When you play online poker often enough, you end up seeing a lot of weirdly played hands. The sheer speed of online means you can play more hands per minute than in a casino, and it often seems like a three hour session is really a six hour one. In the course of this blur of playing I see hands every so often where you just have to wonder what the person is thinking.

This is a typical example, three players in a hand, flop comes down 8-6-6 of hearts. First guy bets out, second guy folds, third guy calls. The turn comes and it’s a four of hearts. Again, the same gut who bet does so once more, second guy calls. Finally the flop comes out an 8, and the same bettor bets again, and either the caller calls and ends up losing or folds his hand.

Now, this is such horrible poker playing it makes me mad. Why does the person calling keep calling? If he doesn’t have any part of the board, the likelihood the gut betting has a boat, flush or even a pocket pair in that case is fairly decent.

And if you’re absolutely sure he doesn’t have that, if he’s bluffing, why not raise him? Why just keep calling. And the absolute worst is when the caller then just folds his poker hand on the river. What were you possibly looking for? In that situation, you had to have known if you were beat or not by the flop, so you’re really just giving chips away. Just fold or raise, and stop being a calling station.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 10:52 am and is filed under Free Games + More, Great Fun, Lady Luck. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.