"Bluffing" With the Best Hand

Bluffing is great! I love to bluff, and there’s no better feeling in life than to take someone off of a huge hand when you’re bluffing. A lot of people get confused when they are bluffing though. Here’s one definition:

Bluff
To make other players believe that one has a better hand than he/she might otherwise have by betting or raising when they do not have the best hand.

So bluffing can only take place when a player does not have the best hand. However I have seen countless times where someone bets out and, once I’ve folded, shows me some crap hand that is actually better than mine!

It must be embarrassing when you “bluff” with the best hand and then show. When I see it online, I picture a big guy in a cowboy hat chewing on a toothpick across the table from who he thinks is some girl. He winks as he flips over his cards and shovels the (usually) small pot towards himself.

The most recent example of this came when I attempted a steal attempt from the cut-off seat with pocket threes. The small blind called and the flop came AK6 with two diamonds. As I didn’t even have a diamond, this was absolutely worst case scenario for me. I didn’t plan on investing a single chip further. The small blind bet out, and as I folded he showed me 9T of diamonds. He led out with nothing, and must have thought it was a great result. What a bluff! Only, he had a 56% chance to win the hand, and therefore had the best hand. Whoops.