Poker News

A word from Mike Caro, ‘the Mad Genius of Poker’

Is there ego in poker? Obviously. But that ego doesn’t always relate to winning or losing. Often it relates, instead, to bluffing. Some players take bluffing personally. They feel wounded when they’re the victim of a bluff, and they feel euphoric when they succeed by bluffing.

Fine. I’ve never quite figured out why this is so, because I tend to giggle and enjoy it when opponents bluff me successfully. More power to them. If they bluff too often, they’re straying from perfect poker. And they stray - whether it’s bluffing too often or not calling enough - the more likely they are to lose to an opponent who doesn’t. Law of jungle. Force of nature. Power of probability.

Call More Often

So, yes, it’s OK with me if opponents bluff too often. I’ll just call more often in response. But sometimes I won’t have anything to call with and they’ll succeed by bluffing with an even weaker hand than mine. Oh, well. In the hidden recesses of the world, life will endure despite this calamity.

No, it’s not a big deal to me if get bluffed out of a pot. And it’s not a big deal to me if I get caught bluffing, either. In fact, since I try to convey a loose image, in order to get more calls in the future, there’s compensation in getting caught bluffing. Therefore, I don’t take bluffing personally, and neither should you.

Here’s a lecture I delivered years ago. I’ve edited slightly for this column. It was called: The mistake of monitoring bluffs. And it sounded like this…

Lecture: The Mistake of Monitoring Bluffs

Rick kept a poker notebook. So, one day many years ago when we were drinking coffee and having a philosophical argument about bluffing, he pulled it from his pocket to prove his case. You see, I had contended that the right way to beat those waytoo- loose poker games in Gardena, California in the 1970s was to hardly bluff at all.

Sure, you could bluff once in a while, but you had to be certain that the situation ran contrary to the loose flow of the game - that both the particular opponent and the way the cards were playing out made a bluff reasonable. Most of the time this was not the case, I argued, because players in Gardena would call anybody who was breathing. Bluffs were mostly futile exercises in ego enhancement.

Not so, Rick argued. And he cited statistics from his notebook. He had logged games in the $2/$4 up to the $10/$20 range. Mostly he played fivecard draw poker, as I did back then. At the end of each day, he would scour his notes and make a neat statistical table of how he was faring at poker. This covered a lot of factors - how he had donewith aces, how he had done drawing to flushes, the average size of his pots… practically everything.

Ahead on Bluffs

So, he told me that for his last 500 attempted bluffs he was ahead something like, $953. That’s almost $2 every time he bluffed, he boasted. That was a meaningful amount back then, considering the average size of game Rick played.

“I say you’re losing money bluffing,” I countered.

“What?” he blustered. “Do you think I’m making these statistics up?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think you’re making them up, but I think you’re misinterpreting what they mean.”

A Secret

And I was right. Let me share a secret with you. It doesn’t do you much good to monitor the results of your bluffs, because you really don’t know - a lot of the time - whether you had the best hand or not.

Think about it. Let’s say you’re playing seven-card stud and you have missed everything. You have an ace-high. Your opponent probably has something, but only has a king-high showing on the river. He checks to you. You hope he has some small pair that he might throw away if you bet. So you do bet. And, wonder of wonders, he folds.

Now what? Well, if you’re Rick, you enter that as a bluffing success in your notebook. But wait one darn minute here. What if your opponent only had a king-high and had missed a straight or a flush? Now you’re giving yourself credit for a win that you would have secured anyway, without any risk, by simply showing down your hand.

And here’s the powerful truth. A great number of bluffs that seem to be successful are the result of your having the best hand, anyway! That’s important and I’ll repeat it. A lot of the time that you think your bluff succeeded, you had the best hand.

Betting a Weak Hand

Now, there’s another thing we need to consider. It might be correct to bet a weak hand, even if you’re not sure you’re bluffing. That’s because you should often bet in order to avoid a showdown when you think you’re opponent is also weak, but you’re not certain which one of you has the better hand. If you figure you’ll only win half the time in a showdown, but win much more often when you bet, it’s usually flat out worth the risk. But don’t confuse this tactic with getting away with a bluff. This is just a strategic move, not an attempt to bluff, because you don’t really know whether or not you’re bluffing.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind. You can only give yourself credit for scoring a bluff if you know your opponent has a better hand. And when you do bluff against a player who has a better hand, try to target hands you know are better, but not very strong. Those are the ones loose opponents might throw away. You should hardly ever try to bluff a loose opponent who is likely to hold a medium-strong hand, because loose opponents habitually call with medium strength. That what makes them loose players.

Losing, not Winning

So, Rick was wrong. If he magically had the knowledge to filter out from his notebook all those bluff attempts when he actually was betting the better hand, then he probably would have discovered that he was losing money on his bluffs, not winning money. And that makes sense, because, on average, you just can’t expect to make money bluffing players who call too much.

So, save your bluffs for tighter opponents, for rare situations that cry out for bluffs, and for times when you know your opponent has you beat for sure, but is likely to hold a very weak hand. Otherwise, the trick in loose games is to seldom bluff, period.

Mike Caro is widely regarded as the world ‘ s foremost authority on poker strategy, psychology, and statistics. A renowned player and founder of Mike Caro University of Poker, Gaming, and Life Strategy, he is known as ?the Mad Genius of Poker,? because of his lively delivery of concepts and latest research. You can visit him at www.poker1.com.

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