soft play

I have not played in any touraments but read about them in CardPlayer and the like. What is softplay and why does someone get penalized for it?

When two players are in collusion, they do not play poker the same way as they would if they did not know each other. For example two players in collusion would not want to risk short chipping each other by winning a big pot against the other player. They both want enough chips to be able to play. In this case, they don't raise with powerful hands, or just fold to give the other player the pot.


In the case of Men Nguyen on other posts, he is accused of allegedly buying players in to tournaments as long as they soft play him. He does not necessarily have to soft play them. Supposedly they can't bluff him.

So who determines whether it is a softplay or a legitimate slowplay gone bad or possibly correct strategy.

You don't determine it. You can only ASSUME because no one will admit to doing it. You probably can't even see it happening in most cases, you just have to know there is a bond between two players. One instance brought up in the posts below is where a player backs another player in the tournament. One is low in chips and the other is high. They get into a hand together. There is a lot of raising until the last card when the low person bets and the high player folds. No one sees the players' cards and they have just redistributed the chips. This is not necessarily slow playing, it is dumping chips. There are several ways for players to collude. None of them guarantee success, but they can give an edge when others are not considering the possibility in their own strategies.

I did read about a hand in one of the big tournaments lately where a player complained that an opponent hadn't bet a strong hand on the end and the tournament director upheld the complaint and the non-better was out of the game for 20 minutes. I think it was 7-card Hi-Lo that's all I can remember. If anyone has more details please let us know.


Andy.

I have never heard of such a ruling in the U.S. Good for the tournament director.