100%

Possibly this too, as well as a whole bunch of other scummy **** against the TOS.

Yeah I've heard that some stables bring in the heavy hitters to play games when someone gets in a high multiplier

I can't speak for other stables but I've certainly never seen it brought up and never gotten the feeling that anyone is soft playing me. Unless players are going to the effort of sharing winnings or something (which wouldn't make sense in terms of time/effort unless it's a high multiplier, which is obviously very rare) there's very little incentive to soft play anyone, even ignoring the fact that it's against TOS.

In terms of hand sharing most groups probably do it on some level. It isn't hard for individuals to buy HH databases for cheap from certain well known sites either. Having access to a large amount of HH is less of an advantage than it might sound, if only because it's impossible to target specific players in spins.

All stables are ghosting, i know one where owners only grind 10x+ multiplers, all from horses.

Come on and out them then, what good does it do in improving the ecosystem if you won't do that

This seems a slightly lesser issue in the long run than HH sharing (though both are disgusting). Surely, it's unpleasant when you lose 0.3-300 BIs worth of equity to ghosting in a 10x+ (assuming that your 1st place chance falls by 3 percentage points), but as 10x+ tourneys are rare, the damage to the overall ROI would be just 0.3 p.p. if you always ran into ghosts (mind that you'll sometimes get 2-fish, thus ghost-free, 10x+ games). Meanwhile, if your ITM in all tourneys falls by 0.2 p.p. because of HH sharing, the damage to your overall ROI would 0.6 p.p. if you always ran into the horses of that stable.

I'd expect ghosting in high multipliers to be virtually non existent beyond maybe room mates, but what do I know.

As a staker you'd have to be doing it so systematically to realize any edge, and every stable has people who leave unhappy and would love to out anything unethical like that

I know for a fact 100% sure all stables sacrifice a kitty at the start of each day. A kitty for each member they have of course. Disgusting.

+1, turnover in these groups is fairly large, there'd be people who would out then for sure.

The only way it might be possible is if the stable is very small and there's a high level of trust between the players (for example, if the stable is 5 mates who know each other in real life). Otherwise there's too many people in the know, some of them leave the stable, tell their friends etc...it would come out.

anyone good enough to have significant winrate difference would be busy grinding their own high hourly not sitting around on call all day. can't imagine a business model of ghosting multipliers being max ev, much better for a stable to efficiently provide top coaching

If the owners reside in the US, the hourly from their own play isn't great as the highest stake available to them is $40 and it's packed with regs.

I agree, though, that the coaching gives a bigger EV boost than ghosting.

If the owners reside in the US, it's even more -EV to try and ghost on Stars via VPN / TeamViewer or whatever. You think Stars won't notice such shenanigans on a million dollar jackpot? A legit excuse reason not to pay is a wet dream for them.

I think the punishment applied to a ghosted player is independent of the location (US/ROW) of the ghost coach.

Also, recall that US residents can observe real money games the same way as ROW ones. So a plain Skype call, even without screen sharing, suffices for ghosting (as the horse can read his hole cards out loud).

So about the only reliable way to detect ghosting is to look for a systematic change in gameplay patterns. It takes many games to notice.

This subject of ghosting and ethics has come up which is interesting to me. I parted ways with a stable, supposedly amicably, but I chose to feel that way as I would not want to feel too negative. I am in the UK. I chose to play with a stable as I was sure that my game had leaks and the prospect of being raised systematically to the higher stakes seemed a good opportunity?

There were definitely occurrences both in relation to me as "horse" and then to the player pool, in big multipliers that were perhaps questionable.

From a BR of 50 bi I won 300 bi at the 7s and then with 20 bi at the 15s I won again about 300-400. Admittedly I hit the jackpot at the 15s! Didn't win though

After handing over 50% I was then told to get a new computer. This was a good % of my winnings. I was playing though, on an 8 yr old mac laptop with 13" screen. Then basically after getting slightly messed around with coaching, down swinging slightly on a new computer (sounds crazy, but it was real, the difference in OS) I was cut after losing 20 bi at the 15s.

Contracts were brought up that didn't exist with me during the relationship. I would have been happy with working to a contract that I agreed with...

The 300 bi at the 7s were won at app 80-90 cev 4 tabling and the 300-400bi at the 15s were at 70cev for the first 500 games, also 4 tabling, before things went awry. I was told I wouldn't be expected to play at the higher stakes.

It's not a complaint. It was not working, but I would guess at not the reasons stated to end the relationship. Having come back to Stars and spins now, I don't think I am that bad and believe I was possibly still of worth to a stable as a player, but not as much after hitting a 3000x. I'd say now I am a 70 cev at the 7s

Generally, it wasn't polite of the stable to tell you what to play on, unless you were having too many disconnections or weren't able to keep up with the volume requirement.

That said, the purchase of a Windows computer to replace a Mac is always a good longterm investment for a poker player (preferably with Windows 7/8.1, generally with an OS version that is 3-9 years old, because of compatibility issues with newer ones, hence used laptops are better for poker than new ones whose hardware might be unsupported by older OS copies) as poker clients and tools are generally written and tested for Windows* and not all of them work well on a Mac.

* As the development of most of the current clients started before Windows 10 appeared, they tend to have numerous bugs when running on Win 10. The same will apply to any fresh version of Windows in the future. It's not as easy for programmers to adapt such a large project as a poker client to a new OS as you might think.

Why does it matter if you hit a 3000x?

He did state,

Supposedly, the stable owners had some hard feelings after he failed to win that tourney for them.

I felt something like it was a shame I hadn't won, disappointment in the result and to me it felt a disconnect from the stated mutual aim to get up to higher stakes and make money from good play, not getting lucky at a jackpot.

Am I missing something or did you leave out the "perhaps questionable in big multipliers" part of the story?

Your stable was obviously daft if they dropped you for now winning a big multi - people are expected to lose a 3000x or indeed any given game more than they will win. You shouldn't feel bad for not having won it. With those results I can't see you having trouble getting in other more reputable stables.

I won't disagree with them telling / strongly suggesting you get a proper computer though. Using any Mac OS is a pretty blantant "I'm not taking this seriously" statement, and if yours was too old to even run bootcamp getting a new one is very sensible. Can't run StarsHelper, CoffeeCalcs, Pio, AHK, anything custom the stable has made, probably all sorts of other useful tools, stable probably can't help you with tech-support very well too. $800 is plenty in the UK, so barring extreme circumstances it shouldn't be too rough after banking 50% of 300-400 buyins at $15s in the space of a few weeks imo.

Indeed. Even if he made mistakes in the grand JP game (in addition to being unlucky), it doesn't imply that his real expected ROI is bad.

Perhaps his former stable also serves MTT players and doesn't see the difference. If you screw up consistently at MTT final tables, there's no doubt that your inherent expected ROI isn't stellar, to say the least. (That's why MTTs are forever alive in terms of fish count - it takes too long to discern a great player from a poor one.) If you screw up in big multiplier spins only (for whatever reason), it has a negligible effect on your expected ROI in the long run because such games are rare enough.

It was a purely Spin stable. It was at that point that I questioned the situation, that in order for me to play well, well enough for this to work and move up and improve etc, I and the stable would need to not account for profit from the big big multipliers and that anything from that situation was basically free money. It would only occur as well if the horses were there playing the games. The point should have been, I felt, to perhaps even support the player who had been so close to a big life-changing score and take the potential skill to the point that cash comes from play at higher stakes and not binking a x 3000. I was just questioning it internally but then when commitments were not met on the other side in terms of coaching, I really lost enthusiasm.

In terms of closing I was pretty good. I think that in the 7s month I hit a few x 10 and an x 25 and was definitely something like 3/4 out of 7

Splitting all the winnings proportionally is optimal in terms of the aggregate variance of the horse and the staker under the fixed EV constraint (i.e. has the least variance among all the possible deals with the same EV).

If you wanted to get a bigger cut of your top-multiplier winnings, then you'd have to agree to get a lower cut of your low-multiplier winnings. Would you agree for that?

to be a big winner at $100 spins you have to be playing/practicing/studying them fulltime (or part-time if youre ibavly), doubt theres anyone residing in the states who could walk into $100 spins and crush besides a mrgr33n type guy. Anyone with that sort of skill isnt going to be bothered with trying to get a tiny edge ghosting spinners theres so many better (LEGAL) things they can do.

If one ghosts only spins with $600+ prize pools and takes a 50% cut, then the effective ABI is higher than $100 but the field is softer on average than the $100 one.