Balancing Bluffs vs Balancing Strategy

[David Sklansky]

Now that the Mathematics of Poker is out there, it becomes necessary to distinguish between the concepts I write about and the concepts in that book. The blurb that is often used about me "greatest poker theoretician" or something like that, has always been slightly in error. Theory has been defined as the opposite of practice. But to be more precise it is necessary to change the word theory to general principles. An irrelevant fine point up to now.

Put another way, much of my stuff concerns advice of a general nature. What factors should you consider before you make your decision? It was less likely to recommend specific plays. However most of that advice did focus on exploiting other peoples mistakes. It did not go into detail about playing in such a way as to avoid being exploited yourself. I advocated mixing up your play a bit against tough players and mixing up your bluffs against most players, but there was no emphasis on "balancing" all your plays in one grand overall strategy. Bluffs maybe, but not anything else.

In other words if a certain hand figured to do better by playing it one way rather than another, I wanted you to realize that. And to play it that way unless decisons were close and/or your opponnents are tough.

In theory however the above approach could conceivably be wrong. It might be better to play a hand differently almost every time from the way it should be played if it was the last hand of your life. For the sake of future hands. The Mathematics of Poker assumes you are taking this approach. And just like using Game Theory to bluff and call bluffs, using Game Theory to balance an overall strategy, practically guarantees a long term win. My experience tells me that the vast majority of games will be beaten for a greater amount if this approach is shelved for my more exploitive approach but time will tell.

All comments welcome.