You seem to think that collusion must occur my explicit agreement. That is not the case. Suppose a husband and wife are in the same game. They never sat down together and discussed working together, but they both understand that since they share life bankroll one of them winning is the same thing as both of them winning. And suppose with this understanding .... but no explicit discussion beforehand they play their hands in a manner that is designed to benefit their partner .... to the detriment of the other players...... would you say that isn't collussion because they didn;t actually make an agreement with each other to do so?

Implicit collusion is, as the name would suggest, a form of collusion. I don't think we need to discuss that?

But that probably didn't happen here. browser2920 already said it, that would have been one of the dumbest way ever to collude.

It's a tournament. Which scenario do you picture where none of them ends up with the chips? It's not like someone is taking off chips from the table on the money bubble to have a bigger starting stack next tournament.

Implicit collusion is different thing fr I m what I am talking about.

I am not so sure that this was innocent. I agree it could be... I think I was the first to suggest that guy with aces was afraid of getting cracked.

This very easily could have been guy with aces knows and likes the other player and decides he doesn't want to bust him on the bubble so he shows the aces. You may say that it's dumb to do it this way. ... but I see people do dumb things all night. A ND I have many situations where they openly collude because they think it's legal or that nothing will happen to them.

OP, are you suggesting that the guy with AA should be punished, or the guy with JJ, or both?

In most tournaments, there is a rule against exposing your hand while there is still action pending. IMO, the guy with AA should get a one-round penalty. But there is no evidence here that JJ did anything wrong.

Regardless of the odds, if they guy with AA had a big stack and was abusing the bubble, he may have wanted the short stack to fold because keeping the bubble going would be more profitable to him in future hands than busting the short stack. Inducing a fold here is not necessarily sacrificing his own equity to help the short stack.

At Foxwoods a 1 round penalty for exposing your hand is automatic. No exceptions.

I can't say for sure at Mohegan Sun and Borgota but I think it is true there as well.

I like it where hand exposure results in a 1 round penalty though I prefer that there be exceptions that could get just a warning at the discretion of a Floor (though this is clearly not one of those cases).

While this can be true ... I would not be inclined to think that is what is going on here .... because it doesn't make sense for the guy with AA to raise all in here if that is what he is trying to do. Sure showing your aces may get the player to fold, but you have left him severely crippelled since he was second small stack before putting in half his stack. You have just made it harder to preserve the bubble. If he really wanted to preserve the bubble he probably should have folded his aces after shortstack raised half his stack. Or even called and then folded to bet on a later street.

That's a prime example of soft play not necessarily being collusion. If such a situation arises without the JJ guy knowing anything about the other players intentions or disagreeing with them, there's no collusion.

Soft playing each other is collusion. Soft playing another player without him/her knowing or returning the favor is not.
There might be 5 guys at a cashgame table who don't want to bust the young chick with big boobs. Is she colluding with all of them?

We can argue all day about which words to use.

But I assume you would agree that the conduct whether you want to call it soft play, collusion, are anything else is a violation of the basic rules of poker and should be taken seriously.

Of course I do. But there's one thing that some people apparently don't get.

If there is proof for collusion, both players involved have to get penalized. If AA is "only" softplaying JJ without getting any favors in return, only AA deserves a penalty.
I'm curious if any of the dealers/floors around think otherwise.

I feel soft play is a form of collusion. Because I don't feel collusion requires reciprocity I don't think both parties necessarily are subject to penalty. But I think we agree about the substance and just degree about the label

It's entirely possible to penalize one player for collusion or attempting to collude. I was at the final table of a tournament a few years ago and there was an all-in player and a dry side pot between myself and another player. The other player, who was sitting next to me, leans over to me and says, "Do you want to check it down?"

I said, "I don't think you're allowed to say that, but I will check." After the hand was over, the TD came over and gave him an orbit penalty. I didn't receive a penalty because I hadn't done anything wrong.

It seems like a lot of this thread is arguing over semantics. I think most agree that the AA player's actions were way out of line and deserving of a penalty, while the JJ player didn't do anything wrong.

I think when you say "collusion" a lot of people just assume that both parties are involved, which I'm not sure is the case. As somebody pointed out, this could just be a case of a guy showing his hand because he is "so unlucky" with Aces that he'd rather win the pot now.

Nothing should be done to the player with JJ as you have no proof he's working with the other player in any way (for now), while the guy with AA should receive a penalty after the hand. Poor job by the floor to say there's nothing he can do.

Here is an explanation, although the word "collusion" may not be included:

http://www.chron.com/sports/article/...ng-1619000.php

The guy who showed his AA should have had his hand called dead for exposing.

I don't know why this myth is so persistent, but this should not be a rule in any casino. Thankfully the TDA specifically says in their rules that an exposed hand is NOT a dead hand.

It's not collusion because there is no evidence both parties were involved. If the JJ guy would have said something like "I would have called but you showed AA", then he would have openly agreed to collude with AA.

It's obviously soft playing on AA part.

As everyone said, 1 round penalty for AA. Nothing for JJ

It is persistent because most people repeat what they hear/read without verifying the truthfulness.

How is that openly agreeing to collusion?

Because you can't prove what JJs intent is if he's just thinking and quietly mucks. You/I/no one knows if he was going to fold or call, but if he blatantly says he was going to call had he not seen AAs cards, then he has admitted to agreeing to a situation which gives then both an unfair advantage over the rest of the table.

Here's another example:

Player A goes all in
Player B covers/calls
Player C covers/calls

B then says to C, "let's check it down"
C says nothing and just checks it down

Have they colluded?

Same situation, but instead C answers with "ok"

Have they colluded now?

Completely different situation.

Admitming that you were influenced by information that you weren't supposed to have .... is not evidence that you made an agreement. Nor is it evidence of wrongdoing.

IANAL but i'm pretty sure insider trading is a form of collusion and all you have to do is be influenced by information that was not available to the rest of the population.

don't get me wrong, i'm splitting hairs here, i dont think JJ would ever get a penalty or be considered part of a collusion without more evidence. i'm just talking about in the strictest definition of the term.

actually no, its really not. the harmed parties are everyone in the tournament, not just the player(s) in the hand. they all have a vested interest.

you don't know if player B or C was a complete fish and would stack off to the other, essentially knocking 2 people out. that effects the entire field. this is why in WSOP its a penalty if you check back when you are last to act OTR and you have the nuts - because soft playing effects the entire field

i equate comparing cash games to tourneys and vice versa as akin to comparing the NFL to the NCAA football. there are many things exactly the same but there are enough differences that using one when debating the other can end up being useless in a lot of discussions.

and i agree - in a cash game, OPs situation is not on my radar one bit

I wanted to come back to address this so that you had some more substantive idea why we don't think killing the hand is a good penalty.

What is the harm caused by the players exposing his hand here? Well its that the shorter stack who had a reasonably likely chance of calling all in as a substantial underdog and being eliminated from the tournament gets a temporary reprieve and this harms the other players in the tournament who are denied the opportunity to advance into the money at this time.

So if we kill the AA hand then the guy with JJ not only gets his reprieve but he gets automatically doubled up which likewise penalizes the other players (especially the short stacks).

No penalty you can impose here will make the other players "whole" but we don't want the penalty to make the problem worse.