casino poker experience from recreational player

[thesilkworm]

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I think part of the problem is people think we're cheating just because a group and winning.



[/ QUOTE ]If there's a lot of hands where one of you leads the flop, another one of you raises, and a person who is not a member of your group is forced to fold top pair weak kicker or such and it turns out that the two of you have bottom pair and a gutshot between you, then the player that folded the best hand is naturally going to think he was colluded against, whether you guys did it on purpose or not.

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Absolutely. I've played in a live game with my girlfriend before where some of the locals definitely suspected we were cheating. Two hands occurred which saw us both betting/raising at every opportunity. She rivered me both times [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] - I flipped over my losing hand on both occasions just to show to the table that I had a real hand.

[Rottersod]

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The people from my office play poker 3-4 times a year and we seem to have a good time. But recently we went as a group again to play 10/20. We have this person who said as a group we're cheating and he started swearing at us. The dealer did give him warnings but it didnt have any effect on him. I know we drive people nuts everytime we play because we dont care about starting hands and we chase to the river. Is it like this at every casino or just ours?

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Thing is that at the 10/20 level you are playing against regulars more than you are playing against once a month types and regulars tend to be nitty about things that change the regular pace of their game. A group of friends who come in and suddenly start raising and re-raising and chasing all the way is going to upset them and in a way I can understand that because whether you realize it or not your group really is colluding. Not in the usual way though. Your group knows in advance that you are all going to play very aggressive and re-raise all the time so you're playing a tag team style against all the other players. There are many types of hands that a good player will want to be able to isolate on but your group has tacitly agreed beforehand that this won't be able to happen. Don't be surprised when this causes hard feelings among the regulars.

[USC@MICH]

Tacitly or not I enjoy when this happens. Makes for big pots, a good change from the normal nits theat play 10-20. If I notice a game like that going im going to request a seat at that table.

[wpr101]

I've sat with three other friends at the same 1/2 NL table before. The rest of the table figured out we knew each other but didn't care too much because we were not talking about hands or softplaying.

[bav]

98 times out of 100 I either don't mind or appreciate a group of folks who know each other sitting down. Often I become the fly on the wall, being ignored in a 6-handed game where 4 of 'em are friends and are actively engaged in bluffing each other and laughing it up. They completely miss that the guy with the tiny VPIP is in the hand this time and is just flat calling 'em down all the way. You gotta love on the river when I raise and one of 'em jumps and says "uhhh, wait a minute--YOU still have cards?"

'Course there are folks who actively work together to cheat. But they're either good enough at it that I don't notice (in which case they probably haven't let on that they know each other in the first place--folks sitting down to work together to cheat rarely tell the table they know each other), or they're REALLY bad at what they're trying to do.

More common, and in the "don't care much" category are the couples who sit down and once it's heads up softplay. Sure, you can throw a fit over it, but when they've made it clear they're husband and wife and are playing from the same bankroll, insisting they keep betting at each other is kinda pointless.