Soft Play (Collusion) in Tournaments

[redfisher]

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Preferential soft playing is collusion, not "maintaining the status quo." When you won't bet against your buddies, but you all play hard against the rest, you are cheating and should be banned. The status of the blinds, antes, bubble, clock, or payouts are irrelevant.

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I agree that preferential softplay is cheating. How are you going to prove it? Many tournament players won't get involved in big pots with other big stacks if it's close to the bubble or a big prize jump. In this case, assume that the evil 5 all have 50 BB stacks while the 2 victims have 4 BB. Which one of the 5 is going to want to be the one who blows up and busts out when there are 2 guys on life support? You don't have to agree that these are good strategies, but you can't ban somebody because they play that way.

Hopefully if OP had some decent evidence of collusion like table talk or the guys splitting the money in the parking lot he'd have mentioned it. Until he gives me specifics of the collusion, I'm not going to assume it's going on. This is a guy who admitted in his second post in the thread that he didn't have any business running a card room.

[psandman]

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I agree that preferential softplay is cheating. How are you going to prove it?

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Fortunately running a cardroom is not like running a criminal court. You don't have to prove anything. If after watching these people play for several weeks the guy running the cardroom thinks they are cheating...they are probably cheating and it is reasonable for him to take action to stop them from continuing to cheat. He need not prove anything. Even if he is wrong and they aren'rt cheating, they are giving the appearance of cheating and that can be just as harmful.

[Mr Rick]

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I do not cheat in poker tourneys, but I thought the normal way to go about it was chip dumping to either help team members survive or to build a couple of monster stacks to compete for the big money. Softplaying just maintains the status quo.

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Softplaying maintains the status quo in terms of number of chips for a number of players but they move up closer to or into the money every time somebody else is knocked off.

When I used to play Party Poker they had a lot of freerolls for WSOP entries. 3500 entrants with 50 making the semifinals. In the semis 3500 entries with 25 making the money (15 top prizes of $10,000). Because of the payout structure it was not uncommon to see entire tables towards the bubble of the tournament colluding by never making a bet. And this collusion was overt. You could watch the chat box at the table and see people laughing about laying down AA pre-flop. Party Poker took different approaches to dealing with it based on who was handling the complaint. In one tourney, nobody was penalized and I got an e-mail later stating that "no collusion took place - so there will be no penalties". In another tourney, all chat priviledges were immediately revoked at that table and because there was one holdout the table was not able to collude.

So in this guy's tourney, if the blinds escalate too quickly you could get situations where the final 8-15 guys would chop all prize money - making it profitable for 7 guys to slow play into that situation. There is a thread running right now asking about a 17 way chop at a tourney...

[MasterShakeJr]

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There is a thread running right now asking about a 17 way chop at a tourney...

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Link?

[DesertCat]

Oscar, if I can read between the lines, you either have an illegal game, or the 7 have some inordinate influence on your clubs operations. Randy gave you the best options, but I think there might be one other route. Sit the 7 down and explain why its in everyones interests that you run an honest room, and explain why what they are doing is wrong and hurting the viability of their room. Then explain what you will be doing to prevent reoccurence.

[Rottersod]

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There is a thread running right now asking about a 17 way chop at a tourney...

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Link?

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That's not about soft play or collusion. It's just about the final 2 tables not wanting to do coinflips for huge blinds with everyone at less than 7XBB.

[GeeBeeQED]

Here here to all posts following mine on the subject. Do something about it and keep at it and I'm happy as a customer of your room.

I've been the victim of end game open verbal collusion on two different occasions by the same player at my once favorite local card room. Great club, several live action tables every night, 20 to 50 player tourny's 5 nights a week. I was in heaven. But, the second time this happened on the bubble being victimized the the same player, I complained about it both times and the house did nothing each time. It won't happen a 3rd time. I won't be back. Funny thing is I brought about 15 players to this room over a couple of years, they won't get anymore from me. It's clear to me, if I don't shut up and take the screwing, my play was not welcome. You certainly must stand up for yourself in this game. I am still a bit tender about the experiance and maybe this is the cause of my strong feelings showing through in my posts.

To Rotter, do only chickens and bunnies make it to the final table? ;-)

[Popped Rod]

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... Because of the payout structure it was not uncommon to see entire tables towards the bubble of the tournament colluding by never making a bet. And this collusion was overt. You could watch the chat box at the table and see people laughing about laying down AA pre-flop...

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This doesn't seem to be the same thing. Laying down AA with a medium stack on the bubble is good sattelite strategy.

I'd be more concerned with players donating to the shorties to keep them at the table.

Another form of collusion during a sattelite is for everyone to call a shorty's all-in and all checking down to the river. This increases the possibility that the shorty will bust out against the many opponents.

[Mr Rick]

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... Because of the payout structure it was not uncommon to see entire tables towards the bubble of the tournament colluding by never making a bet. And this collusion was overt. You could watch the chat box at the table and see people laughing about laying down AA pre-flop...

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This doesn't seem to be the same thing. Laying down AA with a medium stack on the bubble is good sattelite strategy.


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I did not give the complete story in my post. In the first case the chat at my table indicated that there was a table that was "colluding" by not playing a hand. So I monitored that table for over 45 minutes (until there were 50 players left and we had all made the semis). The chats exchanged at the "colluding" table were explicit about nobody playing a hand. And there were many of them. Every now and then somebody would say something like "I have KK I don't want to lay it down" and would get responses like "Just do it - we are all going to get into the semis". etc. etc. etc. In the entire time I watched the table, not one player called or raised.

In a second incident, the chat was explicit in trying to recruit everyone at the table to soft play by never calling and raising. There were at least 3 or 4 players actively trying to convince all others to join in. By the time I had contacted Party Poker there was only one guy who didn't want to do it. And my guess is that if Party Poker hadn't shut off the chat for those 3 or 4 players, the last holdout would have been targetted for removal by at least the organizers so they could get on with their cake walk into the semis.

In all, over a 4 week period of time, in roughly 30 of these tourneys I saw this happen at least 4 times - in one case two different tables were doing it in the same tournament.

The funny thing was that one of the tables broke. In those tourneys Party Poker would break tables in reverse numerical order - so if you were on Tables 1-5 you were guaranteed of not breaking. I could see it coming and then was rewarded by one of the organizers landing on my table. He tried to organize our table to collude as well. Aside from calling him a cheater I told him I was actively trying to get him thrown out of the tournament. A few minutes later his chat was turned off and some of the other players started wondering why the guy was no longer "talking". Needless to say it was very satisfying to see him bust out.

[GeeBeeQED]

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......Let's assume for certain reasons you cannot just ban these 7 from entering the tournament (unfortunately).....

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What do you fear? One of them will go to the police and end your game? One of them is a relative? They are fiends of other players you don't want to lose? You won't have enough players on other live nights to fill tables? What is it you fear? Why do you seek a way to coddle a cheater? They've got you right where they want you. Your compramising the control of your game if you cannot consider all options related to them. Who's game is it anyway?

Your posting rules isn't going to change the nature of thier integrity. The problem will still be there regardless of the placebo pill you pin up on the wall. If you can't bring yourself to act on it, then why embarass yourself by posting rules to begin with? You've got to start booting them out or you'll have no effect. The loss of thier game is the only threat that might have an impact on a few of them. However, it's hard for me to consider you can change the nature of a man. He's a crook or he's not oft'times.