Playing a one-day $250 MTT recently at a major room. 18 cash and 19 left across 3 tables (9max action). Without play officially pausing, some local reg says to pay $10 to some other local reg if you want to pay the bubble. This arrangement was still worked out as hands continued to be dealt (h4h of course) such that about half the players had not paid $10, either because they didn't want to or they didn't understand what was going on. The guy who made himself in charge of this operation said that if a player bubbled who wasn't in on the pool, then everyone would get their $10 back, otherwise the bubbler gets it all. I asked the floor a) why he didn't stop the clock and pause dealing for a deal discussion as one would at an FT and b) why he was allowing this deal to occur if it wasn't unanimous, to which he responded that room policy is to not get involved in bubble deals (this room does facilitate FT deals though).

On the one hand, no one was forced into the deal, but it does affect play (e.g. someone who paid the $10 more likely to risk their chips) and there's a negative information asymmetry to anyone who is unaware of what's going on or doesn't know who is in the pool (e.g. sb jams into bb thinking they're pressuring the bubble only for bb to have bought into the pool and call looser). Then again, this scenario isn't too different from last longer bets or any other side bet which changes optimal player for some but not all of the field and is typically not public information -- are those collusion to or is this not collusion? What should the floor have done/ideal room policy be?

The ideal policy is to Not listen to guys who complain about $10 bubbles.

Well the floor did exactly what he was supposed to do based on the room rules. (I'm taking "not get involved in bubble deals" to mean "even if they are not unanimous".) Otherwise, I agree that an ideal room policy would treat bubble deals as any other deal, with harsh penalties for collusive behavior.

No one is colluding to get back 2/3s of a tournament buy in.

Guys, the OP's concern is that it affects how the game is played in some non-zero amount. If it's not unanimous about paying the bubble, they shouldn't be allowed to make deals on the side. Can the tournament director stop people from paying the bubble out of pocket away from the tables? No, but they CAN stop the agreement from happening overtly in their presence.


Just turning a blind eye to it and spouting "We don't get involved" stinks of management that doesn't care or just doesn't know enough about the game to understand why it is actually a matter of integrity.

I'm of the opinion that it's not that big of a deal and I personally wouldn't care if they made a deal on the side, but I also believe in the so-called 'letter of the law' when people want it enforced properly and I can at least see right vs wrong (even if it's just an academic exercise).

Thanks for your reply, Lord Crispen.

1) The min cash here was $525 on a $250 buyin, so 2.1 buyins. If everyone pays the bubble, that's $190 making the effective bubble $335, so 1.34 buyins. Anyone who knows anything about tournament poker knows correct strategy is very different between 2.1 and 1.34 buyin mincashes. So maybe you throw out this scenario since each person is only putting in $10, but that adds up to a relevant amount of money in a tournament of serious size (i.e. not some $50 rakefest). Personally the size of the buyin and amount of the collusion isn't relevant to me since the patrons paid a buyin and a rake that is significant to them to the casino with the expectation that the casino would follow their own rules and (aim to) prevent collusion.

2) On the above vain, if you just can't care about a $250 buyin, then imagine a $1000 buyin with 100 players left on the bubble giving $10. Or if you're caught up on the $10 issue, imagine a $2500 buyin with 19 players each putting in $100 to save most of a buyin. Again, this shows the buyin and bubble save amount doesn't matter.

And to specifically respond to jjjou in post #4, I'm not saying there will be explicit collusion. You could do explicit collusion such as prior agreed upon soft play or chip dumping or anything else without publicly putting up $10 or doing anything public. My point is there could be an implicit collusion because the optimal game strategies for the players in the deal and out of the deal are different, and it hurts people not in the deal to not know about the deal or who's in the deal (to a lesser extent it hurts people in the deal who also don't know who is or isn't in the deal). Therefore the people in the deal have created a monetary arrangement that collectively increases their expectation in the tournament --> sounds a lot like collusion.

At the end of the day, that’s just something that happens in live poker, especially in low stakes tournaments.

The TD/staff doesn’t interfere with it because they know that’s what keeps players happy. As a winning player, you should also know that the majority of players who are super adamant about paying the bubble and stuff like that aren’t long term winners. If we want those guys (and their friends) to continue playing those tournaments, we should let them do their thing. It’s just not worth upsetting some guys who come to the card room to have fun.

FWIW, I think it’s a stretch to use the term “collusion” in situations where clearly nobody has any bad intentions.

Next question: is chopping of the blinds in 1/3 cash collusion? What about 5/10?

A non-unanimous bubble payment simply negates one person from stopping the bubble payment when every else agrees. My guess is you were the guy that did not want to pay the bubble and are upset you could not squash a bubble payment by yourself. (People rarely dont know who is or is not in a bubble pay.) Certainly paying the bubble changes the play of the low stacks- it makes them more willing to bust.

So lets assume this tournament paid 10%, 33% to first and for ease of argument no rake. Top prize is 15k, second is 10k. You are worried that collusion is allowing someone to to get 180.00? Good colluding, what you should worry about, would be after the top prizes. But you cant see the forest through the tree.

And your math is wrong, the bubble does not get paid 190. DUCY? Redo your equity calculations and repost!

This has come up a few times before. I recommend everyone give these 2 threads a read.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...ation-1628882/

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...stion-1558164/

The TD/floor likely can't intervene in a chop/bubble because they are specifically not allowed to according to the gaming controls of the tournament. I know I can't in mine. It's not worth my job to help players make side agreements. And I'm certainly not pausing the clock for it.

So maybe "effective" means something different to you than me and, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you meant "effective min-cash" is $335?? Either way, if you are only paying $10 to the bubble pot then the effective min-cash goes from $525 to $515 doesn't it?

As to the OP: I don't see a lot of paying the bubble discussions at tournaments where there are multiple tables left when the bubble is reached simply because it's too hard to get everyone to agree. Personally, when I hear this talk I will make an announcement of the offer to pay the bubble and ask for a show of hands as to who agrees to do it and if anyone doesn't raise their hand, I say that's it, no more discussion of paying the bubble. It's pointless to continue talking about it when someone doesn't agree and I will not let it happen if it isn't unanimous so I shut it down and we play on otherwise the discussion causes too much of a problem.

Are you saying that the gaming controls don’t allow you to put a stop to overt discussion of non-unanimous deals in a way similar to what Suit described? If so, do you think that’s typical?

If it gets to a point where the game is slowing down or people are arguing I will absolutely stop either of those things from happening. That's a different story.

Lattimer, thanks for the links. They were interesting reads.

They probably don't realize it but what they're doing is wrong as it has a huge impact on bubble play. The bubble deal is basically stealing EV from the large stacks and giving it to small stacks as the large stacks lose much of their ability to apply ICM pressure on the short stacks

Didn't read the links ... and I always like to put a twist on things, so here comes the grain of salt comment.

So the OP is worried about a one position 'reverse' last longer pool? Should we alert TD or Gaming that there was a prop bet going on during the tournament? GL


PS ... I like Suit's math on the new min cash ...

Couldn't you say this about players who take a percentage of each other's action? What if their decision to do so happens when they get close to the bubble rather than before the tournament even starts? An example would be 5 players (out of 19) all agree to give up 40% of their action, 10% to each other person in their pool.

I don't see how this is very different from OP's situation except in OP's situation, he's opening it up to the general public.

It's a major issue in the poker community and everyone knows it but it gets a blind eye because there is no real good solution to it. No one puts a stop to it because the honest people wouldn't do it, while the others would still be swapping behind closed doors. At least when players blab about swapping, I know who's on who's side. It's the casual rec that really gets hurt by this.

Yes, having a percentage of someone else's action in a tournament you're playing is definitely collusion. I've never even seen any reasonable argument otherwise.

At FW until recently, they allowed bubble deals to go through if not unanimous.

A player (basically a pro) who was really good, and never agreed to pay the bubble, objected and the room hierarchy did not support him. The way I hear it, he went to the Gaming Commission and they supported his position that it was basically collusion if everyone didn't agree. And FW was forced to stop any bubble payouts unless everybody agreed (like what Suit said).

So now, when this "pro" is still alive on the bubble, everybody knows there will be no bubble deal and there is no discussion. When this guy isn't still in, there are bubble payments and sometimes when it isn't everybody. But the abstainers have to agree or at least not object to the others paying the bubble.

The "pro" mostly plays larger tourneys ($300+) where it hasn't already gone turbo by the time its the bubble. So there is real value in "abusing the bubble".

In most of the daily tourneys they have basically gone turbo by the time we hit the bubble anyway. It is rare for there to be more than two stacks at one table large enough to play poker so I don't really care one way or the other (the bubbles shouldn't last very long). I can't remember not paying the bubble money in these tourneys when offered.

My favorite tourney at FW we blew through the bubble without realizing it. They had to chase down a player who was on his way out but had actually cashed...

So this story happened to me at Foxwoods in February. Did the change you describe happen since then?

If I don't bet my friend out of a pot because I have the good intention to be nice to my friend but the action also has negative effect on some other player, does that mean my action was not collusion? Or illegal?

Ideally, the rules of any game should not depend on intent because we can never know intent and therefore should only be based on what can be seen. It is for this reason that it's very hard to police collusion in live poker.

When it folds to the blinds in a cash game, one of the two blinds will win the hand. I don't see how their decision of how to allocate their money is collusion. Namely collusion has to injure someone. Would any player in the game have changed their decision if they knew if the blinds would chop or not? I don't see how or why this would be the game.

First off in the interest of facts I was not opposed to the bubble deal in this specific instance because I had just lost AK to AK aipf and was down to 2 big blinds, although I would not have participated had I been a big stack both because I would be very unlikely to bubble and paying the bubble (whether unanimous or otherwise) would hurt my EV as big stack because it would mean I'm less able to exert bubble ICM pressure. You say yourself how paying the bubble changes tournament play so I'm not sure why you think a non-unanimous bubble deal doesn't hurt any big stacks not in the deal. Or do you just not care? I guess that's an opinion but it's contrary to the poker rules about collusion.

You literally just made up numbers here. And I guess you're admitting then that the situation is illegal collusion and that you just don't care because the money is small, so that's for agreeing with me on the important point.

I'm guessing because you only want to count the net +$180 to the bubble because the bubble had already paid $10 into the bubble save but this is wrong logic. Once they've paid in their $10, it's a sunk cost and the payout of the bubble is the full 19*$10 if all 19 people left in the tournament participate in the deal. By your logic to not count the buyin in the payout, every payout should be net, such that the mincash of $525 would actually be $525-250 = $275. That is a way to think about things but it's not the standard way.

The term "effective bubble" means the difference in payouts between what the next person to bust gets and the second to next person gets. On the traditional bubble where 19 gets $0 and 18 gets $525, the effective bubble is $525. On the final table bubble where 10th gets $1000 and 9th gets $1525, the effective bubble is also $525 (made up numbers here). All other cashes are effectively reduced by $10 for anyone who bought into the bubble deal, but as I explained in my last post, even though the net is subtracted by $10, the actual cash being given out is unchanged -- rather the effective tournament buyin is increased by $10 from $250 to $260 (because that's total money paid by the player out of their pocket). How you want to think of this could change based on where the bubble deal money comes from. In other rooms with traditional bubble save deals, we took all the money out of the 1st place payout. In this case, the money came out of pockets since it wasn't an official or facilitated deal. It's ultimately semantic/arbitrary though.

And now lastly responding to all the people who agree it is collusion but don't want to do anything about it, I will refute 3 counterarguments:

1) there's no way to stop a non-unanimous bubble deal
Suit, who is an experienced floor, clearly outlined how he nips this in the bud in post #11. A simple floor announcement that "No non-unanimous deals are allowed" or more simply just "no bubble deals allowed" (assuming the room doesn't facilitate any deals or for whatever reason doesn't want to bother with facilitating a bubble deal) should be sufficient to scare most people in line (and once a majority wont do it, there's not much of a point for the others players to do it either). And since the deal involves a person holding the cash who is typically playing in the tournament and is in no way being discrete about it, it'd be very easy for the floor to back up their command by penalizing or DQ'ing the player holding the cash. Therefore no one will want to hold the cash and the deal won't happen (I suppose people could still agree to pay but that just makes it one degree harder -- I wouldn't have participated even as the shortest stack if no one had to put their money to a trustworthy person before it was known who the bubble would be).*

2) there are other types of common collusion that don't get penalized
Collusion is illegal in every poker rule set I know about. If you think the scenario I described in OP is collusion and given what I said in (1), you have to police it. Two or twenty wrongs don't make a right. Just because it's easy to collude in poker doesn't mean we shouldn't prevent preventable collusion. Poker already makes efforts to prevent some forms of collusion with rules such as requirements to bet the nuts on the river or that all hands must be tabled in all-in showdowns in tournaments. I noted in my OP that last longers, prop bets, and swaps could all be considered collusion, but if that's the case, then why not start by banning non-unanimous bubble deals as a first step towards eliminating collusion?
tl;dr: Just because a lot of people are able to get away with collusion doesn't mean we should ignore all collusion, especially not when it's obvious and easily policed.

3) the players or at least recreational players want it/it's good for the game
If players want a gradual bubble where someone gets their buyin back, then why don't they ask for this? If it's a service that would make a given tournament more popular, then why don't rooms offer it? Under a theory that businesses give people what they want because people are willing to pay more for things they want, the fact that this feature doesn't exist suggests that most people actually don't want it.**

*As an aside, this scenario very clearly outlines why casinos should facilitate deals because their not facilitating deals doesn't keep deals from happening but rather makes people have to trust random players they've never met before. Facilitating deals is a matter of player protection. Clearly its a service players want. I don't understand why rooms won't facilitate.

**I will concede that the lack of this feature could be chalked up to irrationality. For instance, I play in a room with 10-handed SNGs that officially pay top 2 but a deal is always made 3 handed regardless of relative stack sizes to pay the bubble. I was in the tournament and was told that if I didn't agree to the deal, I was unlikely to be invited back to play (the game is in a public room but generally the SNGs are filled by pre-registration as organized by one of the dealers and mostly the same group of people play in them -- this instance I happened to be walking past and they had an open seat so I was invited to play). I asked them that since they all like paying the bubble and they shun people who refuse to pay the bubble, then why not make paying the bubble part of the official pay structure? This question made no sense to them. I tried to explain it in various ways for 10 minutes before I gave up and accepted that people in poker and life are irrational.