I feel kind of bad (and guilty) for the guys who are at the tables every day with a min-buy in stack whom I watch get wrecked by the 4 other regs at the table over and over. It feels wrong to me to exploit these players since I wonder if they have a gambling addiction
I sometimes just give these guys a break by checking it down when I don't have a pair or better.
I can relate to you here ^
For me, cash tables & tournaments are two different things. Years ago I felt bad while playing on cash tables (Fulltilt days) and after easily stacking some donkey I would often ship them their 100bb's back via a transfer. I'd picture them sitting there, feeling totally defeated over & over... maybe down to their last $'s in their account. Certainly not the ruthless type of mindset one might find to be more optimal, lol. I'd also picture them having a gambling addiction.
But for tournament play I don't feel bad or sorry for anyone. I don't experience the same moral dilemma there. I actually focused on tournament play for my first 4yrs. online partly because of this.
Today I play mostly cash & I don't think about it at all. I don't even picture the other players on my table as people... & if I do, I don't picture the 18yr. old kid in some 3rd world county hardly being able to buy into a $5 mtt or some grandma who lives down the street from me, having fun while sipping her afternoon tea while feeling sorry for them when they lose. Instead I might picture some pimply-faced, mouthy teenage punk with his jeans pulled down & hangin' below his arse, hat turned sideways while holding an assortment of odd finger sign languages up in front of his face, sayin' stuff like 'axe' when it clearly should be 'ask' & he knows it. It's much easier for me this way, lol.
When some donk sucks out on someone on a tournament table, I picture someone who hardly even realizes how lucky they actually just got... I picture that old grandma shouting out over to her half-asleep husband who's pretending to read the newspaper "Honey I hit my straight! I knew it was going to be a '4'... "FOUR!!!! Come on FOUR!!!" "