I think DalTXColtsFan is asking about the ethics of playing with this person at all, vs how to play the turn. Maybe he can speak to it?
Your 1 liner statements leave a lot of room for interpretation. Your 2nd one liner might not read like you think it does?


FWIW, nothing he wrote would keep me from playing this guy and trying to take all his money at the table. If I thought I was wrecking his life, I'd play the same at the table but I'd consider other things away from the table.

I suppose you're right.

I'm talking about playing the game. Sorry for being unclear about that.

There is absolutely room for empathy in the analysis of gambling and the psycho-social aspects of what is going on.

This is not poker.

Really not trying to be pedantic, but there is more to "poker" and "playing the game" than just which buttons you press when the action is on you. I think we all agree that we generally should not play our hands any differently based on ethical concerns. But I think there are a lot of relevant metagame considerations here.

We do all kinds of things that impact our winrate outside of the hands dealt. E.g. talking losing players into staying longer, buying one or player players a drink (maybe the whole table!), being social instead of wearing headphones, talking sports instead of talking poker, etc. I am not going to softplay someone with a gambling problem, but I am definitely not going to talk him into staying past his bedtime, and when he hits his ATM limit there is no way I am lending him money.

Totally agreed. You're correct. "Poker" is not limited to individual actions.

DrHoldemPhD: Please, tell me where you play! I'm lucky to find people who do this in the 4/8 games I play. I was just about to post, "Not to nitpick, but surely they weren't buying into an 8/16 game $100 at a time? That's only 6 big bets!", but now that I think about it, I've seen several people buy into the 4/8 game $40 at a time which is even worse. Lack of understanding of the game.

DougL: "I think DalTXColtsFan is asking about the ethics of playing with this person at all," <===Not necessarily. The reason for the post is that for the first time in my 6-year poker "career" I truly felt like I was at the table with someone who might very well have a gambling problem, and it just kind of threw me a bit. It wasn't just that he lost the money, it's that he lost it playing so badly, and (as I said) I was like, how can you not recognize how BAD you are at this game and make some effort to LEARN?

You made some good points about money being relative. When he pulled out his 8th c-note my thought was, "You can get a 7-night caribbean cruise for $800. You're paying $800 for the privilege of sitting at a table for 3 hours when you could be paying it for the privilege of sipping coffee overlooking the ocean for 7 days. Come on, man!"

There's an epilogue to that story that I didn't mention: I left the O8 game when it was down to 6 people and returned to the 4/8LHE game. When the O8 game finally broke, the guy didn't even leave his seat. He literally just sat there alone at the table. About an hour later he finally joined *our* table, buying in for $100, and went on a massive heater (had about $400 in front of him when I left). He wasn't as bad at LHE as he was at O8 but he was still bad. I've always felt like these heaters trick bad players into thinking they're better than they are, that when they lose they're just unlucky, and keeps them coming back.

You're certainly right. $800 does have much more utility than gambling addiction!

Also to DougL: "FWIW, nothing he wrote would keep me from playing this guy and trying to take all his money at the table. If I thought I was wrecking his life, I'd play the same at the table but I'd consider other things away from the table." <===You've been playing a lot longer than I have. Have you ever had players at your table who you suspected were legitimate gambling addicts? Have you ever had players at your who you KNEW PERSONALLY and KNEW were gambling with money they couldn't afford to lose?

I'm starting to think playing with loose bad players than force you to run into some weird multiway situations is harder strategically than playing a bunch of abc TAGs with one or two fish at the table. Heads up pots are so much more straightforward.

Yes the ultra loose table is more lucrative, but it feels more mentally taxing.

I empathize, as there is much of it in poker.

You said this so well. Nh, sir.

Every time I see the whining about Eli Elezra "owing people money" and how we should all shame him and not buy his book, I think about this. You have the nature of high stakes gambling and predatory behavior -- you loan a guy money because you think he's a favorite to lose it. It is baked into your EV and the risk of him not paying back loans he probably made while on screaming monkey tilt.
You're playing poker because you want to learn stuff about poker. The fact that other people don't seems to bother you. No idea why. People do stuff for their own reasons. If he's not harming himself or others, he's within his rights to play poker badly.
He might drink a bottle of wine worth 3x that $800 when he gets home. Losing the $800 might keep him from drinking 3 of the 4 $200 bottles he was planning on drinking next week, saving his liver. Who knows?
This is why that idiotic guy on NVG pushing "more skill based version of NL Hold'em" is so silly. The luck factor helps losing players want to come back. Is it pro-social? Probably not. It is the reason games can be good.
Yes. There was a guy in a weekly home game I played in who showed up a couple times, decided he loved it. Found a huge PLO or NL game elsewhere in the city. Lost his job and probably his apartment. He went from normal civilian who played poker a couple times to busto degen in a few months. I think his issue was finding that he loved action and being the sort of person who had trouble with impulse control. Good thing he didn't find heroin first. I believe that the host eventually didn't invite him back -- it was a tough game to get invited to, as a winning player you had to be really decent socially. As a losing player, it was much more rare. Guessing the host just thought it was wrong to have this guy here during a clear self-implosion. Could be he went so busto he couldn't afford 6/12 or 10/20 limit? There was very little credit extended in that game, could also be that he wrote a bad check or something.

Not trying to beat a dead horse here, but this isn't helping me with the whole "empathy has a place in poker" concept.

I don't worry too much about the degens I play poker with, some of who have definitely lost a LOT of money and ruined their lives.

What makes me feel bad is their spouses, children, etc. whose lives are ruined because of their gambling problem. They didn't sign up for that.

I’m going to go ahead and nit this one up by pointing out that you guys are mostly conflating empathy and sympathy. They aren’t the same - I have tons of sympathy but not much empathy at the tables.

THANK YOU

It was a lot of fun, looking forward to it. I’m undecided as to whether that was the first time Cha Cha had played poker before. Not just bc he spent 30 seconds trying to convince the dealer that 4 cards is a straight or that he didn’t quite understand that the $10 big blind is not an ante that must be paid every hand. There were other clues, too.

My man. Finally, somebody that gets it. But you’d have trouble in the games I play. Trust me

Probably his first time playing limit, but I recall his friend saying that he witnessed chacha winning a bunch in a casino no limit game. Dude was on fire though. 700 bucks winnings in a couple hours at 10/20 = nice win.

beat: flop bottom two pair, check/3bet a large field, check fold turn when top card pairs. standard.

brag: stopped at 24 hr McDonalds on the way home and chowed a 1/4 pounder with cheese meal.

variance: tag raises HJ, I 3 bet KThh next in, stuck tag on tight tilt(imo) folds btn, chacha calls, bb folds. flop: Jh8x2x, chacha bets, tag folds as expected, I call. turn 7h, chacha bets, I call. river Jo, chacha bets, I call. He has T9ss nh wp etc etc.

I disagree completely about this. All you have to do in a multiway pot is shovel money into it when you have an equity advantage. The only "mentally taxing" thing about it is folding preflop so much. At tables where most pots are heads up you have to really pay attention to the other players' playing styles to be able to exploit their weaknesses, and adjust your strategies on the fly based on who's in the pot.

With that said, I've read SSHE cover to cover at least 10 times so everything in it almost second nature to me. I couldn't even get through books like The Intelligent Poker Player, WITHG or HEPFAP.

Heard a guy muttering to a neighbor about how I "always" raise "his" big blind, which, whatever, but he actually seemed serious. It's LOL because I very seldom do anything close to an actual steal in this game.

Was watching live at the bike 40/80 last week. Announcer was calling any first in raise from late position a steal. I found it very grating.

I've read HPFAP, WITHG, and SSHE. SSHE I think was the most eye opening and I definitely learned the most from any one book. I played a bunch of times before reading it and felt like I had no clue what was happening, afterwards I felt like Zach galafanakis playing black jack in the hangover. WITHG was good for heads up pots and tighter games but less incremental in terms of what I learned. HPFAP never seemed to be that eye opening...

My biggest issues are late street play multiway with bad players. Need to reread sshe for those places.

The biggest things on later streets in multiway pots are not to make huge mistakes and not to become results focused.



If you make a call in a 18BB pot when you had 5% equity, sure that's a mistake. It is a small one. Your ability to tell the difference between 5% and 10% might not exist. At some point, even the most reliable old guy who you've been playing with isn't that finely tuned. I played for years with an old guy who had been a prop and a poker room manager, most reliable of nitty nits. He must have watched a WPT broadcast or discovered a poker theory at some point. He at some point starts raising 53o in addition to JJ+, AKs. I'm sure it took a while for the rest of us to catch on. Guy you see for a session gets bored, tilted, or just has a nutty theory you haven't figured out? You can't be sure enough in one session. All the guys who fold every time to a "tight player" may never figure it out. Math of big pots forces sadface calls. You get high enough in your range, hero folds become potential huge mistakes while sadface calls are tiny ones at worst.


This leads to 2 where the villain shows you top set. Sure. He was supposed to have it and he did. That's X% of his range where X < 100%.

I don't have any empathy to display for this event.

The 60/120 bankroll thread in medium high stakes reminds me of this:

Back when I played often at Foxwoods, a potential investor asked me how much money would it take to give it a full time effort? I explained the problem of game availability at 10/20, and that 20/40 was the smallest game that could provide a decent hourly. In retrospect, I should have spit out a number right then. Instead I went on to describe game availability at 40/80+. I said “but I wouldn’t play that high without $200k.” Apparently he thought that I was asking for $200k because he shot me down instantly and the conversation ended, never to be revived.

Too bad the thread was started by a troll