Not Quite All-In

[vexvelour]

I've been playing poker online for about 6 months now. I recently found a great site to play on and have focused on playing tables on this site alone. In my small limit NL games, I'm starting to see a trend that I never noticed on any other site and I'm wondering if this is a new thing or if its the players on this site.

Players will go ALMOST all in... say they have 1750 chips and they'll bet 1600 on the river. To me, if I have a hand I believe is winner, I'm just going to raise the MF'er all his chips and force him to re-think. This is a sign of weakness to me, he's saying "I think I have the nuts but I'm not gonna put both feet in the river." So of course, I'm gonna make him do just that. Lately though, it's been a friggin trap for the nuts to get all his chips in. This is driving me crazy, and totally screwed with my theory on this. Anyone else find this? It pisses me off.

[fnord_too]

This is in tournies or cash games? Pretty goofy habit, but if they are varrying their play enough to leave you baffled with this play, I would look to when they DON'T do this.

That is, if this little trick is with a marginal hand 50% of the time and a monster 50% of the time, do they pull it every time they have a monster? If so, you know when they don't have a monster, which is great info.

OTOH, if they mix up all their play and adjust to your adjusting, give some consideration to the posibility that they are tricky/good and maybe the games are not as soft as they appear.

One other thing I just thought of, on some sites the slider is kinda screwy and it is easy to only get almost all in. I think royal vegas is like that, damn annoying when you mean to push and realize you left a little in your stack.

[vexvelour]

I find this mostly in tournies, because it has a more drastic effect on chip stacks. I have found it used in cash games and once I see that, I go to another table. The problem lie in the touney games where I read this bet as being weak... I bet, and lose even more. Before I can put this move on a particular hand I'm short stacked and unable to put it to the test again.

The funny part is, about 70% of the time I'm correct. I can steal a huge pot because someone got their hand caught in the cookie jar. It's just this 30%, not a frequent occasion at all, that usually gets me good because of my 70% being right.

This site has a "max" button (read: all in button) and no slider so I know that this isn't the case. It's a sneaky move that I am still trying to understand. Thanks for your input, I appreciate it.