Board Game Arena

Folding on a free check is obviously absurd. In many years of playing live and online, I don't think I've seen anyone ever do it anywhere else. But bizarrely, lots of players are doing it here on BGA. I've seen at least four players do it in the games I've played today, and one did it five times. I've never seen anything so ludicrous.

Why on earth would players on BGA do something so ridiculous that nobody else on any other poker website does it?

It's a combination of poor interface and inexperienced players.

If it was the interface, you'd think they might say in the chat that they misclicked wouldn't you? And surely nobody could fold on a check by accident five times in one game. And yet I've been in several games where players have folded multiple free checks.

When someone does this, I always ask in the chat why they would fold a free check. Nobody ever replies. It really is extremely weird.

It is simply inexperience. You cannot compare BGA with a poker website (or even more so with live play). This is a general board game site with 1000+ different games. On a poker website you can expect people to be invested into the game of poker and know the basic strategies.

Here you can play poker and you do not even have to know if a straight is higher than a flush or the other way round, i.e. some players even dont know the full rule set.

If you have to find out everything on your own you might well start with a strategy "fold with bad cards, bet with good cards" - and then you simply fold with bad cards without looking on the pot or what money was already bet at the current hand...

Could understand an occasional inexperienced player doing this. But it has been happening in the majority of games that I play. I always ask why people have done it, and I've had one single response from someone who said it was a misclick. Nobody else has responded.

In all the other games that I've played on BGA, I don't think I've seen anything similar. I do assume that people don't play games where they don't know the rules at all, and my experience at all other games supports that idea. If I was playing a game I didn't know, and someone asked me why I'd done a certain thing, I think I would at least respond to ask why they were asking. The sheer frequency of players folding on free checks and then simply not responding at all when asked why is truly weird.

So although I think that inexperience and accidents could of course account for some folds on checks, I can't see how they would explain the extraordinary frequency with which it is happening. But until someone who is doing it explains why, I have no other theories.

OK, well, someone who just folded instead of checking five times responded eventually to my increasingly incredulous messages. They said:

"Why continue when it's not worth it? I'm not going to invest when I don't have anything good"

I pointed out that checking is not investing anything; they did not respond.

I think that anyone who plays games of any kind knows that throwing away a hand for nothing is a bad strategy. So it still doesn't make sense to me that ignorance of the specific rules of poker would somehow make someone ignore this much more general principle. But there it is, there are apparently lots of people playing poker here who are prepared to throw away their hands for no reason. It irritates me immensely to see anyone playing in this ridiculous way, but it certainly makes it easier to win games.

Open fold should be disabled or button changed to check/fold for remainder of hand
Players open folding does impact hands Multiway. If early position open folds, middle bets then late positions can reraise more safely then there is no fear of checkraise or a cold call from the EP

If you open folded EP bc you didn't want players to see your hand, at that point there maybe should be an option to muck your hand instead of going to showdown if it checks thru river

wrldtrvllr wrote: ↑02 January 2026, 12:22So although I think that inexperience and accidents could of course account for some folds on checks, I can't see how they would explain the extraordinary frequency with which it is happening. But until someone who is doing it explains why, I have no other theories.

As I mentioned earlier, it's because of the combination of poor interface and inexperienced players. Have a look at this screencap: https://snipboard.io/9TO5Ie.jpg It is checked to me on the turn, and what does the action line say? "You must call, raise, or fold". It ought to say, "You may check or bet." There is a blue "Check" button there which of course I can click, but if I had never played poker other than on BGA, I'd probably pay more attention to the instructions saying that my three options are call, raise, fold.

Here's another example, where I am first to act on the flop: https://snipboard.io/r1szOp.jpg Again the text misleadingly reads, "You must call, raise, or fold". It would be better to delete that text entirely, since it is so wrong. (There's no bet so I cannot call and I cannot raise!) But there's your explanation for why you see so many folds when nobody has bet.

• https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=39837 (currently 5 net upvotes)
• https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=115308 (currently 4 net upvotes)

I've folded a free check out of frustration. But that's just me being angry at a crappy. Though if asked, I'd probably say sobering to that effect.

But be happy. These folds are "money" in your bank.

Are you playing synchronous or async? If it's async, I'd probably fold a hand I didn't want to play out - it takes me out of the sequence of play so things can move faster and I don't have to be bothered reexamining a game I already know I have no interest in playing until the next hand. No need for the other players to be waiting for me to fold my 2-7 hole cards.