JJ's Blog

I witnessed a couple of decisions at the poker table the other day that I have not been able to assign any logical reason. I racked my puny brain and I was just stumped. Why would any rational, thinking human being make this kind of decision? Here’s the scenario:

It’s $1/$2 NLHE cash game with a $100 max buy-in and a reload rule that states you can only reload once you are totally busted. The table is 9 handed. Seats 1 – 4 are new players to the table. Seats 5-9 have been there for about 3 hours. Most people have between $75 and $150. A couple players have more than $200. Seat 1 is the short stack with $40.

Seat 1 UTG limps for $2, seat 3 raises to $12 – standard raise. Seat 4 (me) raises to $30 with JJ. Fold around back to seat 1 who, with a convincing display of exasperation, tosses all $40 in and says “I’m all in”. Seat 3 folds. I call. Seat 1 tables a K9o. After seeing my hand, he declares, “well, I had to make a move….c’mon King”.

After loosing the hand, he looked somewhat relieved that he was now able to reload back up to the full $100 max.

I though and thought about this. Why did he feel the need to “make a move”? With a raise and a re-raise in front, he had to figure to, best case, have 1 overcard. Why put 40 precious dollars at stake hoping that you have one clean overcard that you might be able to spike and win?

Later that evening, I saw almost the same move by a player in seat 9. He had taken a few bad beats earlier and was clearly frustrated. He threw his last $30 into the pot after an $8 raise and a $25 re-raise. He tabled a 7s5s and slapped his hands together and said “its time to get lucky!”

Then it struck me. I’ve seen this same sort of desperation move as people get short stacked during NLHE tournaments. With the escalating blinds, tournament players need to continuously build their chip stacks if they want any hope of making the money. You’ll see a player suddenly short stacked when the blind levels change. They’ll find themselves a hand they can gamble with to double or triple up and push “all in”. Often they look favorably upon a hand that contains 2 “live cards” which puts them as only a 2:1 dog vs. two overcards - a hand like 7s5s.

I think both of these players may have been afflicted with a disease called “Using No Limit Hold’Em Tournament Mentality at the Cash Game”. It’s no wonder really. The popularity of tournaments is causing loads of players to learn how to player poker by participating in NLHE tournament home games or on the internet. I know a lot of players that will only play NLHE tournaments. Many of the players venture over to the ring game have “cut their teeth” on tournament poker.

My opinion is that both of these player just donked off their remaining chips - using a pretty standard decision making process used in tournaments. You don’t need to “make a move” in the ring game. The blinds never change. Both players had 15x to 20x the big blind which gives them all of the normal options to raise/reraise for value or for steal attempts preflop. The could call preflop and open a pot, post flop, for a pot size bet. Agree?

# posted by Jon J : 12:18 PM