Layered vs. reverse bluff

[Blacktango]

Hello,

Two times I disagreed with some teamates about layered and reverse bluff.

I think layered is based on a anormal « not bombing » situation.
Someone should have bombed but didn’t: because they expect more cards to be played before.
Because they didn’t bomb, it tells someone else more answers are required.

Imo this doesn’t mean that reverse bluff should always be forbidden (because it would look like a layered).

Here is the example that happened in my last game.

Me : Y2 XX Bk2 X5 (I just got a Y clue from Donald EDIT : number 2 was already known)
Bob: G5 XX XX XX (G5 is playable but not marked at all)
Cathy: Bk3 XX XX XX (Bk3 is playable but not marked at all, but it should not matter imo)
Donald: XX XX XX XX

Donald argues that the Y clue should trigger a layered from Bob.
I do not agree with this. Since I can’t answer the clue and then bomb, there is no layered.
Bob has to answer and if the clue doesn't match the card played, he should just stop answering: it's a reverse bluff.
Same for Cathy, why should they answer if the reverse bluff is valid and no one will bomb ?
No one has a reason to bomb and therefore give more answers neither.

Maybe on BGA it’s a convention and when layered is on reverse bluff is totally off. To me it contradicts what layered is based on.

[Travis Hall]

There is no such thing as reverse bluff (regardless of whether layered is on or off). The principle behind bluff is that the very next person capable of attempting to play a card to the indicated sequence of play will attempt to do so, and if the played card is not in the sequence then indicating the sequence was a fib, and should not be played on further.

So in this case, Donald clues yellow to Alice (you) indicating a sequence of plays that ends with the yellow card indicated in your hand. You look around for 1y (the next yellow card to play) and you do not find it anywhere, so the next card in the sequence must be in your hand. You play the yellow card, thinking it is 1y, but it is 2y. You misfire. This is not a bluff.

It is not a layered either. The way layered works is that a card in the indicated sequence is hidden behind another playable card, where other players can see it and know not to play until it plays as a result; and the holder of that card knows that they hold it because otherwise somebody would have tried to play it first. For example, if Bob held G5 1Y XX XX. That would be layered because you can see where 1y is, and that all the cards required for Bob to play to get to it are playable, so you hold off on playing 2y to allow Bob to respond.

If you’ve described the situation accurately and have not left out important information behind those XX placeholders, neither bluff nor layered applies to this case. It seems that neither of you properly understands either bluff or layered. You’re expecting clue receivers to just guess at which card is supposed to get played, and delay their plays if they can see any card that can blind play. Don’t do this.

Donald should just clue Cathy’s play directly, so that Alice can bluff Bob’s card. Or both Donald and Alice can discard, Bob bluffs from Cathy, then Alice bluffs from Bob in the next round.

And I’ll reiterate, there’s no such thing as reverse bluff (under normal circumstances).

(Caveat: there are special circumstances where, rarely, it is possible to bluff in reverse. It occurs when the clue receiver is already forced to do something other than played the clued card, or when they have nothing in their hand that could possibly match the indicated sequence. But this is far from the normal circumstance.)

[Romain672]

Here is some others examples for you to undestand:

1) The bluff:
Bob: ?-?-?-?
Cathy: x-b2-x-x
Alice clue blue to Cathy. Bob plays his slot 1 r1. Cathy note b2. The end.

2) The reverse:
Bob: ?-?-?-?
Cathy: x-b2-x-x
Donald: b1-x-x-x
Alice clue blue to Cathy. Bob and Cathy discard because b1 connect to b2.

3) The layered finesse (off in bga, on in hgroup):
Bob: ?-?-?-?
Cathy: x-b2-x-x
Donald: r1-r2-b1-x
Alice clue blue to Cathy. Because Bob and Cathy can see that all cards before b1 are playable, Bob can discard and Conald will play his hand in order.
Note that on bga, Bob would answer and play his slot 1 as a bluff, case 1).
Since Bob didn't answer, Donald see no reason for Bob to discard if he isn't holding b1. So after r1 play, he should still go for more.

4) The pass bluff:
Bob: ?-?-?-(y1) - Bob has a globally known y1
Cathy: r1-r1-r1-x
Donald: x-b2-x-x
Alice clue blue to Donald. From Bob's pov, that's a bluff, and he must answer it immediately. But here he can lie to Cathy and instead play y1. That way Cathy will think she is finessed, and will play r1 in slot 1.
In both hgroup and bga, next turn Bob will play his old slot 1.

5) The out of position bluff (on with high trust on bga, off in hgroup):
Bob: ?-y(1)-g(1)-p(1) - Bob has three globally known 1s
Cathy: r1-x-x-x
Donald: x-b2-x-x
Alice clue blue to Donald. Bob assume he is holding b1. But the problem with that clue is that usually Bob can clue r1 if he want to, which will then make Donald bomb b2 as b1.
But on this specific case, Bob has three 1s. The chance he is holding r1 is high, so clueing it look really bad.
So here after Bob plays his 1, Cathy plays r1 as a bluff.
This work only when there is one of the following:
- Bob can't clue Cathy's bluff target
- Bob has no clue left and can't answer the clue
- Bob has negative playable / negative the finesse in his finesse position
- Bob has no finesse position
In hgroup this was deleted because it was too confusing.

[Travis Hall]

2) The reverse bluff:
Bob: ?-?-?-?
Cathy: x-b2-x-x
Donald: b1-x-x-x
Alice clue blue to Cathy. Bob and Cathy discard because b1 connect to b2.

That is a reverse finesse, not a reverse bluff. At least in BGA parlance.

3) The layered finesse (off in bga, on in hgroup):

More and more often, I’m seeing an expectation that layered is on in BGA (with high-rank players). Hgroup explicitly has levels to allow players to state what techniques are in use, so while many hgroup players might assume everything is in used unless otherwise stated, the tools exist to turn various techniques off. So be careful with your assumptions about when layered is in use.

[Blacktango]

Actually I missed a very important information…
My Y card was completly kwown. I already knew the number, and with the Y clue also the color.
So me and every other players know I can’t answer that Y clue.

[Silene]

Actually I missed a very important information…
My Y card was completly kwown. I already knew the number, and with the Y clue also the color.
So me and every other players know I can’t answer that Y clue.

Yes, IMO that's a valid reverse bluff situation and does not implicate layers. There are also other possibilities for reverse bluff like:
* The clued card has negative information (like here if you didn't have the 2-clue but you had a 1-clue before on it (that would obviously not be in the rightmost spot then but I guess the idea is clear) and only y1/m1 is playable
* The player sitting between has a forced job to do which can't possibly meddle with the bluffed card
* ...there's probably more special cases

[tchobello]

Actually I missed a very important information…
My Y card was completly kwown. I already knew the number, and with the Y clue also the color.
So me and every other players know I can’t answer that Y clue.

Yes, IMO that's a valid reverse bluff situation and does not implicate layers. There are also other possibilities for reverse bluff like:
* The clued card has negative information (like here if you didn't have the 2-clue but you had a 1-clue before on it (that would obviously not be in the rightmost spot then but I guess the idea is clear) and only y1/m1 is playable
* The player sitting between has a forced job to do which can't possibly meddle with the bluffed card
* ...there's probably more special cases

sorry to ask but...
how does reverse bluff work here as both Bob and Cathy have a playable card ? Cathy has to play ?
I haven't played for years... might be a litlle rusty.

[Blacktango]

Bob doesn’t see the missing card in Cathy’s hand so from his point of view he has it and should play it.
This is the same reasoning as a classic bluff.

[Romain672]

sorry to ask but...
how does reverse bluff work here as both Bob and Cathy have a playable card ? Cathy has to play ?
I haven't played for years... might be a litlle rusty.

So this can happen when:
- Bob know what is going on (example Bob is locked and can't get the connecting card)
- Bob can't mess up the clue (example Alice clue red on r3 to Emily, Cathy has r1, Donald has b1, Bob has no clue left)(example Alice clue red on r2 to Donald, Bob got three random 1s, Cathy got a b1 in finesse position, so the chance for Bob to decide to bluff r1 are really small, most (all?) cases is when Alice is holding both others r1. And even though, Bob has still three plays)
- and as others said, Bob has a forced job (Alice clue red on r2 to Donald, Cathy has a b1 in finesse position and a g5 in chop, on bga I think Bob should save Cathy, even if on hgroup, Bob should trust Alice got a clue for Cathy to do, which... Feel really weird, but that make people play their cards)

So if you play without layered, out of position bluff work well since everyone can understand what was going on.
If you play with layered, not doing out of position bluff could be assumed to be layered. It's what hgroup has done for simplicity.
If you play with layered and with out of position bluff, on a simple convention set like bga that could work because there isn't much things going, people can spend their thinking time trying to understand the clue. If you play with a more complicated convention set, if everything goes as planned, that work. If for any reason a specific player decide to do something else by making a wrong assumption that can lead to 2 bombs easily (even if you play safe after one bomb, you don't know from which move the bomb occurs).


I prefer the term 'out of position bluff' instead of 'reverse bluff' btw. 'Reverse bluff' look really ambiguous since nobody play with those.

[Blacktango]

I would say that the « reverse bluff » is a special case of « distant bluff » since the player who is going to play is not right after the clue dealer.
« Out of position bluff » and « distant bluff » are synonymous imo.