Insight On Collusion

[oldmangrimis 0]

there was a a lot of talk at my home game about collusion in general. Some players only thing it go on in casino other say only at home game and some say only online. On how the player work together some said it done by double talk or chip sign or just teaming up on one player with diffrent type of draw to chop the money later. I was looking for any info a pro or long time player can give on this topic, some realy insight.thanks

[James D 0]

Can't give you any insight into the most profitable method (e.g - re-raising to get others out of the pot, or just telling each other cards for more info), but it's rife in online cash games.I've seen many cases at fairly low levels where it was blatantly obvious (reported one case too)... I think anyone who doesn't believe it's happening online is a little naive tbh.

[mtdesmoines 3]

there was a a lot of talk at my home game about collusion in general. Some players only thing it go on in casino other say only at home game and some say only online. On how the player work together some said it done by double talk or chip sign or just teaming up on one player with diffrent type of draw to chop the money later. I was looking for any info a pro or long time player can give on this topic, some realy insight.thanks

I just assume I'm up against it online. That's why I like HU games online.

[GabeTheKid 0]

and i thought i was bad at spelling/grammar

[BigDMcGee 3,352]

If you really want to goods on it, RPG's GCA posts have tons of info on it.. most people think Russ G is a crack pot.. and his pot certainly isn't without blemishes, but a lot of what he says w/r/t cheating I think is truer than any of us would like to admit.From what I've read the easiest, and hardest to catch form of collusion is passive collusion. Lets say you and two of your friends sit down at a table. Each of you communicates your hand to the other two, if you are online, this is easy with IM's or telephones. If it's live, you can do it with chip placement, IE where you set your chips down on your cards and how many chips you put down on them ( For example aces could be one chip on the top left corner, kings one chip on the top right corner, ect). Which ever one of you has the best hand, takes it against the table. In this manner, you ruin the other people's implied odds. How so, you ask? Well, lets say YOu and me are cheating. I have pocket aces, and you have pocket kings, and some third guy at the table has pocket queens. You fold your kings, and I take my aces against his queens. A certain portion of the time, he'll hit a queen on the flop or later streets. If You and I both were in the pot, the queens would have one roughly twice as much ( or more) because the aces and kings are going to be raising and re raising on queen high flops and turns and giving lots of action. Instead, the team wins just as much from queens when we win, and loses half as much when we lose. This form of cheating is much, much harder to catch than people raising and re raising to build pots or push people out. IF you are suspicious about that activity in a casino, you can ask to see people's hands, and catch people jamming pots with a set and with like 29 and get people barred. But with passive collusion, how do you even know someone folded like kings pre flop?Another way passive colluders can work is by protecting each others blinds. On higher stakes, games tend to be very tight and aggressive, with people continuously attacking the blinds. So this is what you do, you sit one person at seat one, one person at seat 4, and one at seat seven. I am in the cut off in seat one, seat 4 is in the big blind, when seat 4 is on the cut-off, seat seven is in the big blind, and when seat seven is in the cut off, one is in the BB. In cases where everyone folds to the cut off, you will raise 100 percent of the time. You will do this to discourage the button or the small blind from raising the blinds, or entering the pot. If everything goes to play, the button and sb will fold, and the team member will fold his blind to the other team member. Of course, if the button or small blinds start getting really aggressive and re raising you weakly, you can back off this tactic, or conversely if the big blind has a big hand that you want action from, you just fold instead of raising the blind. It might not seem like much, protecting blinds like that, but it can add up of the course of a session to a great deal of value.These are just two ways to collude I've learned from reading RPG, I'm sure there are others.. some cruder forms are people raising and re raisnig to either make people pay to draw out on a big made had, or to force people out. This form of cheating, like I said, is much, much easier to spot and avoid tables, passive collusion .. well I have no fcking clue how you spot that.. it might not have as much value as the aggressive collusion, but it's much more foolproof.

[givalitl 0]

Obviously, there is a wide range of collusion at any type of game. In B&M games for instance, two good friends go to Vegas together to have some fun and play some live poker. They both sign up for some 1-2NL and both end up getting the same table. 99.9% of the time, those two guys are going to play much softer against each other as opposed to the rest of the table. This in itself is some form of collusion, but not very serious. However, they could have made an arrangment beforehand to fold to the other's bet/raise or most serious of all, they could signal their cards to each other and use a reraising scheme to either entice or bully another opponent into/out of the pot.I think severe collusion is most prominent in online poker. The ease of getting 2 or more friends at the same table and then having them all open some form of instant messenging to report their hole cards to the others is unparalleled. The imminent threat of this happening online is what keeps me from depositing large sums of money to online sites.I would say home games are the least likely games to find collusion. Partly because if you cheat the limited number of participants, you won't be able to form a game after a while, and partly because a lot of the time you're playing a friend or a friend of a friend and you don't want to cheat them because of their "social status" in your group.

[Mrjones_76 0]

quick answer: it happens and it always will, you just have to learn to look out for it.

[Zach6668 513]

If you're concerned about collusion at lower stakes, honestly, the people who are dumb enough to try it, are usually too dumb to pull it off correctly.