Consistency

There is one thing every poker player can smell. A load of bull.

If you've played poker for some time, you begin to unconsciously apply what you learn on the table with what happens off the table. Today's lesson: how to draw out the bluff.

In poker it boils down to a very simple rule, if the story doesn't make sense, it's most likely a bluff. Novice players struggle with this the most. They start playing and they think to themselves, "I'm going to outplay my opponent this hand", drawn from the logic that made the movie "Rounders" so famous. It's as if you could suddenly change your two cards and make your opponent believe it.

In life, people try doing this all the time as well. It usually works out for them, until they try it on people who deal with it for a living. It doesn't have to be a poker player, it can be a psychiatrist, psychologist, or any similar profession.

When you ask people the same question and they give you a set of different answers, throwing anything that will justify their actions, that's when you know you have a bluffer. I'm not pointing fingers. Often times, the bluffer doesn't know what they are doing. They instinctively come up with some twist to make their story complete. They take you down a road of facts, then suddenly spin one aspect of it, and voila they are logically sound (in their own mind) but leave everybody else scratching their head.

I wouldn't say it's compulsive lying, but something more along the lines of compulsive reasoning or compulsive logic. It often times happens with people who struggle with differentiating theory from practicality. Everybody lives by some standard derived from a theory. They have a set of rules that they abide to that helps them decide their next course of action given a set of actions.

However, there is a problem. Theory is just that, theory. Theory cannot account for all possible actions in all possible scenarios. This is why there can never be a poker bot built to win somebody an infinite amount of money. There is a certain theory all professionals follow when playing poker - value bets, bluffs, ranges, etc. However, in any given scenario, certain theories may weigh in more than others.

This is where practicality comes in. What you do or say cannot be dictated by a set of principles in all scenarios. I would argue that theory would account for less than 50% of scenarios. People who live and die by theory are the same ones who often find themselves struggling to justify their actions. Struggling to get others to understand them. Struggling to understand themselves.

It's because of their obsession with theory. It's a haughty approach to life. Because theory can be so abstract, it's often impossible to prove or disprove. Therefore, if you live by theory, you could never be "wrong". Then you find yourself often arguing past other people, so convinced that your theory could apply to any given scenario.

Wisdom is the application of knowledge. Practicality is the application of theory.

So next time you tell a story or a cause of justification, make sure it's consistent and not some ideal that is developed enough to apply to a situation but vague enough where it cannot be argued. And if it comes to it, just admit your mistakes; fold your hand. Bluffing is a bad idea just because you have a fear or pride issue with the possibility of being wrong.