Use The Half-Bluff Technique To Bluff Better In Poker And Real Life

Use The Half-Bluff Technique To Bluff Better In Poker And Real Life

All the poker bosses in movies have mastered the art of the bluff, tricking their opponents into believing whatever they want. You might not be able to pull that off, but the half-bluff is easier and potentially more effective.

Photo by dupo-x-y.

As advice site Dumb Little Man explains, the half-bluff is when you mislead, rather than outright lie. By mixing in a little truth with your bluffs, you give yourself more credibility. More importantly, you don’t want to make your success contingent on your bluff. If you have a backup plan, then you’re less likely to get nervous and give away your bluff.

Say all of your friends are talking about the Game of Thrones books but you have only seen the television version. Operating the sort of half bluff you would use when playing online poker in the middle of this tricky GoT situation can help you navigate the conversation by letting them think you know all about it — when it fact you only have half the knowledge.

This skill can come in handy when, for example, you’re trying to hide the fact that you went shopping for a present for your partner. If you try to say you’ve been home all day, your partner might catch on. If you say you left the house for a different reason, you’re partially telling the truth. In the worst case, you can confess that you were shopping, but that doesn’t reveal what you bought. Just the comfort of knowing that your secret doesn’t hinge on this one fib can make you more confident in obscuring it.

7 Poker Skills You Can Use in Real Life [Dumb Little Man]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


One response to “Use The Half-Bluff Technique To Bluff Better In Poker And Real Life”