Bluffing When You Don't Feel Like It

Sports are full of bluffing opportunities. You see them in almost every game. A quarterback, bluffing a running play, will fake a handoff to the halfback and then fade back to pass. A pitcher will throw a change-up with the same motion as a fastball, thus bluffing a fast pitch while delivering a slow one. A hitter will "bluff a bunt" by assuming a bunt posture, then take a full swing. A basketball guard will start off to his right, and then use a crossover dribble to make the move he really intended to his left.

Poker is also full of bluffing opportunities. Unfortunately, very few people take full, or even reasonable, advantage of them. Let's look at a couple of reasons why many players fail to bluff enough.

People think it is sleazy: Everyone knows that bluffing is part of poker. However, lots of players let feelings about bluffing get in the way of bluffing correctly. They think bluffing means taking something that does not belong to them, like shoplifting or embezzling. Not only do they feel very queasy about even trying a bluff, they also feel mortified and embarrassed if they get caught.

They get that caught-with-the-hand-in-the-cookie-jar emotion, which makes them very uncomfortable. After all, their mothers taught them not to take things that belonged to someone else, and here they were caught trying to do exactly that! People hate this terrible sinking, guilty feeling. And the easiest way not to experience it is to avoid bluffing. If you never try to bluff, you will never get caught and have to feel awful.

Furthermore, even when these people actually win a pot by bluffing, they still feel guilty about it. Any thrill of victory and stacking of chips, or the joy of outwitting an opponent, buries itself in a rush of guilt about taking someone else's stuff.

Poker is a game played for money. If you never bluff, you give up a lot of equity. Opponents will eventually realize that you never bluff, and they will stop calling you on the river (or even sooner). If they do not call you on the river, you lose one bet, but if they also start conceding the pot on the flop or turn, you lose many more bets. You lose not only the pots you might have won by bluffing, but also the calls you might have won by letting people know you are willing to bluff.

Bluffing is not the same as armed robbery or taking stuff from Macy's. Like the sports examples I discussed at the beginning of this column, it is an intrinsic part of the strategy of the game we have chosen to play.

What would happen if a quarterback decided not to attempt any more misdirection because that would be "tricking" his opponents, and he felt that would not be "nice"? Well, three things would quickly happen: His opponents would be very happy, his team would do a lot worse, and he would no longer be the quarterback.

The issue is not whether bluffing is "wrong," but whether you are willing to play the game correctly to maximize your profit. If your emotions resemble those I just discussed, you may need to re-examine your feelings about bluffing.

(Note: Hey, I know that you can't control how you feel, but you can adjust how you behave regardless of how you feel. For example, let's say you hate your boss. You do not act like you hate him when he is around regardless of how you feel, do you? Bluffing is like that. So, even if you feel guilty, you still need to adjust your behavior and bluff once in a while. After you win a few pots, you might even find it changing the way you feel.)

They get called a lot: What makes a bluff successful? Most people would say that a bluff is successful if it works – that is, if they win the pot. If they get called and therefore lose, their bluff is unsuccessful. People consider an unsuccessful bluff a failure: Not only do they not win anything, they also lose more than you would have if they hadn't even tried to bluff!

Let's see if I can convince you that this logic is totally incorrect. Like many things in poker, correct bluffing is very counterintuitive.

Let's take this hand:

You hold the 7 3 in the big blind and get a free play against a single limper. The flop comes K J 4, so you have a flush draw. You check, your opponent bets, and you call. On the turn, you see the 6, so you now have added a gutshot-straight draw to your possibilities. You decide to be straightforward, though, so you check and call again. Now, the river delivers the 10. Well, you missed. (I know, you always miss. You haven't made a draw since the Cubs won the World Series.) So, you give up and check. Your opponent checks behind you. "I missed," you say. "I didn't," he says smugly as he shows down 8-8. On to the next hand.

But wait! You probably could have won that pot. Against most players, you should have bet the river. (Against some others, you might have played more aggressively on an earlier street, but please ignore that for now.) He would have had a very difficult time calling your river bet with only pocket eights. Not only might you have won if you had bet, but there was absolutely no chance at all that you were going to win the showdown if you checked. When you checked, you agreed to lose the pot.

"Oh sure, Barry," I hear you saying. "That's a good idea now that you know he had pocket eights. What if he had K-Q? You would have lost a bet you didn't have to lose. How would that have made you feel?"

Yes, that could have happened, and I would have felt sad for a moment that my play didn't work. But, I would have felt good about having tried it. I try to feel good about making the right play, rather than worrying about whether it worked a particular time.

You see, bluffing is a matter of frequent failures and only occasional successes. When it works, you win a whole pot, but you lose only one bet when it does not. Obviously, for those of you "numbers people" out there, you have to win enough on your successes to outweigh the more frequent losses, so the odds of your winning and your opponent folding matter a great deal.

However, what makes this tough is the frequent losses. Let's say a pot has 10 big bets in it on the river and you end up with absolutely nothing. You bet your hopeless hand and get called. A few hours later, in a very similar circumstance, you bet the river and lose again when you are called. The next day, the same thing occurs. You bet the river and lose again. Later that session, you see another similar chance. You bet the river and get called, and lose. This happens another time just before you leave. You lose an extra bet again.

The next day, the same "opportunity" arises again. But this time you are sick and tired of losing an extra bet all the time. So, you just check at the end when you miss your draw. Bzzzzzzzzt. Error, this time you would have won.

Obviously, you know the numbers say that you need to be successful only slightly more than 10 percent of the time for your bluff to earn money (in this example). But it's very hard psychologically to keep bluffing and losing while waiting for that one hand in 10 (or 20) when your bluff works. People naturally tend to give up after a number of failures, even though those failures would be logically expected. In sales training, salesmen learn that if it takes knocking on 100 doors to make a sale, when they knock on 50 and get 50 doors shut in their face, they must think, "Great, I'm halfway there." Poker players need to learn the same thing. If you think a play will be successful long term, you need to keep making it even though it will fail almost all the time and you will tire of trying. Like many aspects of poker, perseverance is a critical skill, and giving yourself a pep talk really helps. After all, no one else is going to offer you one.

So, even if you think bluffing is a little underhanded, and even if you get tired of trying, as long as you believe the play is right, go ahead and bluff. After all, that is what they do in football, basketball, baseball, and countless other sports. By the way, if you know how to do any kind of bluffing in golf, please e-mail me immediately.