The reason not to play a normal straight up game is because that's not the kind of game the fish want to play. Give me a totally straight game I can beat for $x/hr and a semi-colluded game I can beat for $x+10/hr and the choice is easy.

Can you explain in detail what the overlay is? I mean more specifically than just that she's colluding with him. Do you think she's signaling the SB to bet her hand? Would that even be the correct play? If you see a pot that you got pushed out of won by no reasonable hand then you have a different case, but I bet you'll never see that.

I can say with confidence that in the majority of the cases I've ever seen behavior that resembles collusion against me it has worked to my benefit, and in most or possibly all the others it has been neutral at worst. Post a hand where this happens to you and she shows up with T8o and I'll have a different answer. In this hand, assuming you would have cold-called with a pair, you were actually allowed to play your hand perfectly, instead of getting check-raised and put in a tough spot.

They are softplaying each other for the purpose of softplaying each other, not for the purpose of cheating you. As long as they want to softplay each other they are bad and you are beating them for lots of money, let them continue to softplay each other while you continue to beat them. And they aren't hiding what they are doing, it's all out in the open for you to see and be comfortable with. If they were cheating you and chopping up your money she'd bet the turn and SB would fold and you'd never see the hand. That's when you should be worried.

Edit: I should add that I'm not saying that actual cheating of this nature is not possible in games that people on this board play. I think we should all be aware of the possibility and on the lookout for it. I just don't think this is it.

that was me. you can post it in here as long as you take out the content at the end!

Ha, I'm sure he appreciates the compliment.

I think he's implying that she figures she can call light because she's effectively got 4 cards with which to hit the flop You only have two. That's assuming they are in cahoots enough to be playing out of the same bankroll.

It would have been interesting to see SB's hand. If it was complete air, that smells up the situation considerably.

This is what Im talking about. Shes going to have the odds to call lightly and they will do it alot when theyre both in blinds. Even if theyre not explicitly colluding(theyre not good enough to do it right anyway) Im still playing against two people(4cards) a large percentage of time. How many people doing this together before its -EV for me? IF its me vs 3players checking it down 5handed, me vs 4 others checking it down??

Torello..I submit that her actual hand here is irrelevant. The SB bets with complete and utter air, she raises, and I have to fold a hand that has a chance to improve. What about if she does it with 78 on 346, and I fold , they check it down and he wins w QJhi? What if they do the same, check it down, and he mucks his hand face down, says "I have nothing" She takes the pot with no showdown?

pig4bill.....His hand was complete air. He said "i have nothing" and then when I started bitching he even admitted "I had overcards..what do you want me to do?" BTW, his justification for it being OK after I start griping is "Its the same thing we do with Mrs. other regular"

Another massively important point, is that this sort of crap discourages shot takers and randoms from playing in the game.



p.s. zigster..this was the 30 game


p.s.s. I know of one other situation where Mitch quit a very good 4or5 handed game at Bay101 because one of villains and another prop were doing the same thing.

It was her and another prop, which made it extra bad. I only quit to make a point to the floor. Then I realized there was too much money to be made so I sat back in and crushed.

I sense a lil megalomania creeping in here.

The check downs are in the 30 game where the regs feel some sort of camraderie, because they all suck.

sorry, i thought it was obvious i was joking. of course he can include the content part of the post if he wants

Tech Q. from the old guy:

I tried using the hand converter on FTR for the 1st time for a Stud/8 hand. I play on FT using the Mac client and I pasted the HH into the box, hit 'convert' and it said something like 'file not recognized'. Is it bec. it's from the Mac version? I can also play using the Windows client but then I have to start up that OS which is a small pain. Need help, ty.

LOL when you said 6 handed before with 3 soft spots and 1 lag, I assumed the other two were yourself and the bdaddio. But since he was off at the DUI stop getting a $25 ticket, that made no sense. Now I find out that the Bay 101 prop is your toughest opposition? Just wow...Me leaving that game at 9:15pm is clearly more evidence that I have developed leaks.

In other news I am simply not allowed to win. A little over a week ago I posted back to back massive wins getting me officially out of the toilet and back to 3.5 months of break even poker. Since then I'm stuck something like $6K in < 40 hours. As a capstone to today I logged into fulltilt to try and gamble a little and lost 12 big bets in my first 15 hands (despite making Queens full against KQ....dude was all in and I won 4 bets less than I should have) and promptly turned off my computer and finished the dregs of a six pack.

Horse before the cart, buddy. Drink first, play poker later, IMO.

Oh, I been doing it wrong then. I do them both at the same time.

Gad, I'm glad I don't play 30 at the Oaks. Half the table are 2p2, 2 are colluding, and only 1 is a random.

But then, how do you play poker, watch porn, and drink at the same time? You have 3 hands?

But they're putting in twice as much money as you with inferior hands, so... are you absolutely sure that this is bad? I tried to think about the math of it, and I understand the implicit collusion math phenomenon in theory, but I'm just not sure if it really applies here. My intuition is that any of these situations you are talking about, absent explicit post-flop collusive behavior, are highly favorable to you. I concede it's possible I'm wrong, but I can't figure out how.

If you told me that I could play against 4 people who were going to play way way loose pre-flop, normalish postflop, and check-down as soon as I'm out of the pot, that sounds great to me.

If you're talking about integrity, rules, or making randoms uncomfortable, then I agree it's irrelevant. If you're talking about your EV then it's highly relevant. As long as I keep seeing 34o here then I'm happy as a clam. If I ever see T8o, that's when we have a problem.

The very first thing I said was I make sure I see the winner. I will not let them do this and then muck muck, that is obviously not cool. As for 78, you'd rather be check-raise barreled with that? Think about it. You were in a tough spot because you had no pair, but she doesnt need help to put you in a tough spot in that case. Plus 78 is at the very lower edge of my 'reasonable hand' criteria. If she plays her 34o straight up then you get check-raised and you're in a bad spot there too. Every time you are forced to fold a 6 outter the alternative was going to have been putting in 2 bets while behind, and that's hardly better. This is why I'm arguing it helps you.


yeah, and fighting it will discourage the regulars involved from playing in the game with you... and which is going to cost you more? You do you have a point here, but it's not something I think is worth fighting for.

QED imo

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?ai...5309350?ref=ts

let's get on this people....

if anyones bored and wants to play or learn how to play backgammon or dominoes, send me a PM. we can play for money if youd like or just for fun.

Stopping by to spam this thread, PJ, hope it's all good! If my spam is out of line, delete it, np.

Hey guys, my little one, Gracelyn Tall, is up for Baby Gap casting call.

Basically if she gets the most votes, we get free Baby Gap stuff and a trip to Jamaica.

So I'm here as a proud dad to sand-bag the vote!

You will need to sign into your Disney account, Family.go account or sign up for one BUT if you have a ESPN.com account, that will work as well. Just use your ESPN username and password and you will be able to vote.

Here is the link:

http://family.go.com/gapcastingcall/...gracelynsmama/

Vote for all the photos and come back when you can as I think you can vote once a day!

Thanks for your help,
Joe

Done. Now I'm going to get added by disgusting degen randoms.

The "let's you and him check it down" discussion reminds me of this thread in the B&M forum some months back. Someone posted about CHEATING IN THE FOXWOODS 20-40!!!11!1!one! because the regulars would check it down when it got head-up. Roughly two thirds of the responses were derisive ("Sounds like the best game ever" or "If you can't beat the Foxwoods 20 you should seriously consider taking up 7-card stud") and the remaining third were supporting the OP ("They may be bad players, but they're still colluding, and that's bad").

I've been talking this over with my GF, and she's surprised at the line I'm taking here; she tells me she would have expected me to be take the hard-line position that check-it-down arrangements are collusion and therefore should not be tolerated.

And it is collusion, and therefore cheating. The trouble is that most of the people who check it down with their buddies, or take one chip back from their big blind when one of their buddies open-raises, or toss that last river bet back to their buddy who didn't realize they were up against the nuts, etc., don't understand why what they are doing is bad for the game. They see it as keeping the game friendly. It's part of the culture of the game.

To get them to stop doing it, you're going to have to change the culture of the game, and attempting to do change a game's culture takes hard work that doesn't come with a guarantee of success. And there may be unintended consequences, like people finding the game to be less friendly than it used to be and playing somewhere else.

Picking up and leaving when friendly softplaying gets out of hand might be a good response, or it might not. Much as I like bdaddy, I'm just as happy that he left the game before I came in to gather all that low-hanging fruit. Getting a shark to leave a game is a win for the softplayers rather than being something that discourages them.

I don't like condoning softplaying, and at the same time I don't see any good ways to discourage it. My best answer is to suggest trying to learn how to swim in those waters, learn how to exploit the mistakes the softplayers are making.

(If the predatory minority think a particular behavior is bad for the game while the prey who comprise the majority think that behavior is friendly and welcoming, who is really right?)

Earlier this year the gambling compact in Arizona was amended to raise the maximum bet size from $150 to $500. This led the CAZ high limit board to add 100-200, as well as provide the ability to run 200-400 or even 250-500 when opportunity (a wealthy fish) arrives. But in reality the games mostly peak out at 75-150 as before.

But spread limit totally changed. The most popular game in CAZ for the last few years had been 5-150 spread limit with a $350 buyin cap, usually they had 5-8 games going in afternoons and evenings. I specialized in the 10-150 which had a $1,000 buyin cap, which would run 1-2 games at peak periods.

But now they changed the games to 5-500 with a $500 buyin cap, 10-500 with a $2,500 buyin cap, and added a 2-200 (the compact limits how many $500 bet games one casino can spread, but there are no limits on $250 bet games) with a $200 buyin cap. When the new limits started, there was in influx into the bigger spread limit games from 20-40, 40-80, and 75-150 regs who were primarily action players. The 20 and 40 became visibly less popular. I remember Howard Beale bemoaning how the casino was going to kill limit with these horrible new "slow limit" games.

Yesterday a pattern that had been trending all summer finally crystalized. The 10-500 has declined to the point that it doesn't run every day, even a week ago Saturday Nite it didn't run at all! The 5-500 only often seems to be running 3-4 games at a time. Some is the economy, sure, but the 20-40 has rebounded back to 2-3 games a day, and the 40-80 seems to be running regularly again.

I think the high stakes regular got bored with the slow games and went back. And the buyin cap on the 10-500 was high enough that some regulars went broke fast (I myself have a $8,500 downswing going in that game, at least $4,500 in lost coinflips), and the remaining game is full of nitty regs. And that the 2-200 bled off regular players from the 5-500 who weren't comfortable with the stakes or buyin.

I'm so glad I decided to go back to limit full time three months ago, I've not only winning but enjoying it much more. I've got a friend who plays 5-500 full time, and he's run horribly this year, partly I think because when the tide ran out only rocks were left.

^^^

I was at CAz 3 weeks ago and had little idea what I was playing. It felt like 3/5 nl.