how to deal with 'all in' merchants?

[madasahatstand]

do you ever sit at a table and get the one person who needs to go all in? no matter what 'all in, all in'. it initially gives me a buzz and im thinking, patience, just bide my time and ill get a hand. when i do call with say KK, AA, it appears that 9 out of 10 times (or so it feels) the fish wins. it really grates me at times and i feel very fraustrated or go the other way where i just get down and say whats the point? i must say that my spark has went out of poker recently and i dont know if its just that ive not had a big win in the last couple of week?
i hope it returns

mad

[RED-DOG]

To cope with this you have to get past the frustration of being outdrawn.

I love an "All in" merchant on my table, I know that sooner or later I'm going to get my chips in against him, and that I will be favorite to win the pot

After that it doesn't matter what happens, I've done my job and got my chips in when I am in front

Learn to appreciate the good fortune of having an "All in" merchant on your table and believe in the math

[madasahatstand]

thanks red but its when they get so lucky and take all my chips that i get fed up/ i lmpw the odds will be in my favour though. i shouldnt grumble because i am also guily or having good luck even with bad odds. well done last night/this morning. sorry you went out. i learned the romany words for good luck last night from your wife. its wonderful the teaching that goes on here

mad

[thetank]

The laugh of it is when you make a stand with KK and the merchant flipa over Aces! Then you outdraw them and watch them go looooooooooopy. Complaining about their bad luck when their strategy is to all-in every hand 

[madasahatstand]

yip ive been there too tank. now thats sweet justi ce

[byronkincaid]

http://www.jazbo.com/poker/huholdem.html

[Sark79]

I am a very cautious player and perhaps a little bit boring. As I don't have a great deal of experience, I try to play mainly how the poker books suggest. Over time I will develop into a tough opponent I am sure, but for now it is a learning period.

Up untill a few weeks ago, these all-in players really confused me. It is so alien to the way I play, I just couldn't figure it out. I went on the internet and read lots of sites dealing with the best way to play these lunitics. To begin with, I actually thought these people were reading my hands and thats why they kept moving in on me. To find out I took a stand. One particular player was a regular at the limits I play online. So next time he raised me about 70% of my stack, I called him. He flipped over  J,3 offsuit. The board didn't help him and my hand stood up. Now I know he is just a lunitic or like my friend says about crazy players ' A Big Balls Player' meaning they are really brave. I think they are just foolish.

Now I feel alot calmer when at their tables. Like Red-Dog said sooner or later all your chips will go in, and you will be favorite.

good luck

[thetank]

It's more the full table all-in merchant that I think mad was on about byron. QTs will not do quite so well against 9 random hands.

Good link tho

[suzanne]

I was playing an STT the other night that had 3 or 4 allin merchants on it so I sat back and watched them knock each other out till there was 4 of us left with me fairly low stacked.

Something came up and I had to go so I said "Sorry guys, got to go, I'm all in every hand"

The first 3 or 4 hands everyone folded, then one by one they called my 83 v QQ, 92 v AK etc and I was winning every hand.

As you can imagine the air was blue with "How could you go allin with that f**in rubbish etc"

It was very very funny 

and yes I won it. 

[byronkincaid]

If someone is going all in with any 2 and you're last to act what difference does it make how many people there are at the table?

[madasahatstand]

byron

so these odds are the same whether here are 10 or 2 players in? wouldnt the odds lessen if more folk were in  the hand?

mad

[Indestructable]

Do what I do, wait for a premium hand, go all in and get knocked out. Happens every time.
 

[Royal Flush]

If someone is going all in with any 2 and you're last to act what difference does it make how many people there are at the table?

It does make a diffrence, the more players in the hand who fold before it gets to you improves the chances your oppo has a hand.

If you are 10 handed on BB and UTG moves all inf or the 10th hand in a row, there is no way anyone is passing AK AQ AA KK QQ JJ TT 99 KQ hands like that, so once evreyone is folding, the chances that ur oppo has a stronger hand increases as the deck gets heavier in rich cards.

[byronkincaid]

If you are 10 handed on BB and UTG moves all inf or the 10th hand in a row, there is no way anyone is passing AK AQ AA KK QQ JJ TT 99 KQ hands like that, so once evreyone is folding, the chances that ur oppo has a stronger hand increases as the deck gets heavier in rich cards.

James, you say that the the chance that UTG has a strong hand is increased cos everyone else has folded. Does that mean that if UTG folded as well and it's folded around to SB who goes all in we can expect him to have a very strong hand? I'm sure I've read this about this theory before and IIRC Mason Malmuth said the effect is so low as to be negligable. I could be wrong tho.

I read the original post as to be the opponent was going all in every hand which means that the page I linked is of some use enabling you to know what % of the time you can expect to win as our opponent literally has a random any 2 card hand. OP didn't say what position they were in maybe they were SB/BB?

Mad

Of course someone going all in every hand  is unlikely in real life (unless it's me in a $5 sng blowing off some steam). What we can do is work out our chances of winning against a range of hands. say for example matey is going all in 25% of the time, so presumably he is pushing his chips in with the top 25% of starting hands. We can use a program called pokerstove to work out what equity we have against his top 25% hand. Say we have 88. we have 53.5% equity against his range. So we are slight favorite to win and if we are in the BB we are getting slightly better than even money so it is mathematically correct to call. This is an easy call then in a cash game but perhaps not if you are on the bubble in a major tourney.

Poker Stove is a great way to learn about all in situations and as it's free you'd have to be mad not to have a play with it

http://www.pokerstove.com/pokerstove/

[thetank]

Of course someone going all in every hand  is unlikely in real life

Someone needs a wee visit to Glasgow