The Dark Art of the Bluff

No-limit hold-em has also been called a black art, requiring players to broadcast and decipher fake tells, master complex (mis)information and amoral psychology, all of it illuminated by bolts of hideous and beneficient fortune. Folding, the thoroughly passive gesture at the heart of strong play, can be understood in religious or spiritual terms -- as humble acceptance, for example, of a metaphysical order beyond our comprehension, sometimes known as the shuffle. While to not fold then backdoor a flush on the river after your all-in opponent filled an inside straight on the turn required voodoo theology and titanium nerves to get your mind around, not logic or math prowess. Thank Shango and Oloddumare as you rake in the pot, or perhaps your lucky stars. As my daughter Bridget has been known to explain rare phenomena: "Whatever whatever, okay?"

Despite poker's nonrational dimension, philosopher John Lukacs was moved to call it "the game closest to the Western conception of life, where life and thought are recognized as intimately combined, where free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered moral agents, and where -- at least in the short run -- the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens." With everyone's hole cards lying facedown on the table, the hand perceived to be strongest in effect is.

McManus, James; "Positively Fifth Street" p120