellent books on reading your opponents. At the most basic level, assume they are trying to mislead you. If they act weak, they are strong, etcetera. The rules of bridge are completely different. In bridge you are not allowed to say or do anything to deliberately mislead you opponents. In bridge there are penalties for hesitating when you have no problem in order to fool your opponents. (In poker you have to hesitate sometimes with no problem to balance the times when you hesitate with a problem.) In fact, bridge books will often say that “bridge is not poker,” and that behaviors designed to mislead your opponents are illegal.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why talking about a hand should be allowed. First of all, players like to do it. It is entertaining. Players come to a poker room to be entertained, win or lose, and creating an atmosphere of morbid silence drives them away. (Imagine trying to ban shouting in a sports book or at a crap table.) Next it is an unenforceable rule. How and when do you penalize it? Kill a talker’s hand, and you’ve lost a customer. Bar him, and he’ll happily go to a place that allows talking. Even if you could invent some appropriate penalty, then you would have to rely on dealers to enforce it uniformly. Dealers work on tips, and a dealer who voluntarily calls a penalty on a player will not flourish. Also dealers might tend to favor regulars and big tippers over tourists and small tippers.

When I asked why anyone would think that such a rule was needed, I was told that talking slowed the game. I guarantee that a penalty for talking and the resulting uproar would really slow the game. Complete silence might just kill the game. Luckily rationality prevails. The players continue to talk. Occasionally, a dealer will issue a half-hearted warning, and then things continue as usual. ♠

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.