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Old 08-06-2007, 05:57 AM
cwar cwar is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Cwar LLC
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Default Collusion at Turningstone?

So Im sitting in the TS 500 max nl game having been there a couple hours, mostly old guys as usual and a few young guys begin filling in seats when I notice some very strange plays beginning to happen. Seat 2, 5 and 7 are the players in question (all young and seem to know each other but deny they are close friends), the first strange situation:
MP2 (super loose seat 1) raises a limper to $35, MP3 (seat 2) 3bets to $130, BB (seat 7 and friend) pushes for $235 more, MP2 folds, MP3 begins considering...

At this point everyone is talking and seat 2 says something along the lines of "I have AA." MP3 is just sitting not even seeming to consider his decision and this continues for a long while until MP3 folds QQ face up (getting 3.5:1, very strange because he has already talked about pot odds in a way that made me believe he understood them), BB mucks and says he of course had AA but doesnt show. Some of the old guys eventually bring up the fact that if they are friends that looks extremely like they are trapping money because of the comments, I concur. 2, 5 and 7 argue a bit but back down when everyone at the table seems to agree.

Action continues with seat 2 continually 3betting the loose seat 1 player very often, the old guys are grumbling but at this point it just seems like aggressive 3betting. The three players in question (2,5,7) seem to be chatting much more with each other at this point but are very on edge when anyone else talks to them. Up until this point seat 5 seemed like an excellent player to me, way above the skill level of anything I normally see online or live (I was reading every action of every hand as usual). When the next sketchy situation comes up:

Seat 5 is UTG and minraises (very strange for him), I fold, lots of callers as is standard against a minraise in this game, OTB (seat 2) 3bets to $100, folds to UTG who starts saying how he likes his hand and doesnt want to fold, seat 2 leans back for the first time since he sat down and definitely has some very awkward body language (which I found particularly strange because Id seen him show strong hands like QQ and bluffs in this spot and he always acted the same then), seat 5 eventually cold calls the $100 (strategically extremely strange from him) everyone else folds and seat 5 (UTG) check folds a J87o flop quickly while giggling saying he needed to flop a set (strange considering that he has shown enough knowledge of the game for me to assume he knows doing that is -EV, also if I suspected he were trying to put pressure on OTB by calling he would never check/fold in the quick nonchalant manner that he did).

Didnt really know what to do so I asked a dealer friend of mine and he advised me to tell the floor and I did so, the dealer that dealt the QQ hand arrived during our discussion and confirmed to the floor something very strange was going on during that hand. Floor said he would warn the players and then stopped paying attention to me and nothing seemed to be getting done so I quickly went to the bathroom (so I could play a long session as it was a good game) came back to the game and waited to post my BB. There was some talk about collusion going on as I came back but I couldnt tell if the floor had come over or not because they were mostly talking about how seat 5 was talking about his hand during the hand.

At this point seat 2 and I got into a bit of a heated discussion about talking about one's hand during the progress and I basically (but quite politely) told him what had occurred was not OK. He now had me covered for more than $1500 and I decided that I did not want to risk playing in the game even if it was juicy especially because I wouldnt be just thinking about strategy and got up and went to find my friends. I checked later and both 5 and 7 had left within a 5 minute time span of me leaving.

Basically what I want to know is what the best way to deal with this kind of situation, was the floor correct in their actions (or what are potential options), and what kind of collusion was going on here? Did they have a complex strategy Im not seeing or were they just bad at it? Was this just a way to engineer a good image and deep stack for seat 2? Before I left for the night I checked back and all three were sitting again and seat 2 had somewhere in the range of $3k-$5k on the table.
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