Ok assume this is FR and the other 8 or 9 are not at all interested in attacking each other unless this helps defeat you (how?) (but of course they can play against each other if they are forced to , however they are not interested in destroying each other the moment you are out of the hand is my point) . They simply dont care to take money from each other because they all say belong to the same company, group, family whatever. But they do not communicate or cheat in any other way . They dont have signals etc . They just only want to defeat you for as much as possible. This is not a freeze out , you can reload as much as you want. They too can do the same.

Assuming that in a regular set of such opponents that play normal game you have a decent winrate of 0.2-0.1bb/h.

What would happen if they all focused to attack you ? What would happen to the game and your winrate? How would they best play to achieve that? Is it possible that you can still remain a winner?

0.1-0.2 BB/h is a god awful winrate.

If your winrate in a regular game is that low, you probably won't be able to properly respond to them shoving blind every hand, which I would imagine will destroy you.

Yeah whats a 0.1/0.2/h? Does that mean per hour or per hand?

I assume it's per hand in which case we're talking 10-20bb/100 which is 5-10ptbb/100, very good but possibly attainable in a weak live game.

h= per hand obviously

The 0.1-0.2b/h is big on purpose to show you are good. I want to see if they can change that.

It depends more on their absolute skill then their skill relative to you. I don't think it's appropriate to discuss how to collude/soft play effectively.

edit: If they're decent you'd get crushed.

They would isolate against you, playing only strong hands, not drawing hands. If one entered the pot, another would only enter if she thought she had a stronger hand than the first player, in which case the first player would fold (or if the first player had a really strong hand, he would reraise and the second player would fold).

If they did this too mechanically, it would give you a lot of information. So they would mix it up with some deception as well. But basically, you would find you were usually playing versus the strongest hand at the table, and making small profit from dead money in the pot from folded hands.

If you knew they were all working together and they couldnt signal then you could just adapt to their system and use it against them.

Unless they used the data they got from eachothers hole cards. Like, if four Aces and three kings were dealt out between the 9 players, they would figure AK is a dead hand. This would give them an advantage.

I think I would welcome a cash game table that was all against me.

When you stipulate that they aren't allowed to signal or share information it makes it nearly impossible for them to get any kind of advantage.

I'd be happy to play at that table just as much as any other, just so long as there's a player sitting that's weaker than me.

this is untrue because theoretically it's basically one player versus one player except one person almost always has positional advantage and gets to choose from 8 hands as opposed to one, this is heads up situation described where the actions of the 8 are irrelevant to one another and it boils down to hand selection and position.

True enough you play in some sense against the best of them with them not caring about making errors against each other but since they cant communicate they dont know who has the best hand so this will often generate extra chips in the pot. So yes you are against a spectrum of better hands on average but they have added to the pot by the time some have to step out and its not clear the edge of the better outweights that extra pot boost. Also you clearly can select when to attack them (maybe even exploit the errors they do against each other somehow) and you can be appropriately strong but you dont have to be extra strong since you can exploit also the fact they will not try to get each other out in an effort to have maximum edge against you . At the same time if they are not chasing each other out they are certainly keeping each other in and this also helps you when you have a good hand and also allows them to have draws why not? In fact they will allow each other to draw out nicely and its only your own draws that they are concerned with.

So far i am not convinced either way and i would like those that think they can crash you to show how because i dont find it particularly self evident. But maybe i need to think about it a bit more.


Oh and by the way regarding concerns about not being a good idea to discuss such issues here . I absolutely disagree vertically! This is not easy to define as soft play. They may play real hard against each other once you are out for all i care and good luck showing this is soft play then. It is an issue that can arise naturally in the game without external collusion and it may be therefore an implied collusion a kind of natural evolution of the game over time if the players understand they cannot defeat you in any other way but that they are similar in skill to each other with you out. It is an inside the game development and a very ethically neutral approach to it . Why not? Is humanity unethical? How do you think the rise of our civilization took place? How can an animal that is not at the top of food chain eventually dominate a planet over thousands of years? Too many animals have an edge agaisnt us even today including bacteria and viruses but not against the totality of us. So is our edge unethical? Would it be better if each one of use went alone even today while attacking nature? You may think its not the same but i radically differ. If i can find a way to reduce the winrate of the best player in the world and others conclude without external agreement to converge to such style of play over time then there is absolutely nothing wrong with it , it is a strange attractor of the game itself! Would i want to play this way? No i want to be the best! Its very simple. I will not tolerate to settle for anything else. But there is absolutley nothing wrong with knowing what can happen either way. This is the core of free thinking and science itself. In a natural game a smart player will know when to exit because this has started to happen. So the discussion has merit simply for the fact it can be a challenge not a cheating activity in a casino or an online site where good luck with actually getting 8 others to coordinate this way and play always at the same table without the site observing them closely for it! But even so if 8 people in a table of 9 do not communicate and naturally develop a way to play that reduces their loss rate or improves their winrate why is that unethical? I really see absolutely no philosophical basis to render this unethical. Is this more unethical than anyone of us winning players entering a simple low stakes game to essentially print money? I am sure its a perfectly clean discussion.

Incidentally if there is a cooperative strategy that doesnt violate the rules of the game and renders the winrate of the best player neutral i consider this a dramatic development and the end of poker as we know it at least for those that get it. Of course i want this to be proven first but i will remain interested either way until it is shown that the good player has exit strategy that secures his superiority regardless of how others play in the absence of communication signals.

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I think in a game of that nature, you'd find yourself getting squeezed/3b a TON. How easy would it be for it go fold fold fold, raise, hero calls, villain 3b, original raiser ships, everyone folds? I don't know how post flop would work because it's more complicated, but I think you'd get pretty boned.

To prove the cooperators have an advantage, it's enough to prove that they would play differently. In a normal game, with each person maximizing their own expectation, the solo individual has a zero expectation, assuming equal skill and no rake. If any player does anything different as a result of being part of a group, that has to be to the solo individual's disadvantage.

Group member 1 opens the betting and solo individual calls. Group member 2 has JTs and would normally play the hand because it's multiway. But since he only counts as advantage money he wins from solo, not from group member 1, he folds.

It's easy to come up with poker situations in which a player acts differently if he counts only winnings from one player versus all winnings in the pot. Therefore, the group must have an advantage. It doesn't prove that the advantage is big, of course, only that it exists. I happen to think it's very large assuming the group are skillful players who have thought about how to exploit their cooperation.

If all they care about is busting you they should just all open jam every hand. You'd get it in soo good but be busto soo fast

Except that even if you do the same, one time in N+1 (if there are N other players) you'll win everything. If you wait for a good hand, you'll win even more.

Wow, you really are dumb.

Prove it! Do it now . I challenge you from 157, oh and a life of ethical conduct that hasnt made me expert in cheating for some things to be self evident to me if they are to anyone that has learned the game in the streets or the night clubs unlike me. But i resent you for reducing the thread to your statement after quoting me without a slight contibution.

Ok.

QED

Stop being a squirrel , man up and come out and say exactly what someone can read and find of value otherwise remain a nutbuster in search of unity.

You think its cheating so i said to you if someone experienced with cheating or devious forms of playing poker (because this indeed requires a deviation) finds such methods obvious then its not clear to me coming from a clean past how and to what extend (although i disagree this that i described is cheating since it can obvioulsy arise naturally similarly to checking down an all in player in tournaments or other forms of behavior near satellite bubbles)

So your so called QED is a null statement/replacement for logical constructive ones.

Feel free to say what you think without selecting personal attacks that are uncalled for.


All i ask to you is this simple thing. If according to you they can crash you why is it such a bad thing to discuss such things and be prepared? Isnt it to the advantage of a good player to be aware of such patterns and any countermeasures so that he can spot them? Why does the discussion hurt poker? According to you maybe we shouldnt find the theory behind quantum mechanics because of risk of hurting the world with bad applications.

I'd hate to ruin the joke by explaining it. But for the record I never intended to make a constructive argument.

I guess SQU and anyone else not looking with open mind such thread you are imagining a case where people have already decided to attack you in advance and have therefore created all kinds of arsenal available to them like exactly what fraction of the pot to bet when they have a particular type of hand to signal each other (and certainly much more lethal body language if live) etc. But i am talking about a naturally arising sequence of events that doesnt start from prearranged tricky agreements , just the decision to stop caring about local mistakes they do against each other if that somehow hurts your winrate. I have no doubt if i had a predetermined way to bet when i have sets or big hands in general the other guy would simply try to grow the pot to give the solo player the odds to call in a totally wrong way and trap him that way or raise it after he had just called to give the chance to the first player to strike big etc. But they cannot communicate and they cannot know in advance anything. Now over time sure its possible that they can start communicating inside the game with patterns repeated but then obviously such information is available to the solo player too if he/she pays attention.

It remains not clear why they can crash you still. Since you never intentioned to produce anything creative i dont mind i am sure others will eventually as we understand the game deviation from normal game better.

In the end we could realize this project by having 8 bots playing agaisnt the human all identical to each other. Clearly they can engage in all kinds of cooperative behavior to attack you and because of the symmetry of the problem their winrates eventually will converge to a common one as a result not having to care about even belonging to a family or corporation of some type. All that matters is that they have designed a way to play that victimizes your winrate which would have not been possible in a normal non deviant game. I personally see nothing wrong with such naturally arising behavior. The problem is if it can be shown that the bots eventually will take you from a winning player against them to a losing one by engaging in the kind of only partially soft play that is very hard to actually identify as illegal.

The motivation from hunting rituals of ancient tribes is evident. All hunters take risks attacking the animal say a mammoth and maybe one produces the critical hit but they share the benefit. Sharing here doesnt have to be part of splitting the profits so to speak after the game (like some criminal group) but of a statistical nature because if they all engage in the same style of play that changes your winrate over time they will all have the same result against you and each other. And this is why this problem is interesting. It is simply asking whether a modification of the typical each one for himself type of poker can lead to a dramatic development like reversing ones winrate against somewhat but not inept inferior opponents. That way bots can defeat humans eventually in a way that develops naturally even if they cant directly one to one . There is nothing absolutely illegal or unethical about this . It is simply a very intriguing development. However i am so far unable to produce analytical arguments either way. Thats why i created the thread to see if people can provide examples of strategy that achieves that.

OP theres a couple things I see wrong with your argument....

1. If your beating the game at 10-20BB /100. That likely means the players at the table have massive leaks in their game as it is, and probably aren't really thinking about the best way to exploit you by themselves much less together.

2. Can a group of players get an advantage on you that are working on a "combined" bankroll or in other words "working against you", yes absolutely yes. Not sure what the point would be, anyone that's willing to put you in a "hot seat" (i believe that's the term when a group of cheaters invite you to a home game where everyone else is against you) they are typically willing and capable to do alot of other methods to get an advantage over you which include but not limited to: stacking the deck, marking cards, signaling/colluding. And if you suspect that players are all playing against you, you need to get up and get out of the game as soon as possible.

So ... again I don't see the point of your questions.... either 1 they are going to "band together to beat you" in which they aren't going to adjust correctly anyways and might end up dumping more chips your way in the process, or 2. they are willing and capable to do anything they can to gain an advantage over you and its not worth your time in that sort of game.

maybe i dont understand what your talking about, but theres no way u win if they just open push every hand allin.

Rather than get hypothetical with my answer like others seem to have done, lets dumb it down a big.

In theory you state that somehow everyone at the table had it in for you, and you alone. They basically only play back at you, and if u are not involved in the hand they are checking down, not really playing poker, etc.

Rather than trying to figure out the impossible which is would a star player still be able to beat that game, lets focus on the reality.

No one (especially a good player) would continue to sit in that game. It just doesn't make sense. There is CLEARLY something wrong with the whole scenario which means any intelligent player would simply get up and find a different game which is EASIER to beat...lets face it, we all LOVE MONEY!

May all your 2 pairs fill up and your flushes be straight!