The true skill of bluffing, then, lies in patience and precision: watching your opponent’s betting patterns and reactions closely – and coming through with surprise – will help to make your bluff more frequent – and targeted.

Strategy can be a powerful tool for navigating the complexities of life, but misdirection can also help you find your way around all of them.

Chris Moneymaker’s “Stone Cold Bluff”

Done right — whether it’s conducting a negotiation about a business deal or convincing your sister you deserve the better slice of pie at the family dinner — deception can be an invaluable tool. But it has limits, and an astute audience will see right through any misstep. With the right timing, good storytelling and the occasional twist of fate, almost anything can be achieved.

A stone-cold bluff – or ‘bluff’ for short – is any bet or raise made with an inferior hand that is not playing ‘the nuts’, and that cannot improve, done with the intention that it will increase pot odds on average in the long run. If the likelihood of an opponent calling is greater than or equal to the desired percentage, then bluffing will not offer a profitable wager.

Bluffs might sport telltale signs such as a rigid posture, dilated pupils and either a sidelong fugitive or a rigid stare. – the voice and expressions all contribute to flimflam’s effectiveness. Seasoned poker players often intersperse real bets with their fakes in order to keep their opponents guessing, but telling licensees a lie once can sour a relationship for good.

Phil Ivey’s “Triple-Barrel Bluff”

Phil Ivey is poker’s best-known bluff master, someone whose ability to make an otherwise tedious card game into one in which he pits his wits almost Kuleshov-like against his opponents’ minds is what keeps fans at the PC screen.

His bets in this direction are normally all-in bets, often larger than normal bet sizes from other players, and there will be a larger number of telling tells: often, tighter body language through staring with misshapen eyes.

His best bluff to date came in 2005, in the Million Dollar Challenge on Full Tilt Poker, heads-up against Sammy Farha with around $1.8 million in the pot with an almost even score. Ivey had an 8 against Jackson’s 6 off suit; he then counted his chips before declaring all-in and calling it – Jackson folded, and Ivey won it all – a masterclass in nerve and skill on one of poker’s most legendary stages.

Jack Strauss’s “One-Chips Bluff”

A good bluff can be just as good as playing tough hands. Isaac Haxton and Ryan Daut played one such heads‑up poker face‑off in 2007, making tough decisions with the poker equivalent of really bad hands. But really, it’s still a really good game.

Then, after Daut called his preflop raise with an inferior pair – 7-2 off suit – Haxton raised again, offering Daut the chance to see one of his cards for (forgive the transcription) $25, 20 plus 5 plus 5.

Haxton’s move upset Daut, forcing him to fold, thus giving him victory for the next game, which in itself was a kind of psychological warfare. The iconic moments that really capture what makes poker so compelling as a sport are those in which a player demonstrates strategic inventiveness and courage. Poker is the ultimate sport for the ‘mind game’, and watching competitors excel in the psychological realm is satisfying for viewers much more than watching them win based solely on hand strength. The maths of the game is more interesting than the win-loss statistics. This makes the game especially exciting to those dreaming about making it big at such a game of skill and chance.

Sammy Farha’s “River Bluff”

They remind us that poker, at its best, is an art of deception, of drama, of all those adjectives that constitute so much of the mythology of the game, from Moneymaker’s unbelievable bluff to change the face of poker forever, to Ivey’s magisterial fakery against the Phantom of the Operation.

In games with multiple rounds of betting, players will also occasionally bluff by raising on the river holding a strong hand that might get even stronger when there is a showdown. This also is not pure bluffing, since they have a real chance of winning the pot even without a showdown, but it can be effective nonetheless when executed well.