Collusion in poker - can it actually acomplish anything?

[tsearcher]

A few more ideas as to why collusion may not be that helpful.

1.) The colluder only wins half as much (or 1/3, 1/4 etc.)with his winning hands. But he is still paying the full rake. So it will be harder for colluding players to beat the rake.

2.) Same theory will apply to blinds and/or antes.

3.) Unless the cheaters are bots, it would be difficult to multitable when playing online.

4.) The problem with chimp dumping was already addressed as far as devaluing your chips. I also wanted to point out that again you are splitting your winnings. And going from two (or 3, 4 etc.) chances of winning to one.

5.) If you don't know you're being cheated you could use game theory principals to neutralize any possible cheating until you are sure.

6.) If you do know you are being cheated, use the counter measures which have been discussed.

Just some thoughts, I don't really have any more proof to back these up.

[doh742]

[ QUOTE ]
A few more ideas as to why collusion may not be that helpful.

1.) The colluder only wins half as much (or 1/3, 1/4 etc.)with his winning hands. But he is still paying the full rake. So it will be harder for colluding players to beat the rake.

2.) Same theory will apply to blinds and/or antes.

3.) Unless the cheaters are bots, it would be difficult to multitable when playing online.

4.) The problem with chimp dumping was already addressed as far as devaluing your chips. I also wanted to point out that again you are splitting your winnings. And going from two (or 3, 4 etc.) chances of winning to one.

5.) If you don't know you're being cheated you could use game theory principals to neutralize any possible cheating until you are sure.

6.) If you do know you are being cheated, use the counter measures which have been discussed.

Just some thoughts, I don't really have any more proof to back these up.

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ok, lets go throught these reasons why collusion isn't helpfull one by one

1. Yes, you are dividing your winnings with another player. But it really isn't two players. Maybe you do pay a full rake for half the winnings, but everytime your partner wins a hand you get half of that for no rake. So it evens out.

2. Same as above.

3. Of course cheaters are not multitabling. You have to pay strict attention to every detail. In addition, you keep thinking its 2 players, why not 5 just attacking any unsuspecting fishes who sit at the table.

4. Chip dumping works wonderfully if you can pull it off. But again, you can't think small terms. You have 10 people moving chips off to each other when they can. Until ultimately two meet at the final table and double the other one up. And off course you are spliting your winnings. But think how much value you would gain by having a double up at key points in the tourney??? Spliting the winnnings doesn't matter when you are STEALING. A good colluding team will almost always get your money. They are cheating and have unfair advantages that you don't. Its not colluding, its STEALING.

5. I will leave game theory alone.

6. If you know that there are 2 or more people colluding at a table, then you leave. That simple. There are no counter measures. You just don't play that game. If you can say, I know player X, Y, Z are signalling and cheating at this table, but I am going to play anyway, then you have a serious gambling problem and need a lot of help.

Cheating exists, collusion exists. Thankfully for us, most people who try to cheat don't understand the game well enough to use its advantages, or are just not good at it. But trust me, at some point, be in amatuer hour at the apollo, or if you play high limit games a pro, you have been colluded against if you play enough poker.

For those who doubt me still, read Richard Marcus' "Dirty Poker" The man killed the tables he cheated with three player.

Or, reading Bringing down the House by Ben Mezrich. A group of MIT kids counted cards and by taking small advantages made millions before they got the screws put to them

I will make one concession to the original poster on this. Most people can't gain enough by collusion to get an advantage from it. However, there are cheats who make livings at it, and are effectivley STEALING your money when you play against them. If you don't play high stakes though, you don't have much to worry about.

[tsearcher]

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Just wanted to point a few things out. If you reread my post, you'll see that I never assumed only 2 players are colluding. See #1 and #4.

Also, the only way the rake will balance out is if the colluding players never play in the same pot. And the more players in cahoots, the bigger the effect of the rake.

[Vicarious]

Confession, I did not read all of the replies.

I don't care about collusion. It's an extremely rare group that has both good collusion strategy AND good poker skills. If they were great players individually, they'd make money on their own far in excess of what they would do by playing the same tables.

[Dov]

I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned yet, but the biggest problem with being colluded against is that you will need cards to win a hand. Not only that, but the colluding team is 2x more likely to hit the board than you are. And they ARE often getting good implied odds from you.

You can't draw profitably b/c your implied odds are not what they seem to be.

It is much more difficult to bluff 2 people than 1. It is pretty much impossible if they are colluding and 1 of them has anything of value.

You are basically always going to make the minimum when you win and lose the maximum when you lose.

If you don't understand how to do this, then I'm not going to teach you. You may be right that most cheaters don't maximize their profitability b/c they are lazy or unskilled or whatever. That doesn't mean that there aren't skilled cheaters operating as well.

BTW, why do you draw the line at 3 handed? Why not give them 10 hands if there's no advantage to it?

Dov

[SplawnDarts]

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I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned yet, but the biggest problem with being colluded against is that you will need cards to win a hand. Not only that, but the colluding team is 2x more likely to hit the board than you are. And they ARE often getting good implied odds from you.

You can't draw profitably b/c your implied odds are not what they seem to be.

It is much more difficult to bluff 2 people than 1. It is pretty much impossible if they are colluding and 1 of them has anything of value.

You are basically always going to make the minimum when you win and lose the maximum when you lose.

If you don't understand how to do this, then I'm not going to teach you. You may be right that most cheaters don't maximize their profitability b/c they are lazy or unskilled or whatever. That doesn't mean that there aren't skilled cheaters operating as well.

BTW, why do you draw the line at 3 handed? Why not give them 10 hands if there's no advantage to it?

Dov

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I don't think a lot of this is sound reasoning. Yes, you need more hand on average to beat two people than you do to beat one person. But that's true whether they're colluding or not. Similarly, yes, they will hit the board twice as often as you will, but when you hit there are twice as many people to potentially pay you off. It's a wash. Similarly, yes, it's more difficult to bluff two people than one, but when you do they contributed more of the pot on average via blinds, so again it's a wash.

Now, I don't disagree with you that there might be skilled cheaters operating. The question is, what constitutes a skilled cheater? What would they do different from their normal "A" game? We've got a few examples thus far, but nothing very exciting. Seemingly the best one so far is to fold dominated hands, and those with outs poisoned by your teammates.

As far as why I draw the line at 3-handed, it's pretty much a matter of convenience. There's no way the donk is going to look at 9 hands, figure out his oh-so-brilliant strategy, and then play them all in a timely manner. The donk will get confused and bored and quit. But two hands makes them feel like they've got a real edge.

[SplawnDarts]

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Richard Marcus has writen a bit about his collusion escapades in card rooms. Though he doesn't quite go into the mathematics of it.

Anyhow, for anyone who doubts the power of collusion, just look at case history of Puggy Pearson. Here you have a world class pro, one of the best, who got his whole bankroll taken in just one summer by a collusion team put together for the sole purpose of busting him (and anyone else at his table).

If the best can't prevent going broke vs colluders, what hope is there for anyone else?

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I'll take a look at what Richard Marcus wrote.
Edit: Maybe I won't. The amazon reviews make it sound like a waste of time for a serious player.[ QUOTE ]
I was disappointed in the author's lack of understanding in general gambling theory, which was showcased in his analysis of the World Series of Poker collusion. His explanation of why the same players often do well in WSOP bordered on "conspiracy theory"; it was clear he did not understand how and why the best players in the game succeed.

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Got somewhere I can read about the thing with Puggy? I've never heard that one before.

[CBat28]

I believe if done correctly, collusion could be very profitable.

[SplawnDarts]

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I believe if done correctly, collusion could be very profitable.

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Fair enough. Of course, the proof's in the pudding. How would YOU do it correctly so that it would be profitable?

[Dov]

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I don't think a lot of this is sound reasoning. Yes, you need more hand on average to beat two people than you do to beat one person. But that's true whether they're colluding or not. Similarly, yes, they will hit the board twice as often as you will, but when you hit there are twice as many people to potentially pay you off. It's a wash. Similarly, yes, it's more difficult to bluff two people than one, but when you do they contributed more of the pot on average via blinds, so again it's a wash.

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It is true that you need a better hand to beat 2 opponents who are not colluding, but that is partly because they can both be expected to be holding a reasonable hand. In the case of collusion, you can never be sure which is the real hand, but you still will require a hand good enough to beat both of them. (assuming you don't know they are cheating you)

In addition, the colluding partner's weak hand can sometimes fluke into a monster unintentionally. This is a hand that you would have won had the colluder not been playing his partner's hand.

Not to put too fine a point on it, there are no situations where collusion isn't an advantage to the cheaters except when you happen to hold the nuts. If they are donks, then they become slightly less disadvantaged depending on the opponent.

It's not a wash at all. Normally, in this 3 handed game, everyone will have 2 opponents. Here you will have 2 opponents, both of whom are better informed than you are about the current conditions of the game. Not only that, but they know how the hand should play out on future betting rounds as well. They will only have 1 opponent.

Poker is an information game. Whoever has the most quality information will get the money in the end, provided that they use it properly. Given enough information, even a donk will beat you eventually.

Your point doesn't speak to collusion as much as skill gap. I think you may have been lucky to find exactly the right donks to play with so far.

If you want, I will play your 3 handed game anytime you want for whatever stakes you want up to 5K per freezeout. Just PM me if you want to set it up.

Dov

PS

I'm not trying to be childish and throw down a gauntlet. I honestly believe that you really don't understand how much edge can be gained from just knowing a couple of extra cards, not to mention the ability to act twice per round in position.

You will need to be extremely lucky cardwise to overcome this disadvantage.