you cant possibly be this stupid

I won't comment on whether these guys collude or not, but I will say that it would be easy for smart players to collude in an undetectable way. You stay away from the stupid greedy moves that would give you up. One of the safest things they could do is simply share folded hole card information. But I'd bet you could get away with a lot more than that and still never get caught.

What I'm saying is that minimal collusion is still worth a ton in a high stakes game where winning is determined by small edges. If I played that high, I would never sit in a game with 5 dudes who all chat on skype all the time, no matter how trustworthy I thought they were.

yeah I foolishly agreed to play high card out here in Thailand, currently stuck 1100 in it but setting daily stop loss of 500 so can expect to only be stuck like 6k by trip's end, better than those nights at foxwoods

ill flip u for 1200

die

whether they are colluding or not, the 5 player sitting out thing is incredibly bad for the game...

It's obviously a form of collusion and the fact that it's posted openly is very interesting.

If people see this happening, just sit out as the 6th person. Problem solved (kinda).

totally agree, it should be like it was back in the day on ub...one person sits in the biggest game who will play anyone, if someone sits who he dosent want to play, he gets up and gives up the seat...not 20 people sitting by themselves who wont play anyone, people like chung ho have really ruined the game

you are much more likely to get action from fish if you give eachother action and get games started

this is a little off topic but bcans told me they have anonymous hu tables on party...thats really ****in cool, all the sites should do that

5 players sitting at the table is bad but its better than 6 players. Its really hard to do something fair when its only one table and so many regs.

Now we are trying to implement "one reg per table" rule. Нope it will work.

Why does party only open 1 250 table? That is 90% of the problem in that situation.

i think all the sites should only generate one table of each limit, or like one 6 handed one 9 haned one hu, and not generate another until the first one is already in action

It seems they all agreed (via skype) to sit in simultaneously across 30 tables or something which I think seems at least a little bit sketchy, regardless of whether or not stick 'deserved it', imo. But maybe I'm reading the OP wrong.

Wouldn't this quickly degenerate into the table filling with regs all sitting out?

i suppose it would, cant have a perfect world...if they could somehow implement this and make it work i think it would make for much better and more frequent games

having 20 people sitting by themselves who wont play eachother really just looks bad in a number of ways to a random fish who they are willing to play against and swarm upon in my opinion

also people might just start actually playing eachother and getting games started

theres another factor of who gets to be the guy sitting at the top who will take on anyone, it feels good to be that guy and people might just fight for that position, and actually get action going...when 20 people are all sitting who wont play anyone that is lost

the person who will take on anyone and work to get games started deserves to be the first in line to get action from a fish

agreed, insane that that is the standard

I have to chime in and say this thread is very interesting and illuminating. Yes, it is amusing and perhaps satisfying to see stickman "get punished", or lose money, or whatever seems to have happened to him. However the far-more interesting topic that this thread raises is the alarming trend towards soft collusion and anti-competitive practices over the past year or two in the highstakes LHE "community".

I don't know the backstories of jama-dharma, IHateJuice, Brazzmonkey etc. but I am aware they have been quite successful financially over the past two years. They absolutely protest that they never violate ethics-- and perhaps they personally believe that-- but what they are clearly doing is coordinating their actions in and around poker in order to gain edge, and it is pushing the boundaries of honest poker play into a significant gray area.

They admit to playing out of the same bankroll... but only in such-and-such situations and never in a ring game. And one is to trust this when 6- or 7-figures is at stake? They admit to private communication and the use of TeamViewer. Why wouldn't they use this to gain an advantage when the money is life-changing? They know each other intimately in real life. Why wouldn't they play together and share hole card information, reads, and statistics?

I have played in the 250/500 game quite a bit, and I am highly alarmed to now learn that apparently the substantial majority of my opponents routinely have high levels of contact with each other. It is not unusual for 4 or 5 of the names listed to be playing together at one time at a 6-way 250/500 table. There has never been any mention whatsoever at the tables that they are in contact behind the scenes. They know each other in real life, they all communicate on private channels and in all likelihood share information on me and whomever else might play in order to gain an edge. Why wouldn't they? As I said, these are life-changing amounts of money. They might even have admitted to doing it before I wrote this post, not knowing how unethical it is.

I don't think they've broken any specific game rules outright... they are too smart to do that and risk prohibition by the gaming sites. But there is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of it, and that spirit is being stretched. There are countless ways this soft collusion can be exploited-- Heisenberg pointed out just a couple of examples-- and they all lie in that gray area. The only judge of their conduct is themselves; they are already clearly in the gray area, and now all we can do is take their word that they won't descend too deep into that gray area. Sorry, that doesn't sit well with me.

Poker is a game of anarchy. Everyone must do what they can to protect themselves. It behooves anyone playing these games to know what these players are doing and the risks involved in playing with them before you make your game-selection decisions.



PS to DrArpadElo: I put "community" in quotations. As the apparent representative of this "community", could you tell me when it meets? How its decisions get passed and approved? And why wasn't I ever invited to its meetings?

You should know better. There is no community. There are only individuals trying to win money from other individuals. When a portion of those individuals coordinate in order to gain mutual edge, that goes against the individualistic spirit of poker and hurts all the other players who aren't included in the alliance for profit. Just because a "legendary fish" is okay with being soft-colluded on absolutely has no bearing on the fact that these practices reduce the edge of everyone not involved in the alliance, whether they be winner, breakeven or fish.

SuitedAces69

Any suggestions?

The current situation is not alright but many pros are trying to improve it or at least not to make it worse.

And obviously talking via skype and knowing each other helps to communicate and cooperate to keep the game fair and friendly.

For example we have AGREED on skype to have only one pro at 250-500 party poker table.

Im from Russia and i dont share my action with german (or any other) pros and i do play with them almost every day. Have never seen anything shady or suspicious.

I can agree to this too... Wont sit in myself until 0nduspeyl joins.
Had you continued the 5 person thing I would have blocked the table.

Hopefully st1ck respects this as well...

I think this can be maintened, only because the player pool on party of players who dont have much of a "playable" edge on each other at the high stakes is like 9 people... And 5-7 of you guys apparently stay in frequent contact lol.

Oh and the new HU annonymous tables on party do kick ass...

Why in the hell is this PS addressed to me? I'm most certainly not a representative of any community, and I rarely/never talk to other regs on AIM/skype or anything. I'm certain not in any "alliance". I was completely unaware of this jama and co. vs st1ck thing until this thread.

My issue is all this indignation being suddenly spewed forth by people about a phenomenon that happens ALL THE TIME. This "soft collusion" you speak of is constantly being practiced by mid-high stakes regs in every form of poker. But yes, let's continue to write paragraphs long diatribes about it ...

Sure, I'll agree with you that poker is a "game of anarchy". Do you think that in anarchic societies people with coinciding self-interests never get together?

Taken from wikileaks: sometimes me and dr elo will play HU on different tables and exchange holecards....

Go on teables...take money...the f do

I can't believe some of what I'm reading. In the last several months there have been a ton of threads (ok 3 or 4, but that's like 90% of the new threads posted) in this forum basically saying "so and so is a scumbag, he doesn't respect etiquette" or "this is ridiculous somebody needs to do something about X, Y, and Z before the games die!" Now a bunch of smart, winning high stakes players actually take the time and energy to do something to improve the situation in what sounds like a pretty fair way for the pros on party poker, and its suddenly a terrible thing. If this isn't a step in the right direction what the heck is? You can't have it both ways. I don't know a single one of the guys in question, but I applaud them for at least trying.

Not to mention the fact that he posted it all on here in and of itself makes it so much less shady.

What group has the moral authority to define players as fish and non-fish restricting their actual playing possibilities based on the categorization?
How do you become part of the group?

Let's take a hypothetical scenario.

The world's best LHE player insists that he thinks that one of the 5 guys sitting at a table is a fish, for him, subjectively. Would you let him take the 6th seat?

Isn't he entitled to think one of you is a fish and challenge him even if the rest of the elite kids have agreed in their minds that the guy is not a fish?
`
I find this thread very interesting and disturbing.

Some kind of an undefined group is making decisions who is allowed to play and whatnot.

What's next?

I gotta agree that reading this thread has been eye-opening... and more than a bit disconcerting. I don't play that high, but I wouldn't sit in a game if I knew this was happening.

I do have a question, tho. What happens if two fish wanna play? Y'all draw straws to see who sits out? Or perhaps have a quick vote over Skype?