Tournament in a local casino, but not a standard daily event, this is a biannual thing with a guarantee, so there are more players than usual.

I am playing at a table with two regs for a while and from their table talk it is obvious they are friends. They talk poker and non-poker related topics, ordering drinks together, commenting an each others hands like "Well played, you are doing good, keep it up" and similar.

Both are solid players.

So a hand comes up. Folds to friend A in MP who raises, folds to friend B in BB.

BB: Are you strong?
MP: Yes.
BB: I am stronger. (3bets)
MP: I doubt it. (calls)

Board is 28Q5K no flush and it gets checked through. BB shows JJ, MP shows AKo.

Stacks are deeper than 50BB so there is no need for preflop all ins.

Is this soft play/collusion? Do you say something or keep quiet?

Thanks.

I am struggling to see the collusion. BB 3bets heads up, so he is obviously not colluding at this point. MP calls, so both BB and MP have repped strong ranges. Flop and turn miss both players but put a scare card in the board. BB was the aggressor, but MP has position, so checking the flop and turn is reasonable. MP checking back with top top on the river instead of value betting is conservative, but falls well below the threshhold of what I would consider collusive play.

You could argue that MP is at least supposed to put in a small river bet here. But in reality the hand played out pretty much how you anticipate it to play out in a small buy-in local casino tournament.

Unless the board gives one of the players a monster, it’s extremely hard to argue there’s softplay going on after one of the guys 3bet the BB when he could have called to close the action.

So maybe MP is softplaying BB but that hand alone certainly doesn’t prove it. Even if he did, there’s no collusion because that requires the second party (BB) to be participating. There’s no way of accusing him of doing that after he 3bet and faced a board that ran out with two overcards.

It is arguable, you can also justify the check back by saying only a set or 2 pair would call\raise a river bet (I don't agree, but it is certainly a reasonable interpretation)

I disagree that collusive play requires 2 players working together. If one player acts against his bets interest to help another player, even if that other player is not actively participating in the collusion, it is still collusion. If I chip dump to a friend without his knowledge, or soft play a buddy on the bubble of a satellite without any thing being discussed or agreed on, it is still collusion.

Well, if you want to redefine "collusion" to fit the cases you want, then you could call anything collusion.

I don't think there's any clear collusion here, but depending on the room's rules players shouldn't be able to talk that much between them in a tournament, even heads up. There was another thread about this this week.

Collusion takes two or more by definition .. which also takes an agreement or arrangement.

Soft Play is in it's own realm, but could also be part of a collusive arrangement.

The problem with both is the proof. I've seen a tournament 'super' stack not make a call against the short stack. The announcers suggested that he did so in an effort to keep bullying the medium stacks, which may have been a better (or at least considered) strategic move. To some, this is soft play but is certainly not collusive since the short stack has no knowledge (or input) to the decision. The collusion door comes open if the Players discussed how to play if one got short at the table before they sat down.

Without a pattern (and hole cams) soft play is also tough to prove. Even in cash I will 'soft play' the other big stack(s) in an effort to avoid large pots when I think I have a better advantage over the other Players. This is 'soft' but part of my strategy ... and certainly not collusive. GL

PS .. Are all the Regs in Rounders colluding when the businessmen fish sit down and they all lay off each other until the fish have been drained?

PSS ... In the OP I think the PF talk is a stretch but may be allowed in some rooms. Although this may appear to be soft play on the River one could argue that AK guy is never being called by worse since they have LOTS of history together. Does that mean he should be betting anyway or that it's collusive? Lots of eye rolling by Floors if you call them over ...

It baffles me how that topic keeps coming up. By definition, collusion involves (at least) two parties in a secret agreement.

If I sit down and tell the table that player 7 is my friend and I am going to softplay him all night and he’s going to do the same, that’s clearly against the rules. But it’s not collusion because everyone at the table knows about it. If I softplay my friend all night without him knowing anything about it, that’s not collusion. If he returns the favor and softplays me too, other players can accuse us of at least implicitly colluding. But again, that requires at least two players who violate the rules.

The Mueller report even made “collusion” mainstream. We all know now that foreign interference in our elections is illegal but to prove collusion, we have to prove that the beneficiary of said interference was in on the plan.

Forgetting about how the hand played, isn't talking about your hands in a tournament a no-no?

Multiway? Yes, everywhere I know of.
Heads-up? House rules apply. Have you ever watched old WSOP episodes featuring Daniel Negreanu or the 2016 ME FT with Jamie Gold?

Usually it is limited to directly revealing the contents of your hand (oddly, you can lie about what you have, but can be penalized if you tell the truth). Saying 'I am strong' would be acceptable table talk in every tournament I have played in (I have heard of some tournaments that have taken the extreme step of prohibiting any and all table talk to avoid having to figure out what is and isn't acceptable, but I have never played in a tournamnent like that)

I disagree. If I act against my interests to help another player, that is collusion. Maybe poker needs another term for it, but at current, collusion is the most applicable term. it is assumed that the other player will be acting in their best interests, so by my playing against my interests, I am working with him to improve his position. However yuou want to term it, it should be penalized.

As an aside, the Mueller report specifically did not address the subject of collusion, as this is not a legal term (it is a term that trump used to deflect, since it, being undefined, could be used in any way he wanted). The Mueller report addressed conspiracy and found that certainly the trump team was aware of the interference, and welcomed it, but did not solicit it. It is appropriate to sanction Russia here, but not the trump team. In this analogy, I would penalize the person doing the soft play, but not the beneficiary unless it can be shown that he solicited the help.

There is a term. It is called "soft play". English can be a difficult language, but this is not hard.

Thanks for the replies. I wanted to know if I was out of line for speaking up.

I told them, hey guys, it is obvious you are friends, and this hand might or might not have been soft play, but could you at least not talk about it? They both protested saying they can play however they want and the dealer said the same and asked if I wanted to call the floor. I said no floor, play on, so we did that.

The room has a rule about table talk, for example asking "do you want me to call?" and any answer to that gets a warning from the dealer. This talk was deemed acceptable.

Later I felt bad for saying anything. Since I can't prove collusion or soft play, so why say anything at all...

I'm not sure if it's the language or the logic that's tripping you up, bud, but you are just plain wrong.

One cannot be party to a secret agreement if one is making a unilateral decision.

A is A, and A will never be not A.

As others have noted collusion be definition has two required elements. 1. It must be illicit and maybe even secret. 2. Must have an agreement, cooperation and or conspiracy. One player can only fulfill one of these elements.

wait it wasnt even multiway? lol this is barely softplaying even.

Soft play is a part part of poker, like it or not. But it can't hurt to let people know you don't like it, especially if you are a reg or well liked or respected. Just don't go wasting everyone's time calling the floor about it. And don't hold your breath hoping for an apology and immediate cessation!

I don't like the table talk between obvious friends.
Warned each other that they were both strong and played accordingly.

Sigh. I had a relatively long post (at least by 2p2 standards) on this but accidentally closed the tab early. So here are the cliffs;

It's not fair to immediately label them as friends for their interactions. Regs spend a good amount of time with one another and some become friendly at the tables. It doesn't mean they are friends away from the table.

At the end of the day, you're accusing somebody of cheating because of one sub-optimal action, the river check back from AK, on an otherwise standard hand of poker. If I'm the floor, I need way more than that to take this accusation seriously.

This is the kind of interaction I would find mildly irritating but it falls below my threshold of saying anything. Too hard to prove anything anyway with that run out.

The hand played as one of the ways as I would have expected it to give the action/talk pre, and the board thereafter, so I don't really see any collusion here. AK guy seemed too scared to value bet the river, and Jacks just shutdown as one would.

The problematic part is the discussion of the strength of their hands which is now forbidden in most rooms I play in (and I think by TDA rules as well) regardless of whether you are HU or not.

I think that is unfortunate because it takes a lot of the fun out of poker so I usually don't say anything if I am not in the hand. The dealers sometimes say something but sometimes they don't. In this case it is not clear if they are in cahoots or if they are trying to suss each other out and get a read. But regardless, a 3-bet from BB is saying "I am very strong" even without the words. And MP doesn't necessarily have to have a big hand to raise.

The way the hand played out MP may have known that BB would fold with a PP if he put a bet out on the river. And/or he may know that BB is capable of a c/r bluff and MP didn't want to bet/fold. And/or MP might know that BB can check three times slowplaying a flopped set in which case he might have to bet/call and potentially get crushed.

The situation is different if every time they are in a hand HU together they always check down all 3 streets postflop. Then I think you may have a reason to bring it to the attention of the Floor.

This looks like possible soft play on the river, but nothing else about this hand is really out of line. Without knowing if the players are trappy or have history of how they play, you can't really say they are soft playing even, since it's possible player A is trappy and player B knows it.

If they were betting to knock other players out of the pot, that would be a problem, but this isn't that case. They played their hands appropriately for the strength of their cards, with maybe one missed bet.

The result of speaking up is going to almost always be exactly what happened. You will have two players pissed at you and the house won't back you because there isn't any real evidence. I'd save your protests for when you have a more significant issue unless you see this happen all the time between specific players. If you see it a lot, i'd quietly mention it to the floor away from the table after the event.