Goddamn PokerRoom.com jackasses!

The BBQ Pit
1

I suppose this is going to boil down to “I’m a sore loser,” but God DAMMIT am I ever sick of people on PokerRoom.com playing crap hands for play money that if they had a dime of real money in they wouldn’t dream of playing. Time and time again I go in with decent to strong hand (A-J or better, high suited connectors, high pocket pairs) only to get called by someone playing total and utter shit. Worse, more times than not they hit some miracle draw, usually pretty close to the only draw that can beat me, so they get rewarded for it. Case in point, I’m all in with pocket Jacks in a four-handed game. Two people go out, the last person calls me. Flop is x-x-7, turn is x, river is 7. They win with three 7s because they called $2500 on a 7-4 offsuit, a hand no one in their right mind IMHO would even think for a second about calling in a money game. They shouldn’t have even called the blind with that crap. I’ve lost track of the number of times something like this has happened, where players get rewarded for playing like shit and as a player trying to play it like a real game and maybe improve my skills I get some shitty beat like that over and over and over again. I get that it’s all in fun and they’re entitled to play whatever hands they want and blah blah blah but it’s starting to bug the piss out of me.

Anyways, this is totally lame and anyone who plays poker is free to jump in and tell me I’m a sucker or a sorehead or whatever. But I feel better for venting. Not as good as I’d feel if all four of my nut flushes tonight hadn’t gotten busted by people who called my all in bet with a low pair on the flop and wound up with fucking full houses, but better.

2

Naah, I’m with you. I play on pokerpages.com, and almost EVERY table has someone who goes all in on the blind on the first hand. Usually with nothing.

It’s quite annoying, and I’ve learned to not even call the first few blinds unless I’ve got a hand I’m willing to go all in on.

And it’s even more annoying when they win on the turn or the river (or a combination of both).

3

Do you play tournaments there? So far I’ve only played open tables so jackasses cycle in and out, shitting all over the pots and then leaving again to refill their play money account after going broke in two hands.

4

It must work differently.

At pokerpages, it’s kinda like Yahoo Games, if you’ve ever played games there. A table opens, and once ten people join, play starts. When you run out of money, you’re out, and no one rejoins (that table), so each table is sorta like a “mini tournament.”

I’ve played a few tournaments, but they have 400 people and take about 2 hours (at least). You can’t rejoin there either. So I guess in some ways it’s a little better, but still. Half the table usually leaves on the blind of the first hand, so it’s kind of annoying, even moreso because one person (be it the bluffing idiot or otherwise) has such a huge chip lead then.

5

I cannot agree more with what the OP said. I play at Party Poker.

I love poker, I love playing Texas Hold’em. However, when you try and play on these free games, these retards come out of the woodwork. There is NO REASON, at all, to bet on the first two cards in these games, although anyone that knows a Hold’em veteran will say that it is one of the most crucial moments in the real game. Even if you bet high (which would be stupid) it does not drive anyone out and the strength of your two card hand is worthless when it runs against everyones hand. Someone is almost always going to have something good from the flop, turn and river if 9 people stay in every time.

At times, I have made the comments in the chat areas that “fake money changes the dynamic of the game and people should at least pretend to make it more fun”, to only get moronic responses like “let people play”, “it is just a game man, lighten up” etc…

There was one guy who would go all in every time, sometimes pre-flop, sometimes post, hit the chip counter and go back up to 2000 before the hand even ended. He could not bet more in that hand, but he at least got to play the very next hand again, but he lost like 20 hands in a row. He was disrupting a good game giving some people a huge chip lead, so I finally said something in chat to the effect, “are you done yet, you are really ruining it for everyone” The next hand, he did it again and was called by about 3 players. He won this time. He then said something snarky back to me implying that I did not understand his strategy. All I could do was roll my eyes, as if his 40k loss was made up by a 6k win, (I hate chat wars) and get up from the table.

Poker is not fun unless there is an element of loss in it. There has to be some pain when you throw the chips in, a sweaty palm, unsure if you are going to lose something of value. If this does not exist, the players must at least pretend this is the case to make it fun. If not, it is simply a random game of turning over cards with no skill involved. That, IMHO, is not fun.

6

Yeah, i play at PokerPages and TruePoker, and both the small ring games and the large tournaments have their share of jackasses who go all in early with nothing. My theory is that these are people who have no real patience for the way that poker is actually played. They want to win a huge hand early, rather than playing a smart, strategic game. If they lose that first big bet, it’s no real loss because they can just join the next tournament. And if they win a big hand, it suits their style because they are the sort of players who put very little thought into their play, but just like to bully other players with big bets.

I find it’s best just to sit back for a few hands and see if there are any cowboys at the table. Of course, if i get dealt a great hand early on (e.g. JJ or better), then i’ll play it.

I know it gets frustrating, Otto, but keep in mind one of the golden rules of poker: every time your opponent plays against you with a hand that has a lower probability of winning, the odds are in your favour. Sure, you’ll lose to some really unbelievable plays and to some very lucky draws sometimes, but in the long run it’s players like this who make it easy for the better players to win at poker.

Hey, Garfield, what’s your PokerPages handle? I’ll keep an eye out for you in the games. Mine is the same as it is here at SDMB.

7

Can I get an amen? I don’t play online anymore unless I play with actual money. These idiots have watched too much WPT, and they have no idea what the word “strategy” means. Three preflop raises, raising over the top on a hand you have no possibility of making; look, I don’t mind throwing away the occasional good hand. If you don’t, you’re not a good player. But GODDAMMIT I have had it up to HERE with having to play the nuts all the damn time. There’s no damn finesse to the online games. There is way too much luck in Hold Em.

While it’s true that some pros call on the junk hands the OP was talking about, the morons in online rooms don’t realize that it’s a calculated risk, and they’ve been watching their opponents and the way they play. A CALCULATED RISK. Not just, “gee, I could maybe pull a pair out of my ass or intimidate this guy into folding,” but analyzing others’ playing style, watching what hands they call on, etc.

ARGH!! I could go on about this for hours. Let me just say, this is the reason I play stud or Omaha. I won’t play Hold Em. Nope, nope, nope.

8

That is why I just about never play in “free” games. There is almost always an ass or two at your table. There is a way to stop that behavior. If you lose all of your chips, you have to sit out for 24 hours. Make it just enough of a pain in the ass to create a new username to prevent people from making lots of them but not enough to stop people from making one.

That said, I’ve seen people play some stupid, stupid shit in live games. They’ll play 42 offsuit to the river because “deuces never looses.”

By mhendo:

Yes and no. I believe it was the late Andy Morton who did a bunch of math and found a flaw in that theory. The ideal game is one where there is, say, one other great player three or four good players but not as good as you and the rest shitty players. A table full of lousy players is a bad thing.

If you are playing against seven lousy players, any hand you play will be a winner against any given one of them over the long haul. You may well be a loser on average against the whole bunch of them. If all or most of them stay on to the river on every hand, someone is going to suck out on you a high percentage of the time.

You’re a lot better off with some other good players at the table, especially if you can identify them. You’re all be playing correctly (i.e. relatively tight) so you won’t end up against them very often. You’ll have much better odds not getting cracked against three idiots rather than six or seven of them.

I hope that I explained that well. It’s one of the rules of low limit poker that is not well known. This is the reason why you will often do worse in free on-line games than in real life. Most of the top pros will tell you that it gets easier as you go up in limits. I’ve never played higher than 6-12 limit so I am just going by what they say but it does make sense.

Haj

9

If you want something that even approximates a decent poker game, you’re gonna have to cash in and play at the cheapo real money games. I used to play the play money games at Paradise, and it was always four bets before the flop, with ten players in. They’d gripe at me if I folded a shit hand pre-flop–“Why are you folding? It’s free!”

BTW, if anyone wants to sign up at Party Poker, I’ll kick my “refer-a-friend” bonus back to you. E-mail me if you’re interested. (Someone did it for me, so I’m just passing on the favor.)

10

Glad to see I’m not the only one. Believe me, if I could afford to play in some real money games I would, but I got nothing that could reasonably be considered “disposable” income at the moment. So I guess if I want to play I’m stuck, although there’s a place in town running a tournament series right now that I might be able to get in on.

11

There are sites out there that spread limit Hold’em games as low as .01-.02. So deposit 5 bucks and you can play to your heart’s content. Surely you have THAT much disposable income.

PS Play money games have absolutely no relationship to real money games. Too many people don’t care if they go bust, so they cap every hand on every street, looking for the big score.

12

I wrote an article for Poker Digest a few years ago where I broke down the math on some of these plays. Sklansky’s Fundamental Theorem of Poker says that any time someone plays a hand in a way other than they would if they could see your cards, you win money. Sklansky knew that this sometimes wasn’t true for multi-way pots, but I don’t think he grasped just how common it would be. In the article I wrote, I showed a hypothetical hand with only three players - you with a pair (and the best hand), the other player with a four flush, and a third player contemplating a bad draw. There was a very wide range of pot sizes in which if the player called incorrectly it still cost you money.

In a very loose game, it gets a little less clear because many players are drawing completely dead, or duplicating each other’s outs. But on average, if you have the bests but a very vulnerable hand, and you could turn all ten player’s hands up on the flop and evaluate them, you’ll find that you wish most of them would fold even if they are making bad calls, if there are a couple of people in the hand with big draws.

The moral of the story is that in very loose games you want big hands and big draws. So fold those KTo hands, kids. Pocket pairs and large suited connectors are golden in loose games.

13

Two things with that are I have my doubts that at such a low limit people would play any differently than they do for free, and I’m on a Mac and most of the sites I’ve found are PC-only. If you have any suggestions for Mac-friendly ultra-low limit sites, though, pass them along here or in e-mail.

Meanwhile, I signed up for an IRL tournament that plays Monday. I’m planning on starting a MPSIMS thread about it. Wish me luck!

14

Mine is the same there as here as well. I think I actually found it because you mentioned it in a post a year or so back…

15

Sam, your advice is ALWAYS appreciated. But really, it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble to have to adjust my game for two or three (or more) maniacs at any given table online when the payoff is points, not cash. May sound lazy, and yes, I should play the same level ALL the time, I know. It just isn’t worth the aggravation. At least in cash games I have motivation to work for it.
sigh Don’t mind me. I’m just venting.

16

Why even bother playing for points? Poker isn’t poker unless there is an element of risk involved. If you’re just doing it for the practice, get Wilson’s Turbo Texas Hold’em. It’ll play as well as the no-money maniacs.

17

I’d like to put in my “amen!” on this. I actually have to be careful not to let my pokerroom.com experiences affect me TOO much, since the group I play with IRL on Sundays are actually good players.

Otto is pretty much my twin when it comes to this subject. I can’t believe the crap people will bet with! I play a LOT tighter in tournaments because I know folks are less likely to be intimidated by a bluff, especially in early stages, which is kinda bad for someone trying to learn how to, and when to, bluff.

18

Is it possible to find a gang of people who feel the same way and use the free poker software to play them? I don’t know that actual money is necessary (though I can see it’d be better) - just knowing that this is your one game a week, and you can’t start over if you muff the first hand, and winning big is an actual acheivement can make you to play properly.

An observation: I don’t know much about poker, but from what I see, you have to accept that people are playing different strategies here. If you can persuade them to do it right, great, but it sounds like you can’t. They are being jerks rather, and deserve a pit, and i think if you play with them you’ll just have to accept you won’t get much proper practice in, and if you still want to, play to win by their rules, knowing that a first round bet is likely made by an insane chancer however much believing that would be bad strategy elsewhere.

19

Some of our fellow Dopers have organized tournaments but it’s on a PC-only site. I’m still bitter.

In happier news, I’ve found a couple of people online who play regularly who are actually playing like it matters. One of them I’ve played twice and she’s waxed me a bit (hit some insanely lucky river cards) and the other I’ve been beating fairly consistently. And I actually may have talked someone out of doing the all-in-on-every-hand routine. He was saying that he wanted to play better IRL but also had the “it’s just play money” attitude. I told him that he was wasting his time playing online if he wasn’t going to play like it was real and he agreed with me and, at least for the rest of the time we were at the same table, quit playing like a maniac.

Currently my play money bank, from a starting point of $1,000, is up over $30,000, which either means I’m doing something right or everybody else really sucks.

20

If you want to try a better class of free games, there are several poker channels on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). You can even download a graphical front end. You can also find several bots on those channels which play a damned good game. They are written by an AI group at the University of Alberta. One of the lead researchers is a good friend of mine. He’s doing his Ph.D thesis on computer poker, which is actually tougher than chess. But his group has the world’s best checkers playing software, and their poker AI is pretty darned good. You can play against it on IRC.