Perhaps he is playing more to knock out V rather than winning himself.

Can you explain how you would knock out a player without helping yourself at the same time?

It's a lot more more difficult to construct the scenario where you collude by yourself against a particularly player, as opposed to colluding by yourself to help a particular player, which would include softplaying.

But at a final table with significant ICM distortions, you could target a player by employing a strategy that is particularly high variance both for you and that other player. When the bubble factor is high, this will reduce both of your EVs while increasing the EV of everyone else at the table.

I think the motivation is the issue here.

Attacking a particular player because you strategically belive it is the best way for you to better is fine.

Attempting only to take out that specific player because you are trying to avoid knocking out your buddy/partner/or the cute girl would indicate not that you are targeting one player but that you are soft playing the other.

When I first saw this question my immediate thought was that OP was looking to justify softplay by recharacterizing it as targeting the other player.

SIPOWICZ: if they try at the trial passing you off as the mastermind, you tell 'em what you just told us.

When I first read someone ITT about self-collusion, I assumed it was sarcasm. But then people were vehemently defending that side.

You can play however you think you need to to win the tournament if that means loosening up against one player, do it. If that means tightening up against another, do it.

You can also collude on the order-zero "null" graph by first creating a secret agreement with yourself against any number of targets and then removing yourself from that agreement, resulting in a collusion that exists between zero parties but persists because you have thought it.

Gotta say there are a damn lot of sophisticated cheats itt.

As far as I can tell, no one has denied any of what you say here. I certainly didn't take the OP to mean "playing however you think you need to win the tournament". Of course you can do that. The OP implied (for me, anyway) "doing anything you think you need to do to make sure a particular player loses the tournament".

Aah. I gotcha. I interpreted that as being "in on it all by himself".

This thread is boggling my mind. Holy cow there are some strange people lurking here.

What

Can't even tilt away my own money any more? This thread is total BS.

edit: if I'm sitting next to someone who smells, guess how much wider my calling range is going to be when he ships it. Now every SJW snowflake is getting triggered to pieces of course.

The thread is about 80% sarcasm because on the face of the the question seems ridiculous.

If the question is "Is it legal to play one player differently than others" the clearly the answer is yes.

There's a more subtle question though "Is it legal to play against a particular player in a particular way even if it's against my own self interest". That's not so clear.

If I'm at a final table and there are 7 fish and 1 good player I might intentionally want to take a line against the good player that's more likely to knock him out even if it's -EV for me because overall it'll be +EV for the tournament as a whole.

If I'm at the final table and all but 1 spot wins a satellite seat and I'm targeting the one player I'm not friends with. Well that's against the spirit of the game if not illegal.

If I'm trying to take a guy out of the tournament just because I don't like him well that's a gray area in between those other two.

Every time someone takes a toilet break I'm calling the TD. Time away from the table reduces the players EV, thus the player is deliberately reducing their own EV which is obviously cheating.

Expert play is to call the TD and accuse someone who just knocked you out of self collusion against you.

Is there such a thing like self collusion?
Damn,I need to read more..

Do you need a safe space.

I got must moved from a table with rules to a table with Laws. Action was better with rules.

Well I am hilariously bad. No doubt. But I'm not concerned with targeting people because of how well they play, but rather targeting people because of who they are. In that sense Angus is correct, maybe the person REMINDS ME of someone who used to beat me up in fifth grade.

Or you just don't like them for any other reason, ranging from the inherent characteristic to the way they dress to who they voted for. And having nothing to do with strategy of quality or style of play.

Angus: appreciate the bold but prefer [brackets] to be clear on word replacement in quotes.

That is all.

He prefaced it with "Think of the flip side", and brackets conventionally indicate words implied by the speaker, not completely replaced by the editor. So that would be extremely less clear.

You can target people for any reason whatsoever.

I just wouldn't say what you are doing or why you are doing it out loud.

The only time this has ever been an issue at the table was when a white guy was targeting a black man because he was black and then leaned over to tell me about it. I'm not sure if he was expecting me to join him in his racist crusade but I definitely disappointed him.

I used to target obnoxious people at the table but let that go many years ago. First of all it was ineffective. I lost more than I won. And second of all, if I were being totally honest, there are times I would have had to target myself.

If you "target" players by opening up your range and playing more hands against them not because you recognize it as a better srategy to get their chips but because you dislike them you are probably just helping them get your chips.....

To be clear, we are not talking about targeting other players because you think that is the best way to win the tournament. We are talking about targeting another player, to your own disadvantage, because you don't like them for whatever reason.

This is not OK in a tournament. It is cheating. It is exactly the same as soft playing someone because you DO like them. Targeting some players to your own disadvantage is basically just softplaying everyone else at the table.

You should be playing to win equally against every player at the table. Of course, the strategy you take to win against each might (and probably should) be different. But the motivation should be the same.

If targeting a player actually DID help you gain chips, there wouldn't be an ethical problem. We're talking about "targeting" in a way that hurts both you and the targeted player to the benefit of everyone else. You can do this in situations with a high bubble/ICM factor just by creating variance for both of you.

I don't think that is what OP is talking about. To be generous he is talking about trying to take out a specific player ...... that is intended to gain that players chips even if the actual execution of the plan disadvantages OP because his strategy is poor.

Though I still think OP'S real motivation is to justify soft play by claiming he isn't soft-playing his friend or partner but that he was targeting another player .... not that he really is opening his range vs his target.



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If 'targeting' is done with the good faith intent to do harm (in a Poker context) to another player, it is ethical. Even if you are spewing and on monkey tilt, there is no ethical dilemma. It doesn't matter the reason, if your intent is to act to the detriment of your opponent, you are within ethical bounds.

If you knowingly act against your own self interests, whether it be with soft playing a friend, or chip dumping to a friend by playing trash against him, this is unethical.

If I don't like a guy, there is a good chance someone will target him. Some players take advantage of that and act like jerks so that other players will play wider and more aggressively against them. There is no violation of ethics on either side in that case.

And in reality, except in the most blunt and obvious of cases, intentional suboptimal, collusive play is difficult to prove to the point where it can be penalized.

OK, now picture a final table with one black man and 8 white racists who all independently decided to target the black man because of his race. Still think this is a fair tournament?