Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozsr
Where can I read about "cheating in live poker" - is there a thread in 2+2?
Guessing you'll find some instances. They aren't widely talked about. In games people play for a living, you run into a few versions of "people playing out of the same bankroll".
- Couples. Often tend to soft play each other or some other BS, but often their "soft collusion" isn't even done well enough to matter. If the relationship is public, it is generally tolerated. Especially in home games, you can't can't get A without B, and you just get used to it.
- Staker/stakee in same game. There are actually some issues with this, even if it is subconsciously. Most buddies claim "we play harder against each other", and maybe some folks with shared rolls manage this. I think you'd get differing opinions on this being anything from OK if public, to "that's still cheating, you jerks!"
- Hidden deals and bankroll sharers. In my mind, this is almost always cheating to some degree. It sometimes begins with "advertising" to start games -- we sit down and play like horrible maniacs HU, then we refund any losses to each other after the session. Then you get to outright collusion, whipsawing, and "check-raising stupid tourists and taking huge pots off of them." The advertising thing also likely happens online, though it is probably easier to catch there if the sites cared to.
One of the cool things about live vs online is that the stakes tend to be higher. You can play bad players at much higher limits. The down side is that you get so many fewer hands that it is harder to learn and swings seem so much longer.
I think for some under-rolled and struggling pros, there's the temptation to do some BS form of sharing bankrolls that can lead into soft and then maybe hard collusion. Guessing they knew it was cheating all along, but if you're kind, the immediacy of rent might make a reasonable person into a cheat by slow degrees. The less kind version is "degens are scum". YMMV
Nozsr, I've played in mid/high stakes games were hard collusion was pretty widely known. Sitting in them, you're making a conscious choice. I know good pros who played in those games with worse than expected results. You can write it off to either that the bad players colluding removed some of their edge, or you could just say the transition from tight online games to loose live ones is harder than you think + variance + meh. I always did well in those games, but again, rungood? Rec players would get whipsawed, call the floor, and basically get a shrug.
