You say it's thin like the guy even knows what that means. Terrible players make calls like this sometimes and it's why I lose a lot of value when I play by checking too many rivers =P

It means I am capable of empathy and getting into the minds of bad players, which I use to my advantage at the poker table. I haven't disputed that it is a bad call. I just dispute that it is a completely and utterly unreasonable and illogical line of thought. I see many players make similar calls with a straight on the board hoping to chop and I really don't see any difference between doing that (another bad call) and trying to call in this spot.

You're probably also losing value by not bluffing in small pots against players like Rush17.

That is absurd! =

Good point. And not to get too strategical or anything, but a pretty good way to combat checking too many rivers is to pretend that there's one more card to come. I know it sounds odd but if your betting patterns/tendencies are pretty spot on for the most part up until the river, you might just be experiencing the feeling of "relief" that the hand is over. I think most of us lose our focus that you have throughout the whole hand on the end, I really do. Pause for three seconds and see if that helps. I make way more bets now on the river and the numbers are staggering. Of course I'm talking about the not-so cut and dry hands where you know you have the goods; I'm talking about all those other spots where we need to think about things a little longer, a little deeper. But w/e.

I never understand the psychology of losing players, especially chronic short stack gambling types.

Playing at a deep 1/3 game the other day, a really nice, funny, young black guy was losing his shirt at our table. He was all decked out in expensive tattoos, trendy clothes, diamond jewelry everywhere, wasn't drunk, but kept losing 100$ buyins left and right and laughing at himself over it. So he's stuck for at least 500$ at the game, buying 100$ at a time and he finally decided to take a seat change directly to the right of the biggest stack on the table. He buys one last stack of red and proceeds to call off 50$ of it on the next hand. He picks up another hand and announces "okay, time to double up and get out of here!" He plays the next hand , gets it all in and loses. Stands up, thanks everyone for the game and leaves.

I'm left thinking, what makes this guy tick? Losing must make some people feel just as good as winning, and I just don't get it.

Maybe he's there to kill time/have some fun and $600 has no more value to him than $6 has to your or me.

A lot of people do not play poker specifically to make money. Like slots or table games, they play to have fun. They hope to win, but expect to lose. They almost certainly have more fun losing than super-serious poker players do grinding out a few bucks.
This is no more "absurd" than playing any -EV game for fun, or spending money purely for entertainment. (When was the last time you won money at the movies?)
I wish there were a lot more of them in poker...

Don't get me wrong, I love gamblers! The game wouldn't exist without them. I just can't get into that mindset where losing is fun. I've lived in Vegas for ten years and have probably played less than five hours of blackjack, never played dice, and maybe play 20$ worth of slots or vid poker a month while waiting for seat in a poker game. Poker to me isn't a gamblers game, but I'm happy to take that money.

The fun for recs is playing and being excited about the prospect of maybe winning.....same as any gambler playing any game in a casino.

I'm sure none of them actually consider the losing part fun though its probably money they've already written off from the moment they sit down.

Before the poker boom, I'd go to Vegas for a week just to bet sports and play table games and video poker. You get used to fast paced action like blackjack and then when you play poker it seems dreadfully slow. Plus at blackjack, you're winning hands almost half the time, but at poker you'll never win at nearly that rate.
I would agree that players like the one described approach poker with a table game mentality. I remember my first casino poker experience was playing five card stud with a three dollar limit in the early 90s. I was hopelessly bored within minutes and couldn't wait to burn through my fifty bucks so I could leave the table. I had to educate myself a lot about poker before I was able to try it again a decade later.

I doubt he is sitting down expecting to lose but clearly the few hundred didn't seem to be a big deal for him...for all any of us know, he does that a few times a week and walks out having doubled or tripled up more often than he loses.

The simple reality is that not every person sitting down at a poker table is looking to grind out a few BB per hour. Some want that quick double and, as others note, treat poker as they would any other pit game. If they win, they win...if not, no big deal. In the meantime, they had fun.

And who cares what makes them tick...they are good for the game and love when they sit at my table. Yeah, variance will be all over the place, but long-term...they are good for the game.

When I first started playing, it was a 5-10 club cash game. (Life roll was like 2buy ins, now its about 3, so yay me on that).

One night there was an ep raise, everybody calls and on my bb I go "well I got position, so I cant fold". The btn looks at me"what u mean position. U act first after the flop"

"I mean position preflop, duh", says me shaking my head in contempt.

was the JJ9JJ hand omaha? otherwise wtf are people saying one player had 5 high? in NLHE in this spot one player has the nuts and the other is playing the board, i.e. he has four-of-a-kind jacks with 9 kicker. not 5 high.
and in many conceivable scenarios, villain's range is such that there are many splits that might bluff (pocket pairs below TT) and his value range is polarised (even king high, e.g. KK, will often check here).

small contribution so that i'm not only posting negatively here:

local casino 1/2 a few weeks ago,
quirky outlandish degen limps directly to my right,
i make a big isoraise with KQ (i had been isoing and opening a ton),
rest of the table miraculously folds, which disappoints the limper, i guess he wanted to limpraise vs one of the whales at the table.
so then he flips over AK and asks me: ''chop-chop?''
i agree, we both take our chips back and split the blinds between us. (pretty sure this happened, although thinking about it again it seems quite strange. does this even make sense?)

$100 in the pot, 5 players, flop is 345. P1 checks, P3 bets $50 out of turn. P2 shoves for $75, P3 is allowed to take the $50 back/fold, every body else folds. P2 shows A2

Well done.

If i was a multimillionaire i would definitely call 50bb raises with ATC. It's pretty fun you can try it on play money pokerstars.

While dealing a tournament down in a casino I work at, two players got it all in with AK of spades against Queens preflop. I ran the board out - AK won when with the flush after spades hit on the turn and river.

A player at the table not in the hand said "You know, they say Ace-King and Queens is a race but that's nonsense. Queens are way ahead of Ace-King there. You only have six outs!"

I couldn't help myself and under my breath said "really," which I don't think he heard because at the same time another player started to question him which prompted this response:

"Of course when he turned that fourth spade, then he was in good shape."

I shared a "did we just hear that" look with the other player, shook my head and dealt the next hand.

He most likely never seen flop like that and he didn't realize quickly enough that kicker is crucial here.

Sorry, board, not flop.

I'm such a nit, I even play tight when I fool around with play money.

fyp

Fwiw i took all my own action anytime i playe irresponsibly. When i played for others i did well

Was playing 1/2 at Bally's AC. I raised with one limper to $8 with 78o and it folded around. I have basically been doing this all day from every position with ATC, since there were only six people at the table and they were all rocks. The big blind starts bragging about how he folded ATs. I tell him what I had and ask why he would ever fold that to me. He says, "because when I'm in a pot I want people to know that I have something good."

2/5 Aria today, one fishy MAWG and one semi oblivious OMC are in a decent sized pot together, around 300$ Heads up. Board runs out with the obvious straight to queen, there were two clubs on the flop where most of the action was. Fish turns over and announces 2 pair on the river with QJo, OMC mucks his cards while the table stares at him, mouths agape, but silent. The cards hit the muck, the pot is being pushed and OMC says "oh, wait!! Oh no!!" Fish says, "yeah, I was pretty lucky there" and happily stacks his first real pot of the day.

Geez... This game is weird.

Finally some really absurd thinking.