Yesterday i had a situation in a 9max SNG with 3 winning seats at the bubble as follows preflop:

• Player SO: 1,6 BB (sit out) in big blind with 0,6 BB left
• Player BB1: 9,5 BB (bubble boy 1) - folded
• Player BB2: 6,8 BB (bubble boy 2) - folded
• Player BS: 49,5 BB (big stack) - small blind - folded

The big stack player folded to the sitting out player. "Sit out" means here that the players does not simply folded all hands but was in a real sit out / disconnect what is visible in the software client.

He did this 4 times in a row whenever the sitting out player was big blind he folded to him and to all others players he pushed preflop allin. Finally the big stack blinded down the bubble boys and was in heads up with the sitting out player.

I wrote a ticket to the site, since my opponion is that this was illegal play by the big stack. The answer was, that this was not illegal play but a clever strategy.

I reanswered this mail since i found a rule at this site which clearly says:
I'm awaiting for a answer to that.



My questions to you are:,
What do you think about it?
Is it illegal play?
Should it be illegal?
How do other sites handels such situations?




In my opinion it can't be legal or should be illegal for a simple reason.
Imagine 3 different situation:
1) 2 Players does collusion and one big stack is dumping chips to another low stack.
2) Player A don't likes player B and dumping chips to player C when A and B are fighting as low stacks at the bubble
3) The situation i described with folding to sit out.

The first two situations are clearly illegal. The action in all situation is the same, chip dumping. The only difference is the reason for the dumping. A site cant look into the heads of the players and clearly identify the reasons. If a site decides benevolent that situation 3 was a tactic, it must be also benevolent in the other situations and come to the conclusion that it was maybe a tactic.

So the action must be always illegal, not some of the reasons, if a site wants to prevent cheating effectively in general.


What me shocked was the fact that the site support said that this behavior was a good tactic. In my opinion it was no good tactic, it was just shameless exploiting the fact that the bubble boys expected fair play. When it was clear that the big stack did no accidental folds, they were so much down that they were not able to do anything against it. That's not clever but ruthless.

In fact the big stack build a team of two players that didn't were concurrents anymore. That's not a fair environment.

Most of us are running for their money, but even if you call me naive, there should be always a rest of honor since its some kind of sports (at least to me). It was a 5€ SNG, not a nosebleed tourney.


(I'm new to this forum, so please don't roast me if i my post did not fully fits into your kind of discussions. I'm sorry for my broken English. I tried my best.)

So the big stack should be forced to play hands against a player he doesn't wish to (for whatever reason, shady or not)? How does that not violate his rights to play or not as he chooses?

People are also forced to bet on nuts...

The big stack should be forced to not dumping chips to a player who sits out. When there is a situation when you could win without any risk, you don't do it and lose instead chips to the opponent, you give advantage to that opponent player. That's just team play. A simple min raise and the big stack would have won chips without any risk without playing the hand.

When i write "sit out" i mean that the player did not simply folded every hand. He was in a real sit out / disconnect what is visible in the software client of this site.

(i edited the first post to make it clear)

He is doing this to be able to grind the other stacks down. While that may annoy you (as one of the other stacks), it is a perfectly viable approach in that specific stack dynamic.

There are ways to combat it. Stall/time bank (to get the blinds higher so that the BB is all-in). Understand on Stars if a BB is all-in and sitting out then he will fold to even a limp by any played except the small blind (in which case the BB actually plays his hand even when sitting out), so when he gets to that spot you open limp and that forces the BB to fold, and if you have a real hand you can shove as well, as the BB will fold and finish 4th.

In theory when the small stack is in the SB he will not win that hand (since the big stack will I assume be shoving), so depending on the structure of the tournament, you should be able to slow it down and force the above to happen. If you cannot then you can open shove when you have a hand (or stall and waitout the 6 BB guy if you were the guy with 9.5BB), and odds are he will not bother to call unless he has a hand.

You can report it if you like, but this has been seen in 9 mans for a long time, and no rules were violated. You can ask about this (with a more clear title) in the appropriate SnG forum as well, no doubt many have experienced this before.

Thank you for your comment Monetroy.

If it is legal to chip dump as big stack to mini stack on the bubble, even when you have AA, whether or not the mini stack is in sit out, where is the difference to players that does collusion? That's my big problem when i think about the consequences when such behavior is declared as legal.

In this situation it is legal. This is not a conventional "chip dump." If you were the small stack sitting out he would have folded to you. As I mentioned, it is a viable strategy to do with those stacks, because if you and the other small stacks do nothing then this person can get it where you all have nano stacks, and 65BB vs 3BB and 1 BB is a lot different than a 50BB vs 10BB and 6 BB.

I assume, based on your frustration, that you ended up bubbling, but I would suggest that a person with 50 BB in that situation is not playing properly if they take out the tiny stack if the other two people are folding hoping for that to happen. All of this assumes that the prize pool differs from 1st to 3rd, which it appears is the case in your tournament. Your perception of the honor of the situation really has nothing to do with anything.

In contrast, if this is a sat where the top 3 all get the same prize then while the behavior is probably still not against the rules, it is for lack of a better term - classless.

Agree with Monteroy, while it is annoying as hell it is legal and done with a specific strategy in mind. And it worked perfectly. Next time don't let one guy build such a commanding chip lead.

Pretty easy, bigstack and site are right, you are wrong.
The sitout is pretty irrelevant, he would've folded to the dude as well if he was not sitting out, it makes no difference for his decision.

"Deliberately losing chips to other players for whatever reason will not be tolerated and WILL be picked up by our collusion monitoring team and dealt with accordingly."

The idea of the rule is to prevent ppl to cooperate, stealing money from other players. If those two guys wanted to, there isn't really a point in one of them sitting out, in fact that even lessens their ability to scam others (they can't take lines that involve the sitouter doing anything else than folding). Also it's really simple for stars collusion team to check if they do that regularly, you could potentially even do that yourself if they're unblocked at sharkscope or other tracking sites.

Imho "Deliberately losing chips" is a really bad term to put in the rules tho, since deliberately losing chips to gain real $ev is a rational decision and the idea of the rule is certainly not to punish that.
If you raise your 2.1bb stack to 2bb on the bubble, all other equal stacks jam, u fold the remaining 0.1bb, you are deliberately losing chips but gaining huge in $ev. Would you wish you were forced to call by the rules here?
What you wish to happen (few will agree with it, if any) is simply not the idea of the rule, so this will not be punished.

No, I was not the bubble boy, i made into money.

It's easy to say that it is possible to prevent such situations. But in thousands of SNG it was the first time someone behaved liked that. So you don't expect this and if you don't expect this you realize too late whats going on.

Such situations are not new to me. I was in such situations as big stack also and i thought about what i should do. I knew that i would increase my chances for the tourney win if i would let the sitting out small stack alive. I did not do it, because it is just a honorless disrespectful behavior and i thought it is illegal. 99% of the players don't do that too.

I accept you opinions that it is legal, but i still think that it should be illegal, since it a kind of teamplay even when one part of the team don't act proactive. It's poison to a fair play environment for me.

So what should stop me from pay back? Why should i not dump chips that way to small stacks in future when i want to damage the player that did this to me? The action is the same, only the reasons are different. Is it legal to damage others intentional that way? How could a site differ? Hey, it was not a onesided teamplay, it was a clever strategy...

It would be easy to prevent such situations technically. Just make it impossible for sit out players to gain chips. If SB folds to sit out BB, SB should get the chips.

You're getting into the debate about the ethics of poker here. There are some people who say anything goes within the rules, while others say certain types of behaviour are wrong even if not against the rules. Examples include angle shooting, slowrolling, stacking chips so people can't see the large denominations, and outright lying. It's up to you to decide how you want to play.

That's it. However, thanks to all for your comments.

I guess i have to accept such behavior.
But i don't have to respect it.

do you think the play would be fair if the BB was not sitting out?

No, i would not think that this would be fair, but far less dingy and 100% legal.

At least it would not be "deliberately losing chips to other players" since there is a chance that BB loses more Chips with play than with no play, whats the big difference to the situation with the sb sitting out, since there it is no questions of a chance, but only a decision to gain chips or to lose chips to another player.

Okay, so let's not look at it from "winning chips" perspective, rather how much EV SB gains from each play in the different situations (which is how you should look at most spots in poker).

Let's say SB only has the option to raise and get in 1.6BB or fold. Whether BB is sitting out or not, raising will be +EV with 100% of hands for SB. Sure, it will be higher EV when BB is sitting out, thats true.
However, folding will still outperform raising in terms of EV gained, wheter BB is sitting out or not, because folding is just so so much better as SB can put a lot of icm pressure in the next couple hands.

You have to understand that from SB's perspective folding is just the right play in this spot and doesn't matter if the BB is there, or not.
If you agree with this and think folding is 100% legal when BB is not sitting out, you should also think it is 100% legal when BB is sitting out.

Sure you might say it is unfair but that is just a matter of perspective.

I'm aware of EV and ICM. I fully understand that this behavior is worth real money. But that's not the point. Collusion is ev+, an ace in live poker that falls from your sleeve is ev+. Cheating in general is ev+.

That something is ev+ is no criterion for what is legal or not.

Again: Where is the difference between collusion and this behavior?
If you declare this behavior as legal you also legalize collusion.
"No it that was no collusion, i folded to that smallstack to increase my chances"

Image a situation on the bubble where a bigstack folds AA as small blind to big blind with 3bb left. Collusion, tactics?

Image a situation on the bubble where a bigstack folds AA as small blind to big blind with 6bb left. Collusion, tactics?

If there is a point where you say "now its collusion", i say: No,the tactic described here is just applied wrongly. Its not forbidden to make mistakes.

There is only one way to leave the door closed to collusion. Just forbid chip dumping strictly in every situation without any exception.

You can imagine all you like, but in the end the play here did not violate the rules, and in fact was likely optimal play. It was not chip dumping (as anyone else but you defines it). Your own beliefs of what is proper behavior is not applicable to anyone else, because your values are not the rules of the game set by the room dealing the game.

I have seen some players say that raising pre-flop is rude. Check raising is not nice. How about if you are HU and the other player disconnects? Do you fold your SBs while waiting for him to come back? The list can go on and on, and in the end you are entitled to your beliefs, but the rules are the rules, and they were followed in this scenario. You can email the room using all the semantics gymnastics you like, but they will tell you that everything in this scenario was perfectly valid play.

The sites ruling is written really badly, to the extent that you have a valid complaint;they need to rewrite their policies.

A better rule on collusion might include “a player cannot intentionally make -$EV decisions that clearly increase $EV of another player”.

The example you described could be collusion, in reality though it almost certainly wasn’t, it’s instead a good strategy used by many non-colluding players, so the site should never be calling this collusion. It’s also a relatively rare situation, people who are playing games with the expressed intention to collude will need to be dumping chips in much more obvious spots in order to profit consistently from collusion, and it’s these spots where the sites can (hopefully) police against colluders.

Yes it's frustrating for other players with more chips than the one sitting out, but it's not 'illegal' or 'cheating'. As others mention, by playing like this the big stack is putting more pressure on the smaller stacks. It makes no sense for it to be collusion as the short-stack loses most of that benefit by the fact they're not playing (sitting out). Losing to keep pressure (ICM) up on others is not the same as intentionally losing to work together with someone (collusion).

Sums it up nicely for me. The rule cited in the op doesn't seem to have been broken by villain so if that's the best op can do in terms of site t&cs I'd say forget about it. He elected not to play hands. There's a clear difference between this and deliberately losing. By folding he cannot lose as he isn't investing anything in the pot.

As a side note this is an interesting strategy on behalf of villain but I'm doubtful that it's more +ev than scooping up guaranteed chips with a raise.

OK, i'm interested in your answer to that:

Ministack in small blind calls to big blind and has 0,1BB Stack left.
Is it legal for a big stack in big blind to fold (with AA)?

Regarding to all you said, yes it is legal, because EV makes things legal. But really, that's just ridiculous.

I remember: You have to bet with nuts (its a different situation, i know). That's a rule that give a **** on tourney-EV and its a good rule. So the EV-argumentation is not the holy grail.

I don't fully follow you. There is no rule on Stars that prevents one from checking with the nuts on the river. I'm aware that action results in a penalty in some live games.
+ev plays are the holy grail to me. Positive expected value will result in positive results which results in making money from poker.

Ok, that's true, it's a live poker thing. But is live poker a different game? Is it a stupid rule to you?

Collusion is ev+ too. I don't think you advocate collusion. So ev is not the holy grail for you, i guess.

What is your answer to my question? Is it ok for a big stack to fold to a mini stack on the bubble that just called?

For clarification, you are only "forced" to bet the nuts when you are last to act on the river. Only then.

The rule comes from live tournaments and do to the nature of payout structure is far less applicable to SNGs than to Tournaments. Situations where you can fold the better hand to gain $$$ happen a lot less in bigger tournaments than in small ones.

Hence you can hardly compare the betting nuts on last bet with being a proper chipleader/table bully.

I know it sucks at first. But quite frankly you should be happy as **** this happend to you and you were smart enough to post about it here.

You havent seen that strategy in thousands of games? Tells me two things, first your competition is not very good, second you got a major leak in your game that you can start fixing now.

You have no idea how much money you make by properly using your bigstack to manipulate the other stacks to your favor.

Really dont want to be a dick, but if you look into the maths behind it for a while, you will understand why it is perfectly legal. In fact youll see why it CANT be considered rude, illegal...

Even without math. Imagine you are shortstack here. You know the math and you know perfectly well that the most profitable move, by far, for Bigstack is to give you a walk. But Bigstack shoves. From this perspective, it is A LOT more plausible to argue that Bigstack colludes with at least one if not 2 of the medium stacks. Than it is in your example to argue that Biggy and Shorty collude.

Long story short, learn how to effectively manipulate stacks in your favor and watch your winrate rise.

OP, you keep asking about whether it's 'legal' or 'ok' for this to happen. It's strange that you keep asking essentially the same questions over and over again.

Of course it's legal, of course it's ok, players can play however they want (within the site's rules). If you're not fine with that, that's irrelevant to it being legal or ok.

Folding to an ultra-short-stack might be terrible mathematically and equity-wise in that specific instance (hand), but it can be beneficial in terms of the overall course of the SNG.

You can't oblige anyone to play any specific way. Otherwise with your logic then a fish can never call off 100BB with 75o because it's not the 'right' play, yet, they will...

I do advocate some forms of collusion under certain circumstances most notably checking down a hand with another player when a 3rd player in the pot is all in.
I wasn't having a go at you in my previous post. I'm just not sure what your point is. I regard any play acceptable if it's within the confines of the game rules. As far as I know folding blind on blind is fine. I also don't have an issue with some forms of angle shooting that are borderline in rule/etiquette terms.