Collusion in poker - can it actually acomplish anything?

[f it]

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Perhaps I should re-focus this discussion: I play a lot of live heads-up NL against donks, but have the problem that my action dries up too easily after a couple of games. One proposition I use to try to get more action is that I'll play them 3-handed, with them controlling 2 of the hands, and free to look at both hands before taking any action. Almost inevitably I find they play WORSE in that situation than they would if they just cloned their donk self and played both hands independently. In fact, the only guy to make use of the proposition to his advantage played his regular "A" game except he folded out dominated hands preflop. Which I suppose is actually a good use of collusion, now that I think about it.

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The difference between this scenario and real colluding is that you know you are being colluded against, which makes a difference. It introduces new variables that a person normally doesnt think about if hes unaware that the other players are colluding

when you dont know the other players are colluding
i would NEVER raise with the hand to your immediate left, because then unless i reraise with my other hand the betting is closed if you call. So if i have a strong hand to ur left, i would limp it and raise with the other hand. If you are not aware of the colluding, you are more likely to call that raise and be faced with more difficult decisions when i reraise with my actual strong hand.. ur obv more likely to get trapped/pot committed etc

when you DO know the other players are colluding
you see through the my scenario above



personally, as a very analytical person it would be a huge headache trying to play against 2 hands played by one person (assuming we are playing for stakes i care about)

[PantsOnFire]

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Perhaps I should re-focus this discussion: I play a lot of live heads-up NL against donks, but have the problem that my action dries up too easily after a couple of games. One proposition I use to try to get more action is that I'll play them 3-handed, with them controlling 2 of the hands, and free to look at both hands before taking any action. Almost inevitably I find they play WORSE in that situation than they would if they just cloned their donk self and played both hands independently. In fact, the only guy to make use of the proposition to his advantage played his regular "A" game except he folded out dominated hands preflop. Which I suppose is actually a good use of collusion, now that I think about it.

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In this case, if I was equally skilled as you were, just the fact of choosing between two hands would give me an edge. My skill level would have slightly lower than yours for this to even us out. If my skill level was significantly lower than yours, then I would not only need the two hands, I would need to use them together (collusion) to get back any edge.

However, I believe you need very good poker skills in the first place to successfully collude. So the results of your experiment make sense to me.

[SplawnDarts]

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In this case, if I was equally skilled as you were, just the fact of choosing between two hands would give me an edge.

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Care to elaborate on this? Yes you get to chose between 2 hands. But 2/3 or the blind money every round comes from one of your 2 stacks. It's not at all apparent that you're getting any advantage there.

[PantsOnFire]

Personally, I believe collusion won't give you a very big edge. Let's take an MTT. Some easy collusions are telling your partner your hole cards and chip dumping. Knowing two extra hole cards could help you a little most of the time or perhaps a lot in certain instances. Small edge maybe.

If one partner builds a big stack and the other is short stacked, the dumping chips from one to the other should be +EV although how much I am not sure, but it's probably not much. This might happen a bit in casino tourneys where you end up heads up with your buddy and you either fold the best hand to give him some chips or you refrain from busting him with the nuts.

Other forms of collusions involving strategy are certainly more difficult to pull off. The whipsaw, or reraising a victim in between you might be one of the more simple forms. But how often will you be in that situation. And once and a while, the victim will have a better hand than both of you.

I think the +EV aspect of collusion is very overrated, especially online or in MTTs where you don't choose your seats or tables.

I believe collusion is at it's worst when either a) a bunch of guys invite a noob or two to their game or b) a couple of friends go together (perhaps separately) to a new game and work to bust it. In both cases, I believe it is the home game scenario that is most susceptible.

I may be naive about this but two players who are good enough to go to a casino and collude successfully are probably good enough to do well on their own.

And at the other end of the spectrum, if two bozos try to collude thinking they are getting the upper hand they actually might end up being -EV. Now that's poker justice.

[SplawnDarts]

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The difference between this scenario and real colluding is that you know you are being colluded against, which makes a difference. It introduces new variables that a person normally doesnt think about if hes unaware that the other players are colluding

when you dont know the other players are colluding
i would NEVER raise with the hand to your immediate left, because then unless i reraise with my other hand the betting is closed if you call. So if i have a strong hand to ur left, i would limp it and raise with the other hand. If you are not aware of the colluding, you are more likely to call that raise and be faced with more difficult decisions when i reraise with my actual strong hand.. ur obv more likely to get trapped/pot committed etc

when you DO know the other players are colluding
you see through the my scenario above



personally, as a very analytical person it would be a huge headache trying to play against 2 hands played by one person (assuming we are playing for stakes i care about)

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Ok, good point. One of the massive weaknesses the donks display in that game is that the very behavior you describe serves as a huge tell, and it allows you to either run away (nearly) free or trap at your leisure. If they used it as a randomized bluff occasionally, that would make it much tougher, but of course being donks, they don't.

Even if you get "trapped" it's often not that bad since you at least get 2:1 on your money up to the point where they fold the shill hand.

I agree that collusion is probably massively more effective when you don't know it's going on.

[ChipFerFree]

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Ok this one is was not online but it surely was true and allegedly semi-unintentional.

Player A and B agreed beforehand to split winnings should either win -- that in and of itself is probably cheating in my opinion

30 person tourny
200 buyin
payout to 4
5 people left


Player A chip dumps to Player B because he is 'tired' -- clearly a despicable and collusive act.

Since Player A and B were not short stacked in this situation -- Player B is now a monster and wins the entire tourny...

That's cheating and I'll bet you it has happened many many times.

Now online -- you can't really pull this off as easily since the sites are actively looking for similar IP address originations and the same players landing in the same games repeatedly -- but again I bet it has and does happen...

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Now hold on - it's not at all clear that one player with 2x chips has a higher tourney EV than 2 players with 1x chips. In fact, the conventional valuation of chips in a tournament says that the exact opposite is true (ie. chips on the bottom of the stack are more valuable than those on top). It strikes me that perhaps you're complaining about results rather than expectations.

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Although I agree with your valuation evaluation [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] winning the whole tourny wasn't my point. With only 1 bubble and three winners -- the chip dump placed person B in the money thus the conclusion of the collusion.

However -- having agreed with your valuation evaluation -- I'd still much rather have the largest stack on the table against two stacks half my size in this situation -- any day of the week regardless of EVBVMEVEE [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Heh -- I took second so I was just fine by the way [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[SplawnDarts]

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And at the other end of the spectrum, if two bozos try to collude thinking they are getting the upper hand they actually might end up being -EV. Now that's poker justice.

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Now that I KNOW happens from experience. I've probably been at a table when I noticed some sort of signaling 20 times, and it's usually not hard to spot who's in on it once you know there's something to look for. Rarely if ever did the colluders seem to be +EV on the whole.

A couple of times I even managed to decode the signals and break a couple of cheats.

[PantsOnFire]

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A couple of times I even managed to decode the signals and break a couple of cheats.

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Poker justice at it's best.

[PantsOnFire]

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In this case, if I was equally skilled as you were, just the fact of choosing between two hands would give me an edge.

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Care to elaborate on this? Yes you get to chose between 2 hands. But 2/3 or the blind money every round comes from one of your 2 stacks. It's not at all apparent that you're getting any advantage there.

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Well think of it this way. There are three of us, all equally skilled. Over time we all pretty much end up even. Now, me and the third guy start showing each other our cards preflop.

Surely you can see that just by showing each other our hands, you will start taking the worst of it.

[SplawnDarts]

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In this case, if I was equally skilled as you were, just the fact of choosing between two hands would give me an edge.

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Care to elaborate on this? Yes you get to chose between 2 hands. But 2/3 or the blind money every round comes from one of your 2 stacks. It's not at all apparent that you're getting any advantage there.

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Well think of it this way. There are three of us, all equally skilled. Over time we all pretty much end up even. Now, me and the third guy start showing each other our cards preflop.

Surely you can see that just by showing each other our hands, you will start taking the worst of it.

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Maybe I'm taking your post too literally, but I fail to see how simply showing the cards is going to help you. You're going to have to take some concrete action based on that knowledge, or it's of no use.

So far, I've seen a few credible suggestions of actions to take:

1) Dumping chips from deepstack to shortstack in a tourney
2) making additional preflop folds when dominated by your collaborator (TH only)
3) "whipsaw" raising
4) Doing pot odds math with 2 fewer remaining cards and a better count of outs, givning you more accurate numbers

Of those three, I can't see any of them giving a big edge against a sound player. 3) in particular is dangerous since it effectivly lays 2:1 odds to your opponent.