I have no easy answer about poker players who bluff some, but not all of the time. Opponents who bluff some of the time are better poker players than those found at either end of the bluffing spectrum. Better players, of course, can keep you guessing about whether or not they are bluffing. And when you’re forced to guess, you will be wrong some of the time just the way it is.
Of course, you might be able to pick up a tell (a revealing gesture) and know when your opponent is bluffing, but that’s not too likely in most cases. The sad truth is that players who keep you guessing are going to give you much more trouble than predictable opponents.
In most low-limit games, players bluff much too often. After all, when you play fixed-limit poker, all it costs is one additional bet to see someone’s hand. And the pots are usually big enough, relative to the size of a bet, to make calling the right decision.
Here’s an example: Suppose the pot contains $90, and your opponent makes a $10 bet. That pot now contains $100, and the cost of your call is only $10. Even if you figure your opponent to be bluffing only one time in ten, you should call. By calling, the laws of probability suggest that you’d lose a $10 bet nine times, for a loss of $90. Although you’d win only once, that pot would be worth $100. After ten such occurrences, you’d show a net profit of $10. As a result, you could say that regardless of the outcome of any particular hand, each call was worth one dollar to you.
The threat of a bluff is just as important as a bluff itself. A good player – one who bluffs neither too often nor too infrequently, and seems to do so under the right conditions – has something else going for them too. It’s the threat of a bluff. Does he or she have the goods or are they bluffing? How can you tell? If you can’t, how do you know what to do when they bet?
These answers don’t come easily, and even top notch players are not going to have a terrific batting average in most cases. As a result, the threat of a bluff combined with the bluff itself, is designed to help a player win some pots that they would otherwise lose and to win more money in pots where they actually has the best hand.
The Relationship Between Blinds and Betting structure
One of the key differences between tournament poker and cash games is the relationship between the blinds and the betting structure. This difference is so significant, that many of the strategies that are employed in tournaments are directly derived from this difference.
Take a look at cash games first. If you were going to play $20440 Hold’em, you’d probably buy in to the game with approximately $800 in chips. That’s common. Some players will enter the game with $500 and others with $1,000, but $800 seems to be typical. That $800 is the equivalent of 20 big bets and provides the opportunity to play quite a few hands before having to reach into your pockets for an additional buy-in.
In cash games, the blinds and betting structure remain fixed, and you can buy more chips anytime you’re not involved in a hand.
The escalating blinds
In tournament poker, you can’t buy more chips at any old time. Unless it’s during a tournament’s rebuy period, once your chips are gone, so are you.
If the blinds and antes did not escalate at fixed intervals, tournaments would take days to complete. After all, most players would wait for outstanding hands before entering a pot. And what fun would that be? It would make poker the equivalent of watching paint dry, and nobody wants that. Because blinds and antes escalate, one is forced to play.
When a player’s, chips have been depleted, and they will be facing the blind in a hand or two, it may be the best course of action for them to go all in with as little as ace-anything (an ace plus whatever else is in the hand). After all, if he or she doesn’t, they will have to risk going all-in with the random cards they receive in the blind. In the early stages of a poker tournament, the structure is similar to a cash game. Suppose 200 players buy into a tournament and each receives $500 in chips.
The betting limits during the first round might be $15-$30. Under these conditions, if a player flops a four flush (four cards of the same suit), you can afford to take the chance and draw for it. In the later stages of a tourney, however, taking such a chance often isn’t worth the risk. Suppose you are one of the last eight remaining p1ayers: Since 200 players bought in initially, there was $100,000 in tournament chips in play. If you divide that equally among the remaining eight players, the par value is $12,500. In other words, if a player has precisely $12,500 at this stage of the tournament, he is average by definition.
