[Ansky]

[ QUOTE ]
I was open about it in chat because I think there's nothing wrong with it.

It's within the rules which shapes a reasonable expectation of risk of this happening when one plays online. I've been duped into playing numerous high-stakes players I wouldn't probably play if I knew who they were before and I never really get upset: it's just a part of high-stakes online poker and you just have to be vigilant sometimes.

The coaching argument is one I've always made and I think is very relevant: if you're fine with the very widespread practice of coaching, then you should be fine with conference playing. In fact, during coaching a player who often has a certain image plays different from his standard plays giving him the advantage of reads on his opponents while having them operate under flawed assumptions about the student's game whereas during conference playing the style of play is consistent so at least your opponents are having accurate reads of your patterns and the tendencies they're responding to are at least actually operative in the inter-player dynamic.

Really weird to me that lots of people are flipping their [censored] over this but the hundreds of posts in which people say "I coach" (I do coach by the way) don't invoke such uproar.

I think if this were 5/10 and everybody found out that some okay but not great regs sit in a room together and conference play nobody would flip out. But this was 300/600 and good players talking so all of a sudden some people are quick to start a scandal. But stakes and quality of the players involved really shouldn't affect whether or not it's ethical.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree w/ this.

I have gotten pissed in the past when I played someone who I thought was someone else... but I coach, and w/ all the ambiguity, it just seems that there really is no precedent whatsoever.