Bluffing at Poker
Bluffing at Poker is the factor which--- added to the factors, always present of chance and skill--- helps to make the game enjoyable.
Every good game has this barely definable something that makes it more than the mere exploitation of an approved technique.
In Chess, the factor of chance is absent, and the same is true of a number of other games for two players: Draughts, Go-bang, the Russian card-game called Challenge, the difficult and complex game of Go which has long been a cult in Japan.
But in all these games the best players bring something to bear which is more than a sound knowledge of their underlying technique: something that makes demands, not on their intellect, but on their imaginative capacity.
No rules can be formulated which govern combinational or positional play in Chess, and the same applies, to the other games mentioned above.
The same thing holds good in games which are primarily games of skill and chance.
An example is Contract Bridge, where the best players are not only conversant with the principles of bidding and card of play, but, once again, are constantly reviewing their opportunities imaginatively.
And there is an infinitude of other games which are to some extent comparable. Backgammon is one, other are card games.
But Bluffs are of may different kinds. Semi-bluffs, and outright bluffs, if not called, will win a pot on a worthless hand.
The problem with which one is confronted after the buy can be out succinctly as follows: is my opponent's hand better than mine? If so, shall I attempt to bluff him? This is the problem on the side a Poker player must deal with.
You have also to decide whether your opponent is trying to put a bluff over on you.
If your opponent has doubled before the buy, it is always safe to assume that he has got a hand which justifies his doubling.
Suppose, for instance, that you play on a pair of Queens and another player doubles and draws two cards. Under ordinary circumstances you must always assume that he has threes.
After the buy, if you have not improved , you must not see him unless you have some definite reason to believe that he is bluffing.
The first question you should ask yourself is: why should he attempt to bluff you? A player never bluffs before the buy, as this player may be doing, without some definite reason.
Some players will bluff before the buy when they are losing, but these are so few, and the conception is so unsound, that the possibility may be ignored.