This is my first thread here, be nice plz.

Over a year ago I used to run a game at my college about once or twice a week, and I was primarily being helped out by a "friend". Over several sessions (40 hours or so of volume), I realized he would quite literally win all teh munniez, cashing for about ~80% of the money on the table...and we were always at least 8 handed! + All the hands he won massive pots with were cold as f***. He's an extremely bad player, and I know for certain that he was a mechanic because when I eventually bought cut cards, he had the most scared look on his face before play...and went insta-busto as soon as cards were in the air. He NEVER had a losing session before that.

Here's the point:

He was cheating at the game because he wanted to make money.

I wanted him to stop cheating at the game because he was COSTING me money, and I knew I would bust him for all he's worth if he WASN'T cheating.

What's the difference between us? Absolutely nothing. We are both deliberately seeking edges to take money from other people. From a poker "rules" standpoint, I am not getting out of line. But from a morality standpoint, it seems like its exactly the same. To make my point perfectly clear, here is a bastardized example...

Who's more out of line? A card mechanic, or a poker player who only plays with people who have down syndrome?

Any arguments against my mentality? Someone prove me wrong and turn me into the happiest bum hunter alive plz.

hardly offers a chance to make an intelligent comment here.
its a pretty plain situation.

Well I'm trying to figure out what's the ethical difference between a mechanic and a hard core bum hunter. If there isn't one, then /thread I guess

I think the difference is based on consent. He agreed to play in a game with a cut card, but you had not consented to playing in a game against a mechanic. You can't consent to play in a rigged game if you don't know it is rigged.

WRT bum hunting, if I go play against Phil Ivey and continue to play against him even after he takes buy in after buy in from me, I've consented to playing against someone who is clearly better than me. Maybe I'm doing it to get better, or because I want to say that I played against Ivey, or maybe I'm just a masochist, but, for whatever reason, I have consciously accepted the risk that a better player is going to beat me.

Now, if I'm underage or severely mentally challenged, you can argue that I lack the capacity to consent, but as long as I'm a consenting adult, I can be bumhunted, but I shouldn't have to play against a mechanic.

What about the people that think poker is all about luck and are willing to put stacks in with gutshots for 2 hours straight? If they're delusional, you can't really call that consent right? I mean...it's not our fault they don't know better, but it's our fault for deliberately choosing to play against players like those isn't right?

In poker you are allowed to beat bad players but you are not allowed to cheat. TBH, I don't understand how you could even make this thread.

Its just that the act of bum hunting and cheating are both predatory. I believe in this so much that I don't even practice table selection. I just try to adjust to whatever table I am seated at...whether its full of fish, sharks, or a mix of both. I guess you can say I'm trying to find a reason to bum hunt without feeling like I'm on the same level as a mechanic.

I think that everyone who sits down at a poker table should be able to operate under certain basic assumptions:

- you can assume that I am going to try to win your money
- you can assume that certain rules will be followed wrt the number of cards dealt, and the manner in which community cards will be revealed.
-you can assume that we are playing with a standard 52 card deck and that cards will be randomly shuffled and dealt to each player.

If one player has deliberately altered some aspect of this agreement without informing the other players, then the players cannot give informed consent to participate in the game, and the cheater has unethically deprived the players of this info... If on the other hand, the other players are simply overestimating how well they play this game, the bum hunter has not done anything to conceal this info from the weaker players, so he has not acted unethically...

If you feel the way you do, I'm not sure that logical arguments can or should change your mind, but don't you acknowledge that the entire game of poker is predatory in nature? Our profit comes directly from the mistakes of others, right? I mean, the fundamental theory of poker is based on the idea that we can profit only by manipulating our opponents into doing something that they would not have done if they could see our cards...

The thing is...in other games that don't involve money (sports, video games, etc.), skilled players are constantly trying to challenge themselves by facing strong opposition, since weak opposition would seemingly be a waste of time and a good player would accomplish nothing by just beating on a weaker player.

We as poker players seem to constantly try to play against the bottom of the barrel in regards to skill level just to make another dollar. Idk it's hard to put into words, but I wish more emphasis in the poker community was put towards challenging ourselves, as opposed to going after fish with deep pockets...it just seems more ethically sound and respectable.

It would be nice to see more winning sessions end with the words

"I just owned that reg's soul"

as opposed to

"LOL THAT DUDE IS A F***ING FISH"

Yeah I mean...this thread does seem pretty dumb, cuz if it was only regs battling regs, then variance would be sky high...and fish is a relative term anyway and can obv apply to "regs" depending on who they play against. But when Epic Poker was first announced, I thought that was the coolest thing ever. It's like they're saying if you suck, GTFO...instead of...heeeey buddy, there's a seat open for ya!

OP, if you're trying to say that you're uncomfortable w/ the dark side of poker I can understand but if you're going to play you have to play the whole game. Game selecting to get into the better game, the more profitable game, is a very important part of that. So just do it. If it's any consolation most rec players don't care that you think that you play better than they do. They are there for their reasons and you are there for yours.

I thought Epic was a cool idea also, but remember that in order to get the pros to play they had to (a) offer up huge overlays/a freeroll in order to compensate for the tough competition and (b) run a satelite event to ensure that some weaker players would still make it into the field.

It sounds like a lot of the pleasure of the game, for you at least, comes from matching wits with people who you consider to be as good as or better than you... If so, great... But if poker were just about the strategy, then we'd all just be playing for play chips...

One last question... If you won the lottery, went to Vegas and asked your favorite pro to play you in a high stakes freeze out, would you consider them unethical for accepting the match?

I guess not, since I asked them for the match.

Another question:

If very close members of your family wanted to play a cash game for large sums of money that they themselves couldn't afford to lose, would you play at that game, knowing they have no idea what they're getting into once you sit down?

Jesus, no one said no yet? That's concerning.

I don't think a poker player, even a bum hunter, ever really necessarily misrepresents himself. A card mechanic almost certainly does. If there's a major difference it can probably be found here.

There are extreme levels of bum hunting and extreme levels of sketchiness that aren't necessarily against posted rules but are pretty much the same thing though. I myself look at "trick betting" (things where you aren't negotiating a price or condition but simply trying to trick the opponent into drawing dead) as on par with arranging a deck though many people would disagree. Your downs syndrome example might also fit the bill.

Also, there are reasons other than moral ones that make cheating a worse decision than advantage play for most. If you're just looking to feel good I basically agree with your op (first paragraph here being the small difference) and can't help though. You're stealing. It's a cruel world.

If it's any consolation you probably do plenty of things that you'd find just as or more unethical than your bum hunting if you really thought about it.