So if the board is AKQJT no flushes, and you check down you get a penalty lol?

This is a wacky analogy but here goes.

There is a law against murder because murder is wrong and those who commit it should be punished.

Some murderers get around the law by being clever. Others are found guilty of murder even though they didn't mean to kill someone or were doing it in self defence.

The law against murder doesn't punish all murderers.

There is a rule against checking/flatting the nuts in position on the river because softplaying/collusion is wrong and players who do that should be penalised.

Some players get around the rule by being clever. Others are penalised even if they didn't mean to softplay or they were doing it by accident.

The rule about not raising the nuts in position doesn't penalise all colluders.

It's not there to catch everyone, it's there to send out a message: softplaying and colluding is wrong. By getting rid of the rule it endorses checking the nuts behind because your opponent is a friend.

I hope this is true. After all, I did say logical reason.

Not all hands are HU on river.

If a hand is misread, knowing the rule would not change anything.

I am not arguing that this rule is good or should exist or that it does much at all.

Want I said was:
The only thing you have done to change this is to make the post count higher.

No, because there are far more ways players can collude by speaking other languages than they can collude by checking the nuts heads up on the river. Two non-English speaking players can potentially collude every hand, whereas the "being heads up on the river in position holding the nuts against a specific player with whom you wish to collude" only occurs rarely.

FYP.

I'm certain there are far more cases where someone checks the nuts in position because they don't realize they have the nuts, think they have the same hand as their opponent and betting would be stupid, or they want to see what their opponent has, vs the times they're actually colluding with a friend.

You don't seem to realize that checking the nuts in position != softplay. If you want to use your murder analogy, remember that murder requires intent. A law that states "killing another person is murder" would be terrible since it doesn't include intent in cases like manslaughter, accidental death, and self-defense. Killing another person is not always murder and is sometimes legally justifiable, with good reason.

Are you saying that they should only have rules about things that come up commonly?

I haven't seen a fouled deck in years.

This is not a reason to remove a rule. Are we trying to save the WSOP some ink or something like that?

I guess you fail at logic then because it doesn't get more logical then:

"The rule doesn't accomplish the intended function and it only forces fish to play correctly"

The OP made a legit complaint for all the wrong reasons so I don't agree with him but it's a legit complaint never the less.
I'll agree with him on one thing though:
A lot of level 1 thinkers itt.

You failed at this:
Plus, I'm not sure you know what logic is.

I see fouled decks all the time and I don't even play live that often. In any case, how long as this rule been around anyway? I haven't played live much in the last few years, rarely watch poker on TV and most of my live play is O/8 anyway, but I'd never heard of this rule until a couple days ago, so it's certainly not a rule that's been around for long, in which case my argument would be "that's not a reason to add a rule."

Actually, his post was one of the few in this thread that actually made sense. It's threads like these that remind me why I largely retired from posting to poker boards post-poker boom, it's like Eternal September all over again.

First, if you see fouled decked all the time, you need to find a better room to play in. (If these are in home games and they can't keep the decks straight, I'm sure you are raping the game. So, continue as you were.)

I'm not sure what you are saying "that's not a reason to add a rule." about.

I learned about this rule from this thread so, I can't help you with the length of time the rule has been around. I'm sure the length of time a rule has been in place is not a reason to remove it.

Now, I did not start a thread about adding a new rule to the WSOP. I did not come to this thread and argue that this rule should be in place. What, I did do was read this whole thread and realize that not one person that was arguing that the rule should be removed used any logic that didn't have major holes in it.

I do not care if the WOSP keeps this rule or removes it.

But if someone is accused of Murder they go to trial. Each accused murderer is judged based on the body of evidence in their individual case. Having a law against Murder is a good thing. Saying everyone who kills another person should be penalized the same would be a bad law.

Having rules against soft playing and colluding is good, I'm pretty sure everyone here agrees with that. Having a blanket rule that everyone who checks behind on the river should be punished the same is a bad rule. TD's and floor people should have discretion to judge each case on it's individual merits. If it's clear that the player was not softplaying or colluding they should not be punished.

I can agree with this and I think these words are in the WSOP rule book:

"in the sole and absolute discretion of Rio"

But, maybe I'm wrong about that, too.

This WILL be the last time I post in this thread and I will leave you with this:

If next year the WSOP were to make a rule that on day four of the Main Event all players will have to wear a red shirt, I'm sure I would also see some of the people itt standing outside of the room arguing that the rule does not make sense.(NOTE: THIS RULE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!) But since I won't see how this rule hurts the tournament, I would be walking to my seat wearing a red shirt and GG & GL as I walked by.

It's not the worst analogy I've ever heard. The argument that I was generally trying to present is that players should have the liberty to act the way they want to, unless there is a reasoning behind not allowing them to do so. I feel like play, as far as collusion goes, should be innocent until proven guilty. This rule acts as a preventative punishment against those who may or may not have been colluding. If the probability that they were colluding was so great that it was obvious to everyone involved, I may have a different argument. But in this case, I am trying to present that there are so many alternatives to colluding, not only is this one inferior, it doesn't make sense.

I kind of think about this situation like the movie Minority Report. People walked around town doing their business with good intentions, then all of the sudden get arrested for doing nothing. Whether they may have done it or not is up for debate, as is evident later in the movie. Spoiler alert, at the end of the movie, all of the supposed offenders are let go because there is no proof that anyone has done anything wrong.

Right now, we are in the stage of guessing who is guilty and who is not, based on this new rule, like precogs. Once we realize that our thought is faulty, and contradictory, we can live happily ever after with Tom Cruise.

If by "fouled deck" you mean specifically when there are duplicate cards or something like that, it's not very common at all, but I've always thought it was also a fouled deck if the dealer accidentally drops the deck before the hand is completed, I've always called a "fouled deck" and I actually saw that twice recently, once because the dealer didn't realize that a player still had live cards and another time a drunk from a nearby table actually fell into the dealer and knocked her over (I was near enough to see the commotion.) I'm sure I've seen someone check the nuts in position recently but it was certainly so innocuous I didn't think it was collusive.

I've seen more weird procedural crap in the last couple months than in many previous years of live poker but we just got new rooms in eastern PA with incompetent dealers and floor staff. The oddest ruling I heard was the dealer and floor said that the odd chip goes to the first player to the left of the actual casino dealer and not the first player to the left of the dealer button. Maybe I need a new room to play in but the games are good.

Perhaps we're talking past each other here, but IMO the status quo shouldn't be "there's new rule in place so there needs to be a good reason to remove i." Rather, the status quo should be "we need a good reason to add this new rule." If the rule was just made a couple months ago as I suspect it was, I'd still consider it a "new rule." While you might not have seen any good reasons to remove the rule, I haven't seen any good reasons to have it, either. I thought I detailed decent reasons not to have that rule in my first post, but you may disagree.

In any case, as long as there's a "at the discretion of the floor" clause I don't really have a big problem with the rule either. I had more of a problem with some of the ridiculous arguments made in this thread, i.e. "anyone checking the river in position must be cheating." I think there are way too many people that read these boards who've only been playing for a year or two and assume everyone else is as competent with basic poker strategy as they are, i.e. they're shocked when someone folds the river for a bet of 1/10th the pot or scream collusion when the BB folds to a small raise from an all-in player.

I would rather see a rule where everyone has to wear a red shirt on day 4 because that won't offend the fish, in fact the fish would probably find the idea more amusing than the regular players. Giving a fish a penalty because he misread his hand and didn't realize he had the nuts, or because he passed up betting the nuts "just to see what the other guy had" is much more likely to offend a fish.

This is an excerpt from the coverage of this issue on the Hendon Mob's "You are the tournament director" feature. I would encourage everyone to read the full article linked below:

"Soft playing your opponent in a poker tournament is cheating. It is the responsibility of each and every player to play each hand for their own gain. By soft playing a relative or friend and particularly by not knocking them out you are cheating every player that is left in the event. It should certainly be punished but it can sometimes be hard to police."

http://www.thehendonmob.com/tourname..._the_nuts.html

When Matt says "Would I do anything to Player A who checked quad Queens? Unfortunately no because he could be check raising." - this is what discredits his ruling. He is basing his rulings off of the royal flush player's intentions, but only within the scope of this hand. This is actually a pretty good example for my argument of abolishing the rule.

Soft playing is not necessarily applicable. I know it seems like it's soft play because he is not betting here, but you simply cannot prove it. There are two scenarios that apply here that the player with the royal flush may have been implementing.

First, he may have wanted to see the quad queens. Given, the quad queens probably wasn't folding, but this observation is subjective, and thus invalid. If he checks, he is not playing soft, he just wants to see what the other player was playing and get information for future strategy.

Second, you don't know the stack size of Player C. Even if we did know it, it would be subjective for us to judge whether or not the royal flush player checked in order to abuse the third-to-second money bubble jump. It does not matter to us how short Player C's stack is, the only opinion that matters is the player with the royal flush.

From Matt's specific words, it sounds like he is a little trigger happy on the penalizing. If there is any possibility that a check on the river with the nuts is strategy, you cannot penalize the play just because you didn't think of it. Penalties that deal with non-basic thinking are the hardest to enforce. It's only a matter of time until someone rationalizes a reason for doing what you just made illegal.

Ezzwo, for an arrogant prick who acts c.ocky you don't show a lot of intelligence.
There are no pros while there are 2 big cons for having this rule.
I never mentioned a second con but I have to spel out everything for you I guess.
Here it goes:

Why this rule shouldn't exist?

1.
It's useless.
There already is a general tournament rule that says cheaters/colluders will be disqualified if caught.
This silly "Mustn't check the nuts on the river" rule addresses only one of many spots where collusion/softplay can occur and can be bypassed easily and in many ways by colluders, therefore = useless.
Basically, there are no pros for this rule.
Someone itt mentioned a pro for having the rule and a con for not having it:
This quote is very important for the point I'll make later so I'll get back to it, for now I will only say that the message that colluding is wrong is common sense and it was sent with the general tournament rules.
It's not only wrong but it will get you disqualified.

But even if the rule is useless some of you need to hear cons or logical reasons as to why we should scrap what looks like a "it doesn't hurt anyone rule" to you.
Reasons 2 and 3 are the cons so I'll get to it.

2.
It forces fish to play correctly so it eats into good player's EV.
Darwin Moon's hand is a perfect example of this.
Because of this ******ed rule Moon and any fish that know about the rule is a better player now, think about that next time you have a calling hand on the river against a fish that has the nuts.

Here is the biggest con though:

3.
This rule eliminates the only spot where a player or a dealer can actually detect softplaying.
Unless there are holecards cameras and all hands are analized by experts to detect collusion, colluders/softplayers will only get caught by players/dealers that are on the lookout for those things.
Players police the games themselves.
The only way players/dealers will ever detect and have an evidence of softplaying is after a showdown.
This means that without this silly rule in place a colluder might slip and check the nuts on the river, which will alert the dealer and players to call floor and investigate for possible collusion.
So this dumb rule actually helps the cheaters, it alerts them to avoid the only spot where they might get caught which is fine for them, they can just muck the river or muck on other streets.

So why would tournament organizers implement such a ******ed rule that actually helps the case of colluders instead of preventing it?
Well, there are 2 possible answers:
A. People who made the rule are level 1 thinkers themselves.
B. People who made the rule are very smart and made it to put level 1 thinkers (like the dude I quoted) at ease.

I wont go deeper into B), I'll let you think of reasons for yourself, I'll give a tip though (catching colluders and cheaters is EV- for any poker room life or online,it reflects bad on poker in general and it costs them customers, they seem to follow a moto "What customers don't know wont hurt them"

Horrible rule.

If you have never kept a weak stack or player in to abuse bubble/pay scale...well, you are not as good as you think you are.

I think Geniius(op) is spot on.
Scrap the rule.

GGK

If you going to collude but you have to bet the nuts in the river IP you can just bet the min.

In the specific example given, they said, after player A checks the nuts in position

"Player A is dating player B’s sister."

And the hands in question are quads vs a royal. Talk about a contrived situation LOL! I assure you that I and most of the other people critical of this rule are well aware of what soft-playing is and are certainly no fans of soft-playing. There are simply far more cases where someone checking the nuts in position is doing so for reasons other than soft-playing.

The responses in that thread make me want to tear my hair out--no wonder there are so many bad TDs these days. How in the world can you possibly penalize player A for slowplaying quads and possibly going for a check-raise on the river when there's certainly a possibility that player B was soft-playing player A without player A's permission!

I remember a few years back Mike Sexton had a piece of several players in some tournament where he was the TD (I think a Party Poker Millions) and quite a few TDs had no problem with it or figured Mike was "just making an honest error in judgment" because they were all friendly with Mike. Interesting that when the players in question are the anonymous "player A and player B" that the TD consensus is that player A must be cheating as well.

Judging by the length of the "penalty" that Moon received, I think that even the floorperson who handled that situation realized the reasoning behind the rule didn't apply in that case, as it was clear Moon wasn't colluding with anyone. It's as if she thought, "Well I know he didn't check behind to save his opponent some chips, but I still have to apply SOME sort of penalty." And sitting out for one hand is virtually nothing.

Which is why the rule is stupid if the floor doesn't realize that an innocent check behind doesn't deserve a penalty. Some of the rules post-poker boom are just so idiotic... like the "f-word penalty." I've been at tables where one player's been harassing the dealer and the other players and the dealer and floor ignore it, and then someone says under his breath while contemplating a call "What the **** could he have?" and the dealer immediately calls the floor and the floor issues a warning. The ridiculous extension of the rule is that several years ago, a friend of a friend told a story about someone who got a 10 or 20 minute penalty at a tournament for using "****" in a story he was telling a friend WHILE THE TOURNAMENT WAS ON BREAK.

Edit: I forgot 2+2 went all nanny-state since I last regularly posted here; the *s in the story above are "the f-word."

he proceeds to check the nuts, then slowrolls the guy cos wants to see his hand. this guy is a class act haha

i think TD should start introducing better penalties. ie. posting dead money + sitting out