Pros Softplaying, how big of a problem is it?

[Texter]

originally posted in MultiTable, but was told it wasn't relevant:

I remember that Barry Greenstein post where he stated he doesn't play his hardest against his son, girlfriend, Mimi Tran or Liz Lieu.

Per Barry:


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As I have said in the past, there are going to be situations where players are close enough friends, that they may tend to play each other straight up.

For me, there are four such people: my girlfriend Alex, my son Joe, Mimi Tran, and Liz Lieu. They are all close to me outside of poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

from 2+2 Thread: Thread on Barry Softplaying

Here Liz states that some pros softplay:

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PL: You have a lot of friends in the poker world, how tough is it to play against people you like? You are basically going after each others livelihood day in and day out.

LL: We all know that everyone does this for a living and we’re friends, but at the table we’re not. Even when it comes to my best friend, John, I tell him to go at it. There is no mercy. I tell him check raise me all you want because I’m going to do it to you!

However, there are some players that will just check it on the river no matter what comes, they’ll play the hand out and then on the river they’ll just check. That’s not my style.

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from:

Liz Lieu Interview

which is kind of strange since Liz is listed by Barry as one of the people he has a hard time playing tough against.

There also seem to be some WPT episodes where pro's are being "nice" to one another.

So how prevalent is softplaying by pros that are friends? Or is it no big deal?