[maryfield48]

Be mindful of projecting your motivations on to other people. People don't play for the same reasons you do.

I have some habitual donators at my weekly home game. These are all friends, and the stakes are not big enough to hurt anyone that badly. My only worry is that they go on a long enough losing streak that they think about dropping out of the game. The following comments are of course based on my experience, and YMMV.

I have realized that they regard every hand as a lottery ticket, with greater or lesser chances of winning the jackpot. They will stay in with a gutshot regardless of pot odds, in order to have a chance to win the pot. Any application of pot odds is done in the grossest terms - such as "The pot is big, I have to call", or "That bet is too high, I fold". There is certainly nothing like knowing a gutshot is 10 to 1 and using that knowledge in deciding what to do.

We play dealer's choice, and the weakest players almost invariably select Omaha-8. I recently figured out why - it lets them stay in the game longer, and it awards two pots for the price of one. They don't think they have any advantage at O/8, they just like winning pots, and more pots = better.

The other day we played a mixed game tournament, and I noticed that in the third rotation, playing Stud, the players were folding much more readily than usual for just one bet. It was four-handed and I kind of wondered why they had gotten more cautious when I thought they should have opened up. Then one of the players said something to the effect that people weren't willing to stay without a hand for $150, unlike in the first round when the bet size was $25. The fact that the $150 was at that stage a smaller percentage of their stacks than the $25 was at the start didn't seem to matter. It was the absolute size of the bet that mattered. This in a tournament, where the chips have no cash value. I found it a very revealing comment.

I've strayed a bit, but bottom line is, what your friends are looking for when they play may be to have fun and drag a few pots (the longer the odds the better), without much regard for the final result. Admittedly the size of the losses is greater (in absolute terms) than those that occur at my home game, but if they're not losing their rent money/child support/other essentials, then it's just the price of entertainment to many casual players.