The All-In Shuffle

In general, be it early in a tournament or playing cash tables, there are a lot of players online that feel shoving all their chips in the pot pre flop is a good strategy. Can even be a post flop shove, though in some cases that makes more sense. The way I see it, these players can't really play poker so they eliminate their need to think a hand out. Their money is all in, now watch the cards fall and see what happens, like the lottery numbers or bingo balls.

The math here is that eventually, no matter how strong ones hold cards are when employing this method, the odds will go against you. This means the odds are that the all-in player is eventually going to lose most, if not all, of their chip stack (money) using this strategy. They may build some chips up, but the good players will chip away at them. The all-in player is easier to read, they will not limp or even 3-bet when they have a monster hand. They will not call or raise aggressive bets based on position or value to call, only based on their hold card strength.

Post flop play is not their strength, so when they wait to attack post flop they are easy to trap plus also easy to get away from. They think their play is brilliant, not realizing how much money they are actually losing or leaving on the table this way. In their mind, anyone that calls them is a bad player. Every time they win they are mad at whom ever called them. And when they lose, they seethe in-side and can not believe how bad other players are that call them.

This is not to be confused with calling an all-in shove when you know you have the current best hand. Unfortunately the same results apply at this point. Regardless of the quality of the hold cards one chooses to play, when you are all-in then the odds are what you are up against. Unless you have the absolute nuts already, consider protecting a good flop versus finding a way to induce a bet which the other player feels pot commits them afterwords. I just made this error, hit my straight on the turn but the other player had 2 pair and would not muck to my over bet. There was so much in the pot, that when the board paired on the river, I was pot committed so called their all-in river bet with the last of my chips and saw they caught a full house. Had I bet enough to put them all-in on the turn they would have called me anyways. I will just update my notes and make sure I eventually get them to commit when they do not have a way out.