Some thoughts on bluffing

[toronexti]

Bluffing

Every player sits down at a table with a preconception - everyone expects to be bluffed a certain percentage of the time. An extreme example is Player 'xyz' who thinks that no one ever bluffs; he starts playing you and after 100 hands notices that you showed down 2 draws that missed and you bet strongly on flop/turn, the wheels start churning and he thinks that possibly you bluff sometimes - maybe 5% of the time*. So now, he calls only you down a tad more often. As you continue to play his take on your play will move back and forth as you attempt to adjust how often you’re actually bluffing. While this variable is impossible to measure, it definitely has a huge impact on the success rate of your bluffs.

Another element that effects how successful your bluffs are is how often you play the same opponents. Tournaments have you facing opponents for short periods of times and seldom do you see the same opponent over and over. Cash games differ in that you can hunt for a specific opponent or he can hunt for you, in general you're much more likely to play the same opponents in a cash game than a tournament**.

The two most discernable variables in the success of bluffs are ‘Bluffing Frequency’ and ‘Bluffing Perception’. Bluffing frequency is just how often you are bluffing; whereas bluff perception is how often you're opponents think you're bluffing. If you're playing good opponents the two will be fairly close together. If you're playing bad opponents they will either over or under-estimate you're bluffing frequency. Against players who have a high bluff perception you're bluffing frequency should decrease because they will fairly often assume that you are bluffing. Against players with a low bluff perception you're bluffing frequency should increase, because they assume you have a hand when you bet.

Your bluffing frequency and as a result your opponent's bluff perception should never be static. As your bluffing frequency increases you are bound to have to show down a bluff. As you show down more and more bluffs your opponent's bluff perception should increase***. The effect of this is that your opponent's bluff perception goes up and you in turn need to compensate.

In tournaments, you rarely want to be caught bluffing. This is because the amount of chips lost will usually not be made up for by an incorrect assessment of your bluffing frequency. Contrastingly, in cash games this see-saw of bluff frequency and bluff perception is vital to your profitability.

What happens if a player doesn't adjust their bluffing frequency? Well, in general this is bad if you play an opponent for any length of time - it's bad because in essence you make yourself predictable. In this scenario your opponent's bluffing perception will converge with your bluffing frequency over time.

* This is assuming some cognizant thought by your opponent.
** In live play (especially home games) this differs because the pool of players is much smaller than online. However, this same small pool of players exists at the higher stakes in online games.
*** Once again, this is assuming they pay attention, and have any common sense - I know a lot to ask for.