Bluffs, tells, and telling all about bluffs

So I am in the doctor's office and he spots my Theory of Poker, which I'm rereading. Ah poker, he says, do you play? A bit, I say.

And of course he wants to talk about tells and bluffing, because people think that's what poker's all about. For me, because I mostly play online, tells are barely an issue, and bluffing is just one more aspect of poker, something I do almost without thinking about it. Which is probably a bad thing in itself, because you ought to be thinking about it! I guess that at some point I will need to work out properly a system of bluffs for limit at least. What do I mean by that? Well, as Sklansky notes, if you bluff the correct number of times, your opponent cannot make good choices against you, so long as you bluff at random. You have to adjust the "correct number" depending on your opponent, but you can work out your optimal bluffing percentage for a given pot and bet size. You don't have to do the maths, of course. Experience helps you develop a feel for it. But the randomness is important. You should not bluff every time you have a busted draw, for instance, but you should sometimes, unpredictably for your opponent. I've never really bothered figuring it out, because I play idiots who I don't have that many games against, but one day I hope to play better players who will be regulars in the games I play, so I need to know it. (If you're curious, you should be bluffing so that the odds you are bluffing match the odds that the pot offers the other player. Say you're at the river in a .50/1 limit game and you're first to act. You have a busted draw and you think that your opponent has you beat -- to make it obvious, let's say you have 64 and were drawing to an openended straight but missed. The pot is $5, so if you bet, your opponent will be getting 6 to 1. You should bluff one in seven times in this spot. You can randomise the bluff by deciding on the turn to bet if your straight card comes and if say any queen or ten of diamonds comes off -- which is approximately the right number of cards. In this way, whether you bluff is not something you decide, so your opponent cannot outguess you. You can even announce to him that you are doing it! There is nothing he can do about it. If you want to see the maths that prove it, read Theory of Poker.

I tend to bluff more situationally than that, which works okay in no limit. I probably don't bluff enough in limit though, so it's something to think about.

Live, tells are a bit more important than they are online, but if you're expecting people to put Oreos to their ear or fidget in a particular way, you're dreaming. If people do have tells like that, I don't play against them. You can never be all that sure in my experience, although two of the players I play against do have noticeable tells, which I think are fairly reliable. One puts his chips out differently when he has it; the other tries too hard not to fidget when he is bluffing. Me, I chatter, laugh, smile and fidget like a fool all the time, so that I give out too much information. I don't even try to keep a poker face because I'm hopeless at it. Someone mentioned that they thought I swallowed when I didn't have a big hand, so now I swallow when I do against him. The worst thing a person can do is tell you your tell. What a foolish thing to do. As the guy who told me that I always bet half the pot as a cbet (which I don't, as it happens, far from it), and got his arse busted when I flopped a full found out.

Ultimately though, poker is not a game of tells, because betting is a much more reliable guide. If you've been betting small at pots when you have nothing and big when you have something, I don't need to see you crack the Oreo. You're readable as a book. And if I know you are cluey enough to follow a betting pattern, but you've been betting your top pair timidly, you're getting bluffed reasonably often when a flush card hits the river and I look like I've been drawing.