Some idiot said that brevity is the soul of wit.

Hate to break it to you but in Jersey you can be a "stand up guy" even if you're a convicted felon who's disposed of numerous bodies as long as you never ratted out your friends.

That may well be true, but I used it with its definition being:
A good solid man, business man, not one to bull****, can be trusted.

Half of the posters ITT appear to be from the Jersey/NY area, and I tell you that is making me feel really safe. No one is going to f*** with me now!

In London where I am from in the East End of London, and where I live now, we have a similar type saying which is: "He is a diamond geezer" The definition of this is: A good, solid, reliable person.

I'm also not from Jersey/NY. If I was I would have begun my post with "notfornothin".

Touché

I will put you into a game with him, as a social experiment. Lol

Something I have noticed many live cash game players getting wrong is that when they are profiling their opponents at the table they only profile players' playing styles and tendencies but not their personalities.

But it is just as important to also profile all of your opponents' personalities and temperaments, yes because temperament can affect someone's decisions in a hand but mainly because you need to know who you can joke around with, who you need to not say a word to, who you can look slightly pleased about winning a hand against and who you need to have a dead pan neutral looking face against if you win a pot.

If you don't work these things out very quickly you will have a harder time winning and a much harder time surviving in a human interaction sense at the table.

By accurately profiling everyone's personality at the table you will also be popular with nearly everyone at the table, because each person will think, he's an okay guy or a good guy, simply because your behaviour towards each player is what they find acceptable.

If your default behaviour towards all players is being polite and friendly, which is how I approach things, then you will find that this will work with virtually all opponents regardless of their temperament.

P.S. I may not be able to put you into a game with Mike Dentale, although you never know, maybe at some point down the line I will.

^^^the reason 2+2 is slowly dying

Your "facts" are incorrect. He didn't fold for .5 of a blind more; he folded when the SB went all in for less than the BB. The blinds were 3k/6k, and his friend Lilly in the SB had 4k total. She put in the 3k SB, and then when it folded around to her, she put in the final 1k and the dealer announced all-in. Your good buddy with the high morals and fine character then mucked his hand, which contrary to your assertion, was, in fact, against the rules.


Yes, during the podcast, he stated categorically and unequivocally that his fold was intentional and that he did it to help out a friend. (But it wasn't collusion to him because he didn't discuss it with her, lol.) However, in an earlier thread here on 2+2, he acted like the whole thing was an accident and that he would never, ever, cross-his-heart-and-hope-to-die, fold in that situation. So which is it: was he lying then or was he lying during the podcast? Now tell us again how you find him to be such a fine, upstanding man of virtue and good character.

In case you're interested, here's his "explanation" from the earlier thread:

No worries man. I was receiving PMs about escrows and just wanted people to know it was no longer needed. Wasn't trying to make you look bad by saying you backed out or anything. Take care!

In response to DC2LV's post #593

Good detective work and yes Mike Dentale it appears has upgraded his account of events from I mucked not knowing I had any more chips to put in to I knowingly mucked, it's my right to do so, but it wasn't pre-planned collusion. So if we assume the latter version is the correct one then it was soft playing each other to protect each other's tournament lives. I don't condone this whatsoever and you'd think that Mike would rethink this in future similar spots, one because it would always be perceived as soft play at best and collusion at worst and two because of the large penalty the TD gave him.

If and when people do soft play each other in satellites, which again I do not advocate or condone, then I am guessing that there is a point at which they stop soft playing as it would be too transparent that they were doing it, as in the case of the hand in question. So if Mike or anyone else does want to use some kind of soft playing maybe they should pre-agree that at a certain stage soft playing is out, but to compensate for this just swap some equity, e.g. have 25% of each other should they win the seat or win cash from the satellite. I would rather play 100% fair and straight myself but if you are going to cross over the blurred edges of the rules then maybe do it as a traffic offence level violation rather than as a burglary.

People with pieces of each other or straight up friends are definitely often and routinely going to be soft playing each other in satellites and in the actual comps, sometimes because they are unluckily and land on the same table early or mid stages of the actual comp and sometimes as a pre-meditated strategy to gain an edge. I don't condone any form of it and there is a recent piece somewhere that I wrote, maybe ITT, where I explain how I approach things when I have swapped equity with another player. I have never actually been in a satellite situation of swapped equity or with a close friend, but I have in a live MTT.

Regarding any form of cheating, angle shooting or breaking poker etiquette, my view is this, taken from my post on my Mikey_D caricature of Mike Dentale thread: (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...46/?highlight=)

"But you have to counterbalance that in his interview he said "yeah I folded deliberately, it's my right to do so." The admission says something about his character and points to him having some good principles, even if they are not principles that fit absolutely everyone else's.

What I feel we have to consider are two things. 1) That poker is a combative thing and that in combat 100% of the people do not follow "The Geneva Convention" 100% of the time. This applies to all players, me, you and everyone else, not just to Mike Dentale.

The very nature of playing poker for money is unethical, win/attain as much money as possible by influencing someone to make bad decisions that will hurt them financially. This pretty much sounds like an exact definition of fraud.

Add into the mix that many, by no means all, "respected" poker players, in the main on line, have been caught and/or admitted to cheating on a wide scale with sometimes very substantial amounts of money involved.

If confession boxes existed for poker players you'd have to cut down the remainder of the Amazonian rain forest to build enough of them. "

I actually said that my instinct and view based on the podcast is that he is a man of decent values and also someone who admits errors and acknowledges parts of his character that could be improved, so admitting this is a quality in itself. Of course he isn't perfect but I think that we have to consider that when you play in the arena of combat that is live poker you are entering the Lion's Den, so you probably need to be either a lion yourself, a lion tamer, a very fast gazelle or maybe a cunning hyena, otherwise you will get eaten alive.

You are not going to church when you play poker and most players are sinners in a poker sense even if the sin is not an obvious, apparent or detectable one they may be sinning in other ways such as cheating on line, playing on ghost accounts, playing a weaker player's tournaments to close them out when the weaker player has gone deep, bot rings, card sharing in on line PLO cash games etc. The list of types of misdemeanour is huge as is the list of players who have been caught/admitted doing these things, plus those who haven't been caught.

Are players using HUDs on line cheats, are players using push/fold apps in live comps cheats? Everything in poker is ethically blurry IMO.

Mike Dentale is not my good buddy, I have never met him. I have never been in the USA let alone NYC or New Jersey (sorry, Jersey!). I lived in Toronto for 9 months but lazily never made it over the border.

But yeah I would buy him a drink if I play at the Borgata or in Vegas some time because I think he is okay. For me he is part of the regular fabric, if you will, of what you find in and what makes up a poker game. He is not a boring personality like many people in poker are, and yes he appears to have a wider range of behaviour in his spectrum than most. But I actually like that. I like interesting people who have depth to them.

Indeed if you look at @mikeunbelievable it says in his bio "Most days I'm Bruce Banner and some days I turn into the Hulk." which probably says it all!

So when I play against him, or more likely have a beer with him because we are at the same venue I very much hope to meet Bruce Banner!. Let's face it though, everyone has the Incredible Hulk within them to a lesser or greater degree, and remember that the Incredible Hulk was a force for good as well as a great blessing for shirt manufacturers!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea1GFf7Iwlc

How about "Mike is a rationalizer and a liar and can't be trusted to be ethical, even though he has some charisma."

You have to be pretty naive to trust a poker player to be ethical.

Now that quite a lot more info has surfaced does anyone know what the latest line is for the match. It feels like Mike Dentale should now be a slight favourite over Cate Hall based on his declaration that he has played loads of heads up and doesn't want any coaching.

Projecting much?

What is your point?

My point is that the vast majority of poker players are quite ethical or at least no less ethical than the general population. The scumbags use the "o we're all liars and cheats, no big deal, this is poker" line to justify their unethical behavior.

One only needs to consider NVG headlines to realize this isn't the case..especially if you take into consideration that the vast majority of improprieties in the poker world are never reported here or anywhere else for that matter.

My view is the opposite, but without a proper scientific study being made into this we cannot know the answer.

I actually said that I behave ethically within the rules when I play poker, but I also assert that two, or a million wrongs, making a "right" is a valid point to consider.

Just take one simple example, that of players using push/fold charts, and now push/shove apps on their phones during live tournaments. I believe this is unethical (and therefore a form of cheating) because they effectively are getting a bot to play some of their hands at ~<16BBs when some other players at the table do not have the bot.

You might say that they could get a bot themselves if they wanted to, but perhaps they are not aware of its existence or availability, so there are for sure some players in a live MTT that as far as they are concerned are playing against an opponent who is using their brain alone and no additional software or mathematical aids.

Barny "The Humour" Boatman recently Tweeted this:
‏@barnyboatman
"I think with 10 bigs or less, you should be allowed to leave a shove-fold chart in your seat and go to the bar."

That's like making broad generalizations on "people" from National Enquirer headlines or "The Jerry Springer Show".

True enough. Although, I have thousands of hours of experience at the poker table with these people too.

One might reasonably say that if poker players are not unethical per se, then when they are in the act of playing poker they have a tendency to become more unethical.

As Dream Crusher said there is a volume of anecdotal as well as witnessed evidence of a high frequency of unethical behaviour by poker players, when compared to the known about or anecdotal volume of unethical behaviour within other industries.

If the baking industry had an equivalent forum with an NVG section, I wonder how many threads there would be about bakers under injecting the correct quantity of jam into doughnuts or on a gardening forum a gardener sneakily using artificial plants instead of real flowers in a client's garden and then punting the money he's saved off at roulette.

You could argue poker players are given more opportunities to be unethical and get away with it, so a higher % are revealed to be unethical than in other fields, but that doesn't necessarily prove that a higher % are unethical. For example, it's a lot easier to welch on a gambling debt because you can't really take it to court. Also, you could argue if someone is a gambling addict they should be treated similarly to the mentally ill, so them committing a crime would be less a reflection of their lack of ethics than if a healthy person commits the same crime, and the poker world has a disproportionate amount of addicts compared to other fields.

virtually everyone everywhere is trying to screw you, we've just made a game of it

It would be pushing it but you could also argue that the avg poker player is under more stress than in other fields, and someone "isn't their normal self" if they are stressed/desperate. Like if you took an unethical poker player and put them in a less stressful career, they may be all of a sudden not appear unethical.

you should really work on your mental game (not trying to be a dick.)

dentale is in fact great at tilting people and tilts a lot himself at which time he spews like crazy. usually makes for a great table.

i don't think i've ever left a table with him (unless i got must moved) bc even if he's playing "well" he has so many people off of their game.