Hello, I have a question about something that seems to be reaching epidemic proportions on the CardsChat Freerolls lateley: Bluffing into dry side pots.
Over a half a dozen times in the last couple of weeks, I've witnessed players with big stacks bluffing off other players with stacks (read ME!) when the short stack (which is usually dead) is blinded All-In PreFlop. I had spent almost all of my online poker time on PokerStars before joining CC and signing up for a slew of sites (current count is seven). On PS, All-In dead stacks are folded, the hand is almost never live (except when the dead stack has exactly the amount of the Big Blind) On almost all other sites, it seems that dead stacks that are All-In are live to showdown.
My question is; what is the point of bluffing off an opponent rather than taking the hand to showdown with two or more hands to play against a small amount of dead money. Bear in mind that the Blind size was not a significant part of anyone's stack (except for dead money's) and no one bluffing, or being bluffed off the hand would be significantly impacted by the pot. It seems to me to have been just a matter of the big stack saying "if I can't win it, no one can, and I don't care if the dead stack survives another hand".
I find this behaviour infuriatingly counter-productive. Last week, a dead stack on the Final Table of the PartyPoker FR laddered up two spots because the big stack was "protecting" him by raising preflop whenever DM was All-In. The only sensible reason (outside of collusion) that I could come up with, was that the big stack preferred the dynamic of having the dead money around. I'm pretty sure that would not be the reason given if you asked the big stack.
As I mentioned before, this activity has become so prevalent, I'm just wondering if this is some kind of "thing". Did Doug Polk just blog about picking up all the pennies and nickels while the ignorant masses are foolishly trying to eliminate the dead money players and ladder up?