Bluffing is a slippery area in poker. Players usually think they understand it perfectly, but there are many subtleties in this field that most players miss.
One of the most important aspects is bluff equity. This is the equity you get from the possibility of bluffing on a later street. If you imagine someone examining two napkins – two cards that have no connection to the cards on the board, such a person can still win and even beat some really bad opponents. All of such a player's equity comes from their bluff equity or, in other words, their ability to win the pot through bluffing.
Sometimes it is very important to consider bluff equity and stay in the pot rather than fold early, as this can be a valuable equity decision for us. Most poker players forget about this, but negative EV decisions early in the street can turn into positive EV due to profitable bluff situations that arise during the game. A similar situation exists with implied odds. According to implied odds, a negative EV decision on this street can become profitable due to the likelihood of making money from it on the next street. The same is true for bluff equity. You can continue to play with a hand that has slightly negative EV because a good bluffing opportunity may arise on the next street. Usually, people feel much worse using such an explanation in reality because they are rarely confident about positive EV and the possibility of hitting a straight or three of a kind. But EV from value hands and EV from bluffs are the same – EV is EV.
It should be noted that to base your game decisions on bluff equity, you need to ensure that the bluff will indeed give +EV. You also need to read your opponent well and know exactly what they are thinking. If you trust your read, the actual bluff EV will be very close to the projected bluff EV.
For a confident player, it might be a good idea to rely on bluff equity, but if the player's confidence is low, then this equity should be used more cautiously as an explanation for -EV play.
Ironically, players rarely consider this when it comes to implied odds. They will chase sets and draws, assuming that if they hit, the opponent will pay them off. Most people rarely acknowledge that when they do hit, it doesn't pay off. This usually happens because of their own bet sizing or nitty behavior, which warns the opponent. This is probably a habit that players learn while playing low stakes (where there is a lot of set and draw chasing, hoping that a fish will pay for it).
Sometimes this is also called residual habits. They can be a serious problem if they don't disappear when you move to a more complex game. Most residual habits, like this one, will prevent the mind from transitioning to subconscious calculations (this depends on how intuitively the pot reacts to probabilities), the brain simply won't process the difference between 20% and 10% profit at a higher level of play. This means you always have to be vigilant about the possibility of making incorrect and outdated conclusions.
