@ mods; please keep this here if you can. I´´d like to discuss this with smart people and actual players. Thx for understanding


Sweating = Cheating ?

What is the REAL difference is between sweating somebody on a cash game and sweating somebody on a final table in a tournament ? I assume the amount of money involved doesn´t change the ethical dimension of "right/wrong".
It might change IF and how you get punished, like stealing a gum will not get you into jail, but stealing 1 million probably will.


Multiaccounting vs Sweating


Where do we draw the line? Here are 4 cases

a) A friend and high stakes player watches you and he gives you (FREE of charge) advice while you play cash/final table

b) You hire a coach and he gives you advice (you pay him) while you play (aka Sweat session with coach)

c) Coach buys a piece of your action, watches and gives advice

d) Coach buys 99% of your action, gives you 99% advice, you simply klick



----> The pragmatic person in myself would say the result is the same from a) to d). No matter what, the other players will play against a way stronger opponent and not the opponent they "knew" before

----> The forum reader in myself tells me that a+b is considered to be ok, while c) and d) are considered to be cheating


----> The logical pragmatic brain in myself fails to see the difference as in b),c) and d), as there is financial involvement. Just to a different degree of course. But where do we draw the line
In a) he just doesnt get paid for "cheating"




When i used to do 1-1 coaching more frequently, i pretty much declined to do sweat sessions. Not because of my deepest concern for the games, but simply because i find them to be extremely inefficient for the student. However, two times they begged, so i did it, and personally i don´t see anything wrong with it.

Since i almost not play at all anymore, i watch friends here and there. And yes, i give advice. Is this considered cheating?!


Honestly, it shouldnt make a difference if you get paid or not.


Where do you draw the line ?!
[i´m much driving the lee jones style with "unenforcable rules are crap" ]

Type in the chat that you are getting advice/help by a friend if you feel that you are cheating the other players.
Everybody at the table now knows this and there should be no problem really.

and when someone at the table says, "that's cheating please stop."....then what?

My bad, i might have used wrong language...

To make one thign clear:

I personally dont care. My concerns are not of any deeper nature. I just don´t see the real difference to people who get slantered for buyin final table seats online.

Weather you do "final table live coaching" or buy 50% action is only a monetary difference at best. But i´m pretty sure most people would say this is unethical/cheating and whatever words you wanna give it.

In reality its no different...

I personally dont have problems with any of the above. I will try and gain an advantage by whatever means possible and I would expect villains to do the same.

i dont like that obv. noone likes it when the opposition gets an advantage. but nothing to do against that really

you make money exploiting degenerate gamblers, wealthy individuals out to have fun and addicted morons who continually go round the cycle. this really is not the business for you if you have a strict moral code imo.

dumbest post i've seen in a while.

In general, if something is explicitly disallowed by the the rules then it's cheating.

If it's not explicitly against the rules, then in general it's fine, although there are some grey areas where something is against the spirit of the rules.

I don't see typical sweat sessions (say (a) - (c)) in general as a grey area as it's well known these take place and are not against the rules, or, IMO, against the spirit of the rules (although c comes close). Possibility d however does seem to be against the spirit of rules and I'd consider it cheating, although this is obviously subjective.

At the risk of sidetracking, in most ethical situations there is as sliding scale. e.g., a man who would otherwise die of starvation stealing bread from a rich person would hardly be considered unethical by most, but there must reach a point (e.g., merely "very very hungry") when it becomes unethical. So subjectivity, and arbitrary cut-off points, are probably unavoidable.

There's a 1 player per hand rule on pretty much any poker room I think.

One player to a hand is the custom thru out the world as far as I know.

One player to a hand is the rule in all the brick and mortar rooms I have played in, as far as I know.

Personally, I would neither give help to a player or accept help from a player in this manner.
...........................

Exception: If the players in a game were made aware and willing to allow this then I think it is ok.

I once watched a game where an atrocious (and new to poker) player asked if it would be ok for him to ask his wife for advise during some of his hands.

The players all said, "Yes!!"

After this agreement the wife sat behind her husband and periodically whispered secret advise into his ear from time to time in the middle of various hands.

I think it depends on how invasive the sweeting is.

To me, sweating (as in watching, perhaps with the intent of later discussion) is ok. Wives, husbands, and friends often "sweat" a player.

However, giving a player advise on how to play a hand that is in progress is not ok. Asking for advise in the middle of a hand is not ok. This is what I think is meant by "One Player To A Hand."

I have heard some say that internet poker is different than live poker and that "ghosting" is ok. That is not my thought or belief. "One Player To A Hand."

lol

To be clear I'm sure what I meant was that in my opinion the implication that poker as a profession is somehow immoral is idiotic. I probably should have just stated that instead of attacking the poster.

Yeah good point.

I mean, if my dog/turtle/wife/baby/8yo brother/whatever sweats me, does anyone at the table feel cheated ? Unless my turtle 16-tables and crushes 25bb/100 at 5KNL over 2M hands and somehow communicates me with telepathy, it does not give me an advantage.

Now if My high-stakes friend sweats me but doesn't make a sound or indicate anything while I play, it doesn't matter either.

The point where it is unethical is when the guy sweating is giving you advice.
Now if the person giving you advice gives you bad advice, then it's probably good for your opponents that he is sweating you. Of course, whether he is giving good or bad advice can't be known by the other party.

I think it becomes unethical at the point where the sweater either gives information of any kind to the player, or has a part in the decision making progress.

Semi troll but I'd be curious to hear the reasoning behind why using HM/PT is okay but having a HS crusher friend sweat you is not.

I should clarify, I'm not for sweating/account selling etc and use HM

why are apples ok but not oranges?

And how could this be enforced? If we have our own "rules" that can't be enforced by sites, the honest guys end up losing out vs the scumbags. As much as I don't like it, the only way to even the playing field for everyone is to just accept/encourage everyone to play on any name/account and just expect that you don't know who you are playing.

Hmm idk. Does it matter that the player is the one to ultimately making the decision and clicking the buttons?

I was under the impression that stars did not have a "one player to a hand" rule because it's completely unenforceable. Is this no longer the case?

You raise a valid point. I would back into agreeing with it being unenforceable, hence doesn't make sense to prohibit it. But it is an unfair advantage to get live input from a different player.

I've spent enough time with groups of online poker players to know that random advice in the middle of a hand happens all the time. It's also pretty obvious that live sweat coaching sessions are quite common. I think in an ideal world neither of those things would happen but realistically prohibiting them would be futile.

In my opinion it crosses the line (by quite a lot) when people take over accounts deep in MTTs or buy action/sweat hu matches. Both of these instances are effectively MAing while having another person click the buttons.

TBH, sweating a player by just telling him what to do before he does it is a really inefficient method to help him improve his game. If you really want to improve someone's play, it's much more beneficial to let him play the hands completely on his own with no input until after the decision has been made, and then discuss the reasons for playing it different ways after the fact.

Ok new rule, mandatory webcams and pokerstars wont run if it detects screensharing.

Oh yeah and no cell phones.