Game theory and bluffing question
 

Hi,

When balancing your plays (betting, checking, calling, check-raising) between having nothing/having something, is an optimal balance generally where you're bluffing 50% of the time? It seems to make intuitive sense if you either were bluffing or had the nuts and were all-in by the river as that would simply be unexploitable, but its practicality is obviously limited. What's the practical method of balancing plays with hands that are just straight bluffs, hands that are valuable but can't really go all-in and hands that have enough equity to get it all-in?

That may be an overly ambitious question, but any advice you can give would be great. If you could just solve one simple example showing the method, I can just run with that.

Thanks.

Re: Game theory and bluffing question
 

This has been covered several times in the last few weeks on this forum, browse around for it.

The answer is not (in general 50%)

In general, you want the ratio between your bluffs and your legitimate bets to be about the same as the ratio between 1 bet and the pot size. This is so that your opponent can not profit - you are indifferent as to whether he folds or calls.

This is covered in "The Theory of Poker" by Sklanksy, and, I gather, The Mathematics of Poker.

Re: Game theory and bluffing question
 

[ QUOTE ]
This has been covered several times in the last few weeks on this forum, browse around for it.

The answer is not (in general 50%)

In general, you want the ratio between your bluffs and your legitimate bets to be about the same as the ratio between 1 bet and the pot size. This is so that your opponent can not profit - you are indifferent as to whether he folds or calls.

This is covered in "The Theory of Poker" by Sklanksy, and, I gather, The Mathematics of Poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

Makes sense. That concept was covered in replies to another post of mine in similar context too, haha...I forgot. Arg, data overload these days.

Thanks for the reply.

Re: Game theory and bluffing question
 

[ QUOTE ]

In general, you want the ratio between your bluffs and your legitimate bets to be about the same as the ratio between 1 bet and the pot size. This is so that your opponent can not profit - you are indifferent as to whether he folds or calls.

[/ QUOTE ]

Situations that are earlier in the game - that is with more potential betting, or cards to come - will probably have significantly different ratios since those will reduce the effective value of a good call down. (You'll see that most discussion of game-theory bluffing deals with the river or an analogue where there are no more betting rounds or cards to come.)