unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

during a recent sng I played, the following situation came up (approximately):



player1: 2000
player2: 2000
me: 7000
disconnected player: 1000


the blinds were 100/200 and I proceeded to push every hand and fold to the player when he was in the big blind. my reasoning is that this is optimal play if both player 1 and 2 are playing mainly to make the money (which I had observed prior to disconnection) and if the player who was disconnected was instead connected but for some reason folding every hand.

my questions are
a) would you consider this against the rules? (the poker site in question was pokerstars)
b) was this an unethical thing to do?

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

This is exactly how you should be playing with these stacks anyway. Nowt to do with the disconnected player.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

i do it every [censored] time.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

not at all unethical.
here
is an old post I made that shows how to really use a Dc'd player to your advantage.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

The concept is great, letting the disconnected player keep his 1000 stack is borderline retarded. Get him to 1BB, then you preserve the bubble.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The concept is great, letting the disconnected player keep his 1000 stack is borderline retarded. Get him to 1BB, then you preserve the bubble.

[/ QUOTE ]

well yeah, I should clarify . . . I only folded the to him when calling would be all in or another player had already entered the pot.


thanks for all the responses, they were basically the things I was thinking when I was playing.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

Poker... ethics? What? Other than not being an [censored] by delaying the actions (like tanking for minutes for every action or slowrolling), who cares about poker ethics? What is this, like "check raises are rude, don't do those".

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

This is not necessarily best -- if one of the other players picks up a hand when disc. player is in BB, they will shove and bubble will end. So leaving him with more than 1BB might be better -- maybe 3 BB's or so would be best.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The concept is great, letting the disconnected player keep his 1000 stack is borderline retarded. Get him to 1BB, then you preserve the bubble.

[/ QUOTE ]

WHAAAAAAAMP. Getting him to 1BB is borderline retarded. If he has 1 BB all somebody has to do is limp, then what? If the players are smart, one would limp every time disco is on BB forcing you to raise instead of fold (or call, either way disco loses BB and they make money). If they arent picking up on this, blind him down a little, make sure he has at least ~4 BBs i say, maybe even ~6 for now if the blinds are going up soon. Eventually theyre gonna wisen up id have to think and you want to preserve this edge as long as possible.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The concept is great, letting the disconnected player keep his 1000 stack is borderline retarded. Get him to 1BB, then you preserve the bubble.

[/ QUOTE ]

WHAAAAAAAMP. Getting him to 1BB is borderline retarded. If he has 1 BB all somebody has to do is limp, then what? If the players are smart, one would limp every time disco is on BB forcing you to raise instead of fold (or call, either way disco loses BB and they make money). If they arent picking up on this, blind him down a little, make sure he has at least ~4 BBs i say, maybe even ~6 for now if the blinds are going up soon. Eventually theyre gonna wisen up id have to think and you want to preserve this edge as long as possible.

[/ QUOTE ]

First, they almost never think to limp.

Second, he can come back at any time and you want him to be as short as possible if/when he does.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

They might not think of it right away, and you should def. start bleeding him since he could come back, but 1 BB seems terrible to me. Eventually, theyre goin to realize "all i have to do is push or limp and hes out!" Like i said, start bleeding so A.) they dont realize what youre doing and B.) hes got almost no chance to come back, but dont destroy him right away.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

Well I'd bleed the guy down a little but not too much.

This isn't against the rules...as for ethical decide for yourself. However, this is pretty close to how you should be playing even if the guy wasn't disconnected. Him being disconnected just makes it that much easier...I always loved it the few times this happened to me. Shoving every hand and knowing they can't call is wonderful.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

raise that [censored] up, money is money

http://www.k12.nf.ca/acreman/animals_4/meercat.jpg

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

you dont think they wouldnt steal your chips if u dc`d ? go ahead and take them....take them!

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

I ran into this issue last night on FTP. They had some type of system outage that affected some but not all players. I was knocked out of two tables and couldn't reconnect for about 45 minutes. Fortunately I was ITM on both tables. However, on one of the tables, the other two players were able to continue, so I was blinded out in 3rd. On the other table I was heads up and the other player was knocked out too. When I was able to get back on FTP my heads-up match had been stopped by FTP and resumed about 3 minutes after I connected. The other player didn't come back, so I raised each hand until he/she was blinded out. So I guess it was a wash... I was $%#@'ed on one table but took advantage of the situation on the other. To bengiec's point... money is money!

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

i do it all the time and u dont need to keep him at 5bbs

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

Being disconnected is one of the hazards of online poker and if I'm disconnected, I would not expect anyone to softplay me. And there's no way I would let a small stack sitting out somehow get ITM.

I think a better question might be is it unethical to discuss with other players about setting up an auto-raise/fold system to make blinding out the player quicker in case he comes back.

I was in a very interesting situation in a freeroll MTT. You had to qualify for this tourney a long time in advance and it turned out that a lot of players didn't even bother using their tickets. So the first table I was at I began to notice that only two other players were actually playing hands. The other 7 were auto-folding. The site was Paradise so it didn't indicate they were disconnected or sitting out. You had to figure it out yourself.

Anyways, the three of entered an agreement such that we would each take an orbit of blinds in turn. This allowed us to get through hands very quickly. In about one half hour, we managed to distribute about 80% of the sitting out player's chips amongst the three of us before I was moved to another table.

I feel so dirty.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

lol zomg u scoundral ! :P good plan tho tbh, if they not there why bother letting have chips!

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

Lol at thinking players are smart. Many times I have seen people go multiple rounds or even get knocked out not realizing they can limp to end it, don't give people credit. 2BBs then..

You also need to plan for the disconnected player to come back in which case you want him to have as little chips as possible.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

Of course its not unethical to screw the situation for every chip u can get.

Spending time starting a thread on the best strategy to do it though...

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

If i got disconeccted, they will probably all fold to me in the big blind, until i got connected again.


...not.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
If i got disconeccted, they will probably all fold to me in the big blind, until i got connected again.


...not.

[/ QUOTE ]
LOL. If they were really nice, maybe the BB could fold to my SB once and awhile.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

It's not even a matter of whether it's unethical or "not nice", you're putting yourself in a very -EV situation by folding to let the disconnected player "stay afloat". If it's multiway, is everyone at the table going to agree to let everyone keep their blinds, to keep things equal, until if and when the disconnected player gets back? Because if not you'll be giving up your chances to steal and others will still be playing normally (and probably exploiting the situation). And, if by some chance you did end up at a table full of nice and honorable souls, and everyone just folded around for a while, soon the blinds would reach a point where it's a crapshoot, and any skill edge you might have on the field is shot.

Really the fairest, smartest, and most +EV thing to do is for everyone to continue to play at their best, exploiting the situation as they can. I hate when the person to my left disconnects, because then I'm faced with tougher defending decisions out of the SB, knowing others have (probably) widened their ranges. Yet another reason not to give them a break.

If it's heads up, then I guess it's a judgement call. You can speed call as fast as you can to wear him down or stall a little to see if he comes back.

Re: unethical to exploit disconnected player?
 

By folding to the disconnected player you can put yourself in a very +++EV situation. I just did it in this S&go.

Hero 5K chips
Disconnect 1K chips
Villain 3K chips.

I would push every hand and pick up the disconnected and villains chips. Then when villain folded I would be in the SB and fold to the disconnected players BB. I left the disconnected player with 225 chips.

The advantage is that the other player will not play any hand because he wants to land in the money so you're pretty much gaurenteed first place.

Hero: 8K
Disconnected: 200
Villain: 800

Villain says "what are you doing!!!! @sshole!!" and then calls my all in raise and is knocked out.

I kinda feel bad but meh