This widely
used phrase certainly originated in American poker games of the early nineteenth
century, as bluffing was an integral part of poker, and to call
meant to match a bet. Some etymologists trace bluff itself back to the
Low German bluffen, "to frighten by menacing conduct," which became the
Dutch buffen, "to make a trick at cards," but bluff if first
recorded in n a838 newspaper account of an American poker game.