[gaming_mouse]

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Do you mean you would estimate P(showdown | bluff/r) using P(showdown | raise)?

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Yes.
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I like this idea, but I think the former might be slightly smaller. For example, if you call my turn bluff raise, then bet into me on the river, I would probably fold more often than if my original raise has been legit. I don't know though. The formula doesn't distinguish between "good" and "bad" bluffs. In principle, some bluffs may be more transparent than others, so that only "good" bluff raises would be as likely to be called down as legit raises.

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Very interesting point, about the bluffer giving up. An opposing force to the point I made about bluffs being more likely to be called down, and I don't know which would be strong. Of course, we could look at the cases of "bluffer has position" and "bluffer OOP" separately to answer your concern.

As to your point of "good" and "bad" bluffs.... My first pass will not distinguish between these two, as this obviously makes the problem much, much more difficult. It is hard enough trying to define a turn raise bluff to begin with (in a way that can be programmed). Finding the criteria for determining what is a "good" and what is "bad" bluff is exponentially harder. In fact, simply getting good players to agree about this in specific cases on the forum is hard.


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The second idea seems a little fishy to me. You want to estimate P(bluff/r from opponent), but in the formula you would use P(showdown | bluff/r from gaming_mouse). Maybe it's not that big of a deal, but the mental red flag popped up when I read that.

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Yes, this is a good point. As I said, you would want to get data from a bunch of players (preferably with diverse styles) for this method to be accurate.


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As a practical matter, do you know how many hands you would need to gather enough data for this?

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I don't. I'd like to have at least a million or so. I'll be able to make better estimates after I start doing a little research.

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By the way, are there sites where you can see the folded hands in the hand history? Or is that just a myth I heard.

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Not that I know of. That would be an amazingly rich source of data though. Let me know if you find one.

Thanks for your comments,
gm