Over and over I see live 1/2 players make super light "crying calls", especially on All In shoves.

What's the reasoning behind it? Do they think they are being bluffed, or pray their hand has a chance?

Hands like AJ off, calling on a board with A K 10 x....

Or players who can't let go of AA's on the river, when flushes/ straights complete.

Or a small flush calling, when it's clear someone has the nut flush.

I mean, I don't mind it one bit as I make more profit off these players.
But what are they thinking, they can't let go of their good hand even though they KNOW they are beat?

I see this way more often than making disciplined folds.

I've got guys calling with AQ suited or 10/10 on $100 pre flop raises...wtf?

Recreational players come to a poker room to play poker. They like to play hands and they don't like to fold. Folding is not fun to them. They like to call and see flop.

True....they are there to gamble.

Certain hands I rarely see folded are a nut flush draw, calling down anything, even AI to try and hit and AK. Fish love those hands for some reason.

There's a thin line between "fish" and "shark."

There are many "it depends," but as you move up stake, you will see that most winning players are actually very sticky and stationy.

"It's hard to make a pair."

Problem with lowest stake is that people are simply clicking buttons and ignoring everything else.

The really bad ones don't even think about what you have. They just think about their own hand. You don't see too many of these villains any more, but they still exist.

I love when someone calls 3-streets with 88 on 55523 board because they "had a full house". It never crosses their mind that someone has a higher full house. The really bad ones just look at the absolute strength of their hand.

Because it's hard to have a big hand in hold'em and so they don't want to fold when they finally pick one up.

Like you noticed, it's always a "good" hand (even if the board and action make it obvious such a hand is beat.) Fish have no trouble letting weaker hands go even though to a thinking player they would have equal value (a bad player will call with a 3-high flush but fold second pair against someone who would never bet anything in between.) It's because they only think "wow this is a strong hand, I haven't had a hand this good in three hours."

Only against aggro opponents with wide ranges. It's a completely different thought process; they're not just calling because I haz toppest pair!

Good thoughts in the other responses so far. I'll just add that a lot of fish also hate not knowing. If they fold a good hand, it'll bother them that they don't know if they made the "right" move, in a results-oriented sense. We've all seen folds in big pots, followed by the winning fish showing a monster unnecessarily. In his mind, he's being nice by not making the opponent wonder if they were beat.

THIS.

How often have you heard someone say, "Damn, I think you have me beat, but I have to call." Then their 8 high flush gets beat by the nut flush, and they say "I knew it!" as if them being right somehow makes up for losing the money.

People like feeling smart. It cost them some dollars, but they get to still be proud of being right. Had they just folded, they would have a few more dollars to their name, but would instead have nagging self-doubt.

For them a call when they think they are behind is win-win. If they are wrong, they get money. If they are right, they get to bask in their right-ness.

Have you ever experienced what dgiharris calls the "donk fog"? I know I have. You get tunnel vision in a hand, and make a hero call, or a number of bad plays without really stopping to carefully think through the action and your reads before making an informed decision.

For winning players, we call it the donk fog. For recreational players, they just call that "poker".

To be honest, you are over thinking if you ar thinking anything past:

In one form or another, someone who plays badly is playing badly due to lack of information, lack af ability to apply it.

If you have all the information, and you apply all of it all, all of the time, you will *destroy* in the long run. As you slowly take away information, you will see that the player gets worse. Some of it will not be important, but some of it will. Ranging for example is a type of information that stationary fishes don't have (or don't care to apply) so they make mistakes.

What is the specific information that they lack? The strength of the range of hands that their villains are going to bet into them. They do not know that their observant opponents are never bluffing them because they are massive fscking stations.

So, why does any player do anything that he shouldn't?
Information.

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