Poker News

James McKenna, Ph.D.

Bluffing is as much a part of poker as betting, raising bets, and folding. Bluffs are designed to get players to fold and/or to build a pot. Bluffs can be planned or unplanned. They can be passive or aggressive. Players will tend to bluff in the manner that they live their lives. However, when bluffing, a player may be pretending tobe someone else. An aggressive player will likely be passive in their bluffs. Usually, a passive player will get aggressive when he or she is bluffing. However, this is not always the case as we’ll see later.

When you group bluffers by how passive/aggressive and how planned/Impulsive they play, four types of bluffers will emerge. Here’s a sample of the styles of bluffing that come from grouping bluffers by their preference to plan, be impulsive, limp in, or be aggressive.

Dare Bluffing. Players who plan their bluffs and are aggressive seem to be daring you to call them. They may even say, “Call that if you don’t like money.” This type of bluffer is full of a lot of “should’s.” In a game of Texas Hold ‘em, such players will “should” all over other players. They are highly opinionated and their bluffs are forceful and well planned. They will take others to task for bluffs that are not sophisticated in their opinion. Often the dare bluffer has a good hand and is semibluffing with a nut draw.

Attack Bluffing. Bluffing can be a sudden impulse designed to act strong when holding a weak hand. Often you will see such bluffing occur aggressively, with flare, and the bettor hasn’t even looked to see what he or she is betting into. For the professional player this unfortunately happens often enough to throw away good hands that would end up costing too much if the loose player is on a lucky streak. At the same time, veteran players like this type of player that’s on a bad streak. Attack bluffers will give the action and stay in longer than they should. This can be profitable for the other players who get their excitement more from reaching out and saying, “Send the Money!”

Sneak Bluffing. These players prefer to play from “behind the bushes,” will prefer to hide their hands and let others do their betting for them. So, if you have already determined that a player is a quiet person who plays systematically, then you can expect bluffing to be systematic, conservative and yet unobtrusive. Although their bluffs are slow, they usually are semi-bluffing when they do bluff. In other words, they may have four to a flush or open ended straight when they are bluffing. When they make their hand, they jump out from behind the bushes and say, “Gotcha!” Sneak bluffers like to raise bets on the button with pocket Aces. The button is their bush and they hope you think they are just raising the bet from their good position.

Dream Bluffing. These are passive and unplanned bluffers who will do little to influence play and pretty much let the cards play themselves.Their bluffs can also present a paradox to the belief that “weak is strong and strong is weak.” The reason, though, is more because they are bluffing as if they are strong because they actually believe that they are going to win the hand. They are dreaming of the hand they are going to get. This bluffer will bet like he or she already has the hand. It can’t even be called semi-bluffing, because they are bluffing on their dreams. They also don’t want to scare anyone away. They will bet more on the come and play as if they already have the hand.

There are as many ways to bluff as there are personality types at the poker table. In my soon to be published book, Beyond Tells, I discuss this complex world of bluffs and integrate bluffs with personality types.

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