[2HighIsTheNutz]

With you all the way kriskris911 and nitemare6. My previous posts sum up my thoughts, which are pretty much exactly in line with yours'. Went back to FTP after winning consistently at PokerStars to see if I could still see a difference. Just did some fake money games and freerolls, which I know aren't the best source of competition, but in the later stages of freerolls and the high buy-in play money there are decent players. Just hilarious to watch. It's so obvious where the skew is you can practically call the outcome when people turn over their cards after an all-in. If PLAYER1_STACK > PLAYER2_STACK then PLAYER1 WINS else PLAYER2 WINS. That simple. I think this bias is what has trained players to move all-in with air in the first few hands, because it's critical to gain a chip advantage early. Otherwise you're going to lose no matter how good your cards are.

There is often a similar series of events for chasers. Bad players tend to call a flop bet no matter what, hoping to improve on the turn. Good players tend to take a lot of factors into account to make this decision, and so fold more often when they determine the situation is -EV. Say a bad player has two suited rags. If the flop comes rainbow, for example, and a bet is made, they will call almost everytime. Say the bettor has middle pair or something, they might be inclined to probe bet or something on the turn to figure out if they're up against top pair and minimize their loss if they are. If the turn card makes the bad player one away from a flush, you can bet the farm they're sticking around NO MATTER WHAT. Either they will a) go all-in at this point hoping to scare you off because even if they don't they still could catch or b) they'll call any size bet to see the river. I'm not saying anything you don't already know - the difference is that on FTP that MIRACLE RIVER CARD COMES WAYYYYYY TOO F**KING OFTEN. I mean, it's a ridiculous chase play and even if the pot odds demand someone stick around to try and catch, the simple statistics say this should only work out for them <20% of the time. Rough guess, I'd say this kind of situation works out for the donkey chaser about half of the time. Even more if they've got a monster stack.

The fact that so many players do this kind of miracle chasing on FTP supports the idea that it works out more often than it should - in a honest game you'd learn not to do it pretty quick.