That's one issue, another is gauging skill levels.

Being good HU is a start, but how many guys make money in one format but lose in another? Plenty of times you see a guy win in HUSNGs but lose in 6 max hypers, or vice versa. While HU is close to 3 mans, it's not perfect, and plenty of players won't treat them differently and learn the intricacies and differences in strategies (specifically 3 handed) and will be more prone to having lower winrates than they otherwise would.

Are you all being serious about teaming on these? Seems like obv collusion... The games are fine as they are (rake could probably be .5% lower but w/e). Yes they're high variance, but that's no reason to start discussing colluding in them. Especially with the current way the tables are started.

might aswell just team up, work on our 3 handed game and suck it dry over next 3-5 years

is % swapping in mtts collusion aswell?

3 handed sngs where you're going to be seated a lot with people in your 'group' is not remotely comparable to swapping pieces in mtts.

surprised more people (stars included) aren't as concerned about the collusion potential here. format is an absolute magnet for it.

col·lu·sion noun \kə-ˈlü-zhən\

: secret cooperation for an illegal or dishonest purpose


I'd say in most cases most people do not have initial intent to collude by definition but I'd say it could become much more of a problem in a 3 Man SnG. Imagine two players from the same "team" bink a chance at a the top prize. You really expect them to not naturally work together and/or soft play each other in an attempt to garner that top prize?

The reason it's not usually as much of a problem in the MTTs is because MTTs are played six to nine handed often and you're not nearly as often at the person's table to begin with in that case.

I've played some of these Spin and Gos and some of the FullTilt Jackpot ones during offpeak times and have had multiple SnGs with the same opponents on each of my tables. Personally I'd feel very uncomfortable playing two people invested in the same profit sharing alliance at the same time in a three man SnG.

Swap partners may agree not to share the winnings in those tourneys where they run into each other (nevertheless, to make official deals when that facility is up) but share the winnings in the tourneys where both opponents are not from the team. This way, there will be no interest in soft play.

right, we'll just assume everyone's honest.

Stars keep an eye on players making too many transfers to each other, so rest assured that extensive integrity checks on their games against each other will be done.

there are plenty of ways to detect collusion and im sure people in charge will be checking everything if some people did decide to collude in some way. Profit sharing itself is what this is about, not coming up with clever ways to cheat.

BTW how realistic are the achievable ROI's from SwongSim? How does one calculate that? Winrates seem kinda optimistic

They depend a lot on one's skill level relatively to the player pool, so I'm afraid they can only be assessed by actually playing a few thousand games and looking at the chip graph.

I've been trying to hear about other people's win rates. Through 1200 games mine is 36.4% win rate, 36.5% cEV win rate. $15 level.

If my win rate stays above 36%, I will definitely keep grinding these. If it drops below 35%, I will drop them. If it hovers around 35.5%, I guess I'll be stuck in variance purgatory for a while.

Has someone posted a formula to calculate ITM/ROI based on chip EV. I think I got it but im unsure :S

ROI=(Chips won/#tourneys-500*0.03)/500 ???

Not teaming I believe, sharing variance was brought up.

I guess if collusion is a concern, insurance could be sold (there were some of those companies selling poker insurance before, though I don't think many are still around).

In any case, there are definitely plenty of guys that would be more than fine just playing regular vs every opponent, whether they were staked/shared bankrolls/were friends with that person.

Obvious examples are that (as mentioned) in other formats like MTTs this comes up plenty and has been handled anywhere from "perfectly fine" to "ok" to "shady" to "outright cheating." Just because spin and gos bring up these situations more frequently doesn't mean they should be treated differently.

Also an important incentive for collusion is personal gain, which isnt really that much of incentive when you are sharing the profit with a group of people anyway. I dont think anybody would risk softplaying, risk to reward ratio would definitely make it -EV. I think alot of times when recreational player loses a big jackpot they will suspect collusion and have the staff review the games.

This is exactly why it should be treated differently. I think most people accept % swapping in MTTs because the frequency that two or more players from the same group play at the same table together is so much lower than it would be in this format and also when they do end up playing at the same table together there are usually 7 or other so people playing there at the same table with them. This all sort of negates a lot of the impact that their collusion or soft play would have with one another and it's effect in the tourney.

Even if two people were trying to play an otherwise optimal strategy against one another there would still be plenty of times they would just naturally pass up on a slightly +eV or higher variance plays at the expense of the third player at the table. I just don't see how this is even an argument and anybody that says otherwise is just kidding themselve.

It wont go on detected as collusion because player A didn't 3bet the the bottom part of his 3bet bluffing range against player B but infact that's exactly what soft playing is in poker. Guys saying that they would go against their teammates with the same kind of stealing and re-stealing frequencies that they would go against a random are just talking in denial.

i just cant see how you cannot collusion if you have some % in a 3handed game....

Heavy collusion in those would be the best way to get rid of them. that would be a blessing.
It s obvious team playing(has sharing variance not colluding) would be an ideal solution to make money in those, the increased risk of collusion is indeed implicit , the main conclusion is no matter what that this format sux

cneuy3 +1

If two members of a profit sharing group are playing a big multiplier then of course they are going to try to make sure that one of them takes it down, OK they can't be too ridic obv about it but do you really think that they will play the game 100% as normal, even if that gives the other player a greater chance of winning? That's not to mention any possible softplay / collusion in smaller multipliers which is far less likely to be monitored or noticed by the other player, but over time would also be lucrative. I assume Stars thought that blind lobbies would largely overcome these collusion type issues however they should not underestimate the resourcefulness of regs to maximise their income and lower their variance.

My guess is that groups (or maybe just one big group) will form because it is obv in the regs' interest and there is prob not much that Stars can do about it as long as they don't take the piss too much. The obv problem is someone binking and not paying up but if you are in it for the long haul maybe this would not happen so much? Not sure about that tho.....

Maybe insurance policies are a better solution all round although its still poss that many of the recs get sick of too many 2x multipliers in a row and go back to their 'normal' games where they lose less quickly.

Stars can program the seating and avoid automatically that suspicious players seat together

You can't really compare MTTs with a 3 handed sng. Even on the off chance that you are sat at the same table as your partner in an mtt you two will not have a significant enough portion of the chips in play (unless it's a ft , then things can probably get a bit sketchy). In these games if you sit with a partner you start with 66% of the chips in the play, and could get even more of advantage.

I don't believe that if two players sharing a roll got sat in a 1,000 buy-in sng will play to win, they'll play to maximise the times that the 3rd player busts first, and all of a sudden they have a 75%+ winrate instead of a 37%.

Unfortunately the way lobbies start atm make this even easier.

So you are saying there is hope? Just like after the Chinese, Stars dropped DONs? Nothing left but pray for more collusion rings and even more reports for collusion.

Ofc they dont - big multipliers alter the behavior of every player, from fish to reg. Mostly they will tighten up a lot. I´m curious how PS is going to judge in these cases as some play could be considered a chip dump (e.g. if someone 3barrels off and gets called despite having no intention of chipdumping) and in other cases where they might look at it as softplay where you fold a hand that might be a push or call...

Actually i think there is, if collusion gets rampent. But by then people will have lost ALOT of money to it. And from what i read, PS never even came close to refund the real amount people lost in these games.

I honestly think with this kind of development in SNGs it slowly becomes time to look for different game formats. The variance in past introduced formats just kept increasing whilst the edge got smaller and smaller for the player (not for the house though). This format is almost lottery like, god knows whats next...

im sorry but other than hole card sharing how the **** can you collude in a winner take all shallow stacked game