"Good bluff"

More from today's Palms $1-2 no-limit hold'em session.

I realize that hand histories, in isolation, are pretty boring. I'm going to walk you though this one, because there is actually a point to be made at the end.

A guy in middle position open-raised for $20. I was the only caller in the small blind, with 9-9. The flop was 3-8-J rainbow.

I already know that if my opponent started with unpaired hole cards, he will only hit a pair or better on the flop about once in every three times (32.4%, to be exact), so even knowing nothing more than that, chances are that I'm ahead here. The fact that two of the flop cards are little ones makes that even more likely. I had already pegged this guy as a pretty good player, though a little more aggressive than he can really handle (i.e., I had seen him get in over his head and not get away from a pot when should have known he was beat). That made me pretty confident that he would bet if I checked. I wasn't really planning a check-raise, because I needed more information before committing a lot of money to this pot. I wanted to see what I could learn from how and how much he bet.

Sure enough, he fired out $50. Now this was a bit odd--I hadn't seen him overbet the pot before. The size of that bet plus everything about how he made it (fast, emphatically, looking right at me in sort of an intimidating way) shouted, "I want you out of this hand right now." He absolutely did not want a call there. So, naturally, I called, based on the truism that you should always do the opposite of what an opponent wants you to do. He gave me a very quizzical look, and said kind of condescendingly, "Are you serious?"

The turn card is a 4, which almost surely didn't help him. Although I think I'm ahead at this point, I don't have enough confidence in that conclusion yet to build a big pot. I suspect that my call on the flop has alarmed him. To test that hypothesis, I check again, and sure enough, he checks behind me. There is no way this guy would check here if he had an overpair to the board, had a jack in his hand for top pair, or had hit a set. This pretty much seals my conclusion that my measly nines are the best at this point. Just about the only hand that he could plausibly be holding that would have me beat is pocket tens. Now as long as no big card comes that might pair him (I think he has something like A-K or A-Q), I should be in good shape.

Another 3 hits on the river. Again, this is extremely unlikely to have helped him. So I bet $75 into an approximately $140 pot. He asks me a couple of questions, which I ignore. He thinks a while, then folds.

As he tosses his cards in, he says, "Good bluff."

It is that remark that leads me into this grumpy rant. It's not the first time I've heard this, but I hate it every time, so I need to say something about it.

The most obvious response is that if you really think that your opponent is bluffing, then you should be calling or raising, not folding. There is an incredible discordance between your actions and what you claim you're thinking when you say "Good bluff" while folding. Actions speak louder than words, so what's apparent is that you do not really believe that it was a bluff. Which means that you're lying--and it's not even a good lie, but one that is revealed as such to everybody watching even as you speak it. It's stupid.

There are, I think, two main reasons that people say this in such a situation. First, it soothes the ego by covering all the bases. If it really was a bluff, the person can tell himself that he "knew it" (though obviously he really didn't), and if it wasn't a bluff, he can reassure himself that he made a good laydown.

The second motivation is to try to goad the other player into showing his cards, to prove that it was not a bluff. In this instance, I had actually planned to show him my hand, because I was still fairly new to the table and wanted to establish that I was playing in a pretty solid manner. But because I suspect that one of this guy's reasons for saying "Good bluff" was to annoy me into proving him wrong, I decided instead to frustrate him by not showing, and leave him wondering. That's my little retaliation for the smarmy comment.

Personally, I think a much better way to get a look at an opponent's hand in a situation like this is to fold face-up, especially if you add a "nice hand" kind of comment with it. That's a pretty clear friendly invitation. I will usually, though not always, respond kindly to an opponent taking that tack, and show. In battle, when an opponent surrenders, you don't keep shooting. The face-up fold is far classier than the sniping little "Nice bluff," as a means of trying to see what your opponent beat you with. Tit for tat. Nice begets nice. Nastiness begets nastiness.

I guess the reason that it irritated me more than usual today is that, given the situation, it was so obviously not a bluff. I think any knowledgeable, experienced player who had watched the hand play out, not having seen the hole cards, would be highly confident that I had the best hand at the end, even before the other guy's fold. His betting pattern was one of weakness, while mine was one of cautious strength. If my opponent had been unsure of where he stood and asked me, as he folded, "Were you bluffing me?" I would have shown him my cards and said, "No, I think I had the best of it." No taunts or insults, just friendly honesty about the situation.

Instead, he choose to be bitchy and egotistical about it. So, in return, he got no information and scored no points for good sportsmanship. It's a loser thing to say in every situation.