Still, the advantages of this method are clear. What better way to make your opponents think that you have pocket A’s than for you yourself to believe it? I can tell you from firsthand experience that I am much better buying pots when I believe I have a better hand than I actually do. I confess that I’m not really a very good poker player, and when I first started playing I sometimes misread my own hand. In my first poker group, we usually rotated the deal and let the dealer call the game. I would do stupid things like forget that deuces were no longer wild in the current game of five-card draw, though they were wild in the previous seven-card stud game. Usually, this resulted in huge losses and more than a little embarrassment. (Imagine triumphantly laying down your flush at showdown and then reaching for the pot only to be told that your flush is actually nothing.) But occasionally misreading the cards worked in my favor. Sometimes I thought I had the nuts, I bet confidently, and stole large pots with my flushes-that-weren’t-really-flushes. Imagine your bluffing abilities if you believe that your low pair was a flush, not out of stupidity, but rather because you decided to believe it was a flush for the purposes of bluffing. If you believed your own bluff, you probably wouldn’t have any tells at all.
For this reason, it would be very good, for the purposes of bluffing, if you were able to make yourself believe your own bluffs. And fooling yourself really would be a good bluffing method, if only it were possible to actually do it. Unfortunately, however, it seems impossible for a mere mortal to make herself believe something that is obviously false. Remember that part of the problem with bluffing-as-bullshitting is that to switch back and forth between bullshit mode and truth-seeking mode requires superhuman abilities. In this respect, bluffing-as-fooling-yourself is even worse. It is just too difficult—impossible even—to make yourself believe that you have pocket A’s when you see 4-7 staring back at you.
It might be that people can make themselves believe some things, just by trying hard enough. But fooling yourself can only work when there is no available evidence or when the available evidence is very inconclusive. Perhaps a mother can make herself believe that her son is not using recreational drugs simply because she wants to. She may have never spoken to her son about drug use, and perhaps she has no evidence at all that he has so much as taken a puff from a cigarette. She might even be able to hold on to her belief when she encounters just a little bit of evidence to the contrary. Suppose she detects the distinct smell of marijuana in his room. She might be able to convince herself that she was mistaken about the smell or that it must be one of her son’s friends who smokes pot. But now suppose she walks into her son’s room to find him smoking away. Suppose she asks him what he’s doing and he answers, “I’m smoking pot, Mom. I’ve been getting high for years. Here, you wanna drag?” It’s now going to be extremely difficult for her to hold on to her belief that her son does not use recreational drugs, no matter how much she wants to believe it. The evidence to the contrary is just too strong.
The same point can be made with easy, do-it-yourself experiments. Go ahead and try to make yourself believe—really believe—that 2 + 2 = 5. Or make yourself believe, right now, that you’re really a hippopotamus. Of course you cannot. And making yourself believe that you’re holding cards that you obviously aren’t holding is a lot like making yourself believe that you’re a hippopotamus or that 2 + 2 = 5. You just can’t do it. It’s not like making yourself believe in the absence of evidence. At the poker table, the evidence is right there in front of you. So although fooling yourself might be a great strategy for bluffing, it’s not a strategy that is fully available to us.
So What Is Bluffing Anyway?
Now that we’ve seen what bluffing is not, we’re in a better position to understand what it is. Perhaps it will come as no surprise to experienced poker players, but good bluffing is an art. Although it’s not identical to lying, bullshitting, acceptance, or fooling yourself, it can involve aspects of all four. It’s the perfect combination of elements from lying but also from acceptance. It’s a bit like bullshitting, but perhaps a bit like fooling yourself as well. Its complexity is not surprising. After all, any idiot can bullshit. It’s not too hard to lie. But good bluffing is difficult. You must get it just right to be successful.
To sum up:
Bluffing IS NOT . . .
. . . Lying
because your ability to deceive in poker is less than your ability to deceive when you lie.
. . . Bullshitting
because bullshitters ignore the facts to a large extent, and poker players cannot afford to ignore the facts.
. . . Acceptance
because bluffing necessarily involves deception and acceptance does not.
. . . Fooling Yourself
because you can’t fool yourself completely about the cards you hold.
Bluffing IS . . .
. . . Lying
insofar as bluffing does involve quite a lot of deception about
(a) the cards you hold and
(b) what you believe.
. . . Bullshitting
insofar as it might be a good idea to try to pry your attention away from the hand you hold when bluffing.
. . . Acceptance
insofar as good bluffing at least sometimes requires you to act as if you believe you have a better hand than you actually do.
. . . Fooling Yourself
insofar as it might be a good idea to try to fool yourself when bluffing (even though you won’t be entirely successful).
Bluffing, then, is no simple matter. It is certainly more complex than merely lying. Like lying, it involves deception, but it is not identical to lying. Good bluffing also involves elements of bullshit, acceptance, and even, perhaps, fooling yourself. Here I have presented only a few suggestions about what bluffing is and what it isn’t. I have a lot more ideas that we can discuss in my Ferrari.
________
1 For a more in-depth discussion on the connection between lying and expectations, see Chapter 12 in this volume.
12
Poker Lies: Keep Your Friends Close and Your Ethicists Closer
ANNE BARNHILL and SUSAN SOLOMON
At the 2002 World Series of Poker final table, the game dropped to three players. After a short break, the most amazing pocket cards were dealt to Robert Varkonyi, Julian Gardner, and Ralph Perry, all looking to grab the two-million-dollar top prize or $1.1 million second place award. Gardner, England’s top young poker player, was first to act. He bet his pair of 10’s. Perry, a cool Las Vegas professional originally from Russia, saw his chance and raised—with a pair of J’s. Then the action passed to Varkonyi, an M.I.T. graduate and poker amateur. Holding his head and kneading his hands, Varkonyi contemplated the situation about five minutes, a very long time in poker. He ran fingers through his hair, straightened his Wall Street glasses, and tried to think things through. What should he do?
At this stage in the game, a player just folding and sitting back might make another $550,000 moving from third to second place by simply letting one of the remaining players knock the other out. So anyone taking that chance to stay in with a call, let alone raise, clearly had to have a strong hand. Again, what should he do?
“All-in,” Varkonyi finally said after what seemed an eternity. Gardner was flabbergasted and laid down his hand. Perry called the raise and both players paused to flip over their cards. Varkonyi proceeded to put on a show by creating a little suspense for the live audience, revealing pocket A’s one at a time. Afterwards, Varkonyi commented, “When you’ve got A’s in a spot like that, the crowd’s going to love it.”1 Perry was blown away and out of the World Series. He was bluffed into the pot by Varkonyi who pretended that he wasn’t sure how good his hand was.
But wait: Varkonyi deceived the table, cameras, and audience into thinking that he had a big decision to make. Varkonyi said later, “My biggest decision was actually how long to wait and act like I had a difficult decision to make. I kept asking myself ‘Has it been long enough yet?
’” Classic poker strategy is to appear weak when you’re strong and strong when you’re weak. Varkonyi did just that, deceiving everyone. Deception is usually morally wrong and so is lying. Yet as poker fans we think Varkonyi has nothing to feel guilty about, and in fact, we admire him for what he did. When then should we consider lying and deception morally acceptable?
Consider another scenario. Two players collude to squeeze a player in the middle out of a hand. They raise and re-raise each other until the middle player drops out. Or, worse yet, two players signal their cards to each other in a predetermined way to give a sense of what cards the unknowing third player may or may not possibly have. In this case, these players cheated, and furthermore we would all probably agree they did something morally wrong. So, clearly it is not always morally acceptable to deceive during poker. Collusion crosses the line of what’s acceptable, and is morally wrong.
Lying, too, can cross the line. Consider another hypothetical scenario: Matt and Eliza are players in a casino Texas Hold’em tournament. Matt is short-stacked, and Eliza is an aggressive player who consistently raises Matt pre-flop. Matt wishes Eliza would leave the table. At the end of a break, Matt hurries back in and tells Eliza that he has just seen her car being towed. She leaves. We don’t respect Matt for lying to Eliza. We think, instead, that he’s a liar, and that he shouldn’t have done it. So again, not all lies during poker are morally acceptable.
Where’s the line between morally acceptable and morally unacceptable lies and deception in poker? Pretending that someone’s car is being towed is morally wrong trickery. But is it wrong to pretend to be a poker novice who doesn’t know how to play? That’s trickery, but that seems like morally acceptable trickery. Is it morally wrong to lie about yourself in other ways? Suppose Sinan falsely claims to be a Marine on leave from Iraq because he knows that will win the respect and gratitude of other players. Is that morally wrong? These are tricky cases. On the one hand, if you’re allowed to lie about your cards and lie about your level of experience as a player in order to influence other players, then shouldn’t you be allowed to lie about yourself in other ways, too? There might be no morally relevant difference between lying about being a poker novice and lying about being a Marine. On the other hand, lying about being a Marine does seem, somehow, to go too far.
There are also difficult cases of deception, which are neither morally acceptable nor obviously wrong. For example, leaning back in your chair and going out of your way to look at other players’ cards is generally not considered acceptable behavior by the poker community, although in some rare instances it may happen. Is this morally wrong? On the one hand, you’re allowed to read information about cards off of the other players’ faces, so shouldn’t you be allowed to read information off of the other players’ cards, if they are not skilled at hiding their hands?
Figuring out these tricky cases is an interesting philosophical puzzle. If we can understand when it’s acceptable to deceive others around the poker table, then perhaps we can learn something about when deception is acceptable in our everyday lives as well.
Table Talk
When we agree to play poker, we waive our right not to be lied to and not to be deceived. We give others our permission to lie to us and to deceive us, when we first sit down to the table. Of course, we don’t say to them, “Yes, I’d like to play, and yes, you may lie to me and deceive me.” By agreeing to play, however, we give them our implicit permission.
We also agree to play by explicitly stated rules—when we play in a casino, we play by house rules that are posted and explained. In some of the lower-stakes Seven Card Stud casino games considered friendly or “kitchen table poker,” check-raising is not allowed. Also, when a player makes a verbal bet, even jokingly, they are bound to it even if their physical bet doesn’t immediately follow. As an example, a situation occurred in a no-limit Texas Hold’em game once in a California cardroom where a woman jokingly said, “All-in,” holding nothing but disjointed low cards, offsuit. She was held to it and lost her entire $250 stack. But explicitly stated rules are not the only rules that apply to casino play. There are also informal rules or a code of honor, so to speak, that apply. And when we’re not playing in a casino, the rules are often entirely informal or implicit.
Our question, then, is: What are the implicit, informal rules about lying and deception that we’re agreeing to, when we agree to play poker? What we implicitly agree to depends upon the expectations that are shared by all the players. This means that the implicit rules that we agree to play by will vary since expectations vary from group to group. For example, when Pete plays poker with his family, peeking at others’ cards violates the implicit rules, and is therefore a morally wrong instance of cheating. No one in Pete’s family expects their cards to be looked at, so when they agree to play poker, they are not agreeing to let anyone “steal” a peek. In casinos, on the other hand, seeing a careless or drunken player’s cards may be acceptable. It is reasonable to assume that if you’re sloppy enough not to guard your cards, others may take advantage. Agreeing to play poker in a casino is agreeing to suffer the potential consequences of sloppiness.
Implicit rules depend upon the expectations shared by the players. But this can’t be the whole story about implicit rules, because some expectations about poker play are bad expectations, and some implicit rules are bad implicit rules. Imagine an argument between Pete and his brother about whether or not lying about your cards is cheating. Pete says, “Lying about your cards is a part of poker.” And Pete’s brother replies, “Bluffing is part of poker, but outright lying is not part of poker.” And Pete can reply, “Lying is just a more extreme form of bluffing, so it is allowed.” It makes sense that Pete and his brother would have this argument. But it is an argument about what their rules should be, and an argument about what their expectations should be. Therefore, the whole story about implicit poker rules is not that the expectations shared by all the players determine the implicit rules of play. That Pete and his brother can argue about what their expectations should be and what their actual rules should be suggests that there is some underlying order to the implicit rules of poker. What Pete and his brother are arguing about is what this underlying order is. There clearly are implicit and explicit rules surrounding lying in poker, but not everyone agrees with what these rules should be.
Lying in our Everyday Lives
In general, it is morally wrong to lie, but there are exceptions in our everyday lives as well. For example, most of us believe it is morally acceptable to tell a white lie in order to protect someone’s feelings. Molly tells the man she met at the airport bar that she can’t go out with him because she’s married, when in fact Molly just doesn’t like him. Dan tells his boss at work that a key project is generally on track and on budget, when he and the project team have their own un-communicated concerns. Suzie calls in sick to the office when she’s really taking a “mental health” day. Or consider a situation when it is morally acceptable to lie to people who are hurting or threatening you. For example, Dan is being mugged and his mugger says, “Give me all your money.” Dan hands over his wallet, but not the cash in his pocket, and says, “That’s all I have.” Dan is not morally obliged to tell the mugger the truth. The mugger waived his right to be told the truth about Dan’s money when he threatened to steal it.
Clearly, then, there are implicitly agreed upon rules that even a mugger understands and agrees on. Rarely does he assume his victim is telling the whole truth, and therefore might check his pockets regardless of what the victim says. Again, these are rules that we, as a society, have agreed on amongst ourselves whether we realize it or not. While the American Constitution doesn’t instruct us on what is ethically acceptable to say to a mugger, we all have a rough idea on the kinds of things one should or shouldn’t say. If you’re being mugged, for example, it may not be ethically (or culturally) acceptable to start screaming ethnic slurs, even if he’s the only one who can hear it. It is, however, ethically acceptable
to lie about the PIN number on your girlfriend’s bank card that you were carrying at the time.
Poker Rules and Poker “Rules”
If there’s an implicit code of ethics in the game of poker, then we should attempt to state it explicitly and see what can be mutually agreed on. We’d like to suggest that the underlying structure of implicit poker rules is that the implicit rules of poker are rules ensuring that the game tests poker skills, and only poker skills.
Consider the following new poker rule: when two players have equally strong hands (for example, they both have a Jack-high straight), they will not split the pot, but instead there will be a free throw competition to determine the winner. This would not be a good poker rule because being able to hit free throws is a skill that is relevant to basketball, not poker. The following rule would similarly not be a good poker rule: the friends of players can walk around the table, peek at cards, and signal to players what the cards are. Having devoted allies who are good peeps is a skill that is relevant to espionage, but not poker.
Good poker rules are rules ensuring that the game tests only poker skills. Poker skills include having a good comprehension of the odds in order to determine the likelihood of having the winning hand, being able to read others so that you can determine if they’re bluffing, being discrete and difficult to read so that others can’t read you, and being able to control yourself so that you don’t go on tilt and make poor decisions.
Poker and Philosophy Page 16