The Price Sets the Mix

Players answer "how much should I bluff?" with character words — be brave, be disciplined. It isn't a personality trait. It is a number, and the number is set by the price your bet lays him, because the only job of your bluffing frequency is to leave him unable to find a profitable answer.

The price decides the ratio

Bet the pot and he is getting two-to-one: he needs to be good one time in three to call. Bet two value hands for every bluff and he is good precisely one time in three — held exactly on the edge, with no winning move. You did not choose that mix by feel; it fell out of the price. And the price follows the size. Bet bigger than the pot and you lay him a worse price, so you are allowed more bluffs; bet smaller and fewer. The rule is the opposite of what nerve suggests: the bigger the bet, the more lies it can carry. Over-bets aren't reckless — they are the sizes that support the most bluffing.

You are not deciding how brave to be. You are filling the bluff portion to exactly the level that leaves him no answer.

The price tells you how many bluffs. It does not tell you which hands — and that is decided by removal. The best bluffs are the ones that quietly make his continuing hands less likely to exist while leaving in the hands you want him to fold, so a good bluff is chosen for what it takes off the table as much as for its own weakness. Frequency comes from the price; selection comes from removal; together they build a lie he cannot profitably call.

All of this assumes your opponent is paying attention. Against one who isn't, the careful machinery becomes not just unnecessary but wrong — and that is the last movement of this force.