Re: [ba-poker] Players who show bluffs

[Brian Goetz <brian(deleted the rest)>]

My favorite are the ones who show the losing but poor hands -- going three 
or four bets on the turn with middle pair-with-kicker, and then showing 
their "great" hand in disgust ("wah, I'm so unlucky") when you show them 
aces/set/nut flush.  Just one such incident is enough to draw significant 
inferences about such a player's play.

> Then there are players who show bluffs after the other player folds.  Often
> they are trying to  advertise, hoping to be paid off later when they 
> really have the goods. But sometimes they are  frequent bluffers who are just
> proud of their ability to win money that way, and who won't stop bluffing 
> just because they've shown a bluff.  Sometimes they're just trying to put 
> the other player on tilt.  If the only information  available is that a 
> player showed his hand after a successful bluff, what inference  should be 
> drawn from it?

I think it requires a certain degree of additional inference in order to 
put the player into one of the two categories you state (advertising / 
ego-stroking.)  But such information is pretty valuable.  A player who gets 
such an ego rush from being able to bluff you will bluff way more than is 
correct, and also is likely to run multi-street bluffs (bet all streets on 
a bluff) rather than simply trying once to pick up the pot.  THis means 
that if you are going to call them with a bluff-stopper (say, A2 with no 
pair and no draw), you need to be prepared to call all the streets, or just 
fold to their first bet.



--
Brian Goetz
Quiotix Corporation
brian(deleted the rest)           Tel: 650-843-1300            Fax: 650-324-8032

http://www.quiotix.com