All-In All-In All-In

We had a funny situation take place last night at the Party Poker $5 nlhe cash game. Funny interesting really. I was in the process of deciding whether to take my seat at a particular table that had around 7 or 8 players. I noticed that there was one guy with a stack of over $8 and the rest were under the maximum buy-in of $5.

So I watched the first hand and the pre-flop betting when something like: limp, fold, limp, to the big stack who pushed all-in which then prompted everyone to fold. Big stack takes the pot. Okay, fair enough, I thought, the big stack had a hand and pushed everyone out. Next hand same thing: fold, fold, limp, ALL-IN, fold, fold… Hmm, very strange, 2 all-ins in a row from the big stack.

And so it went hand after hand. It turned out this dude was simply playing All-In poker every hand. It was a bit surreal and it was definitely messing with the heads of the other players. Seeing as I wasn’t actually playing it was a very interesting psychological exercise to see how people reacted.

It took around 5 straight all-ins before the disgruntled commenting started (in French so I couldn’t understand it). 2 people simply upped and left. One guy raised before the all-inner but couldn’t bring himself to call, even when it was obvious he was going in with anything.

Finally one bloke decided enough was enough and had the courage to call, trimming him down to size. After that he was quickly dispatched and within 8 or 9 hands the experiment was over, the money was gone and so was the mysterious All-In merchant who simply stood up and left without a word of explanation.