Easiest Bubble Ever (not much educational value, just interesting))

[sofere]

Okay, Pokerstars $11 SNG. Stack sizes: Me ~5k, everyone else around 2000-2500. Blinds at 100/200. Smallest stack (to my right) disconnects. We play for about 3 hands until I realize that both the remaining players will fold to any raise until disconnect is out.

I steal EVERY blind with a 3xbb raise (occasionally when I'm BB, Button will limp and then fold to a 3xbb raise). I do this until disconnected guy is out with absolutely NO RESISTANCE. The most fight I got was someone saying "you're kinda gay" in the chat room.

By the time disconnected guy was out, I had >T10k, the other stacks were T500 and T1000 and I easily take first.

Has anyone seen anything like this? I almost felt bad for them, but then I realized how fun it was to have 34 wins without showdown in a tourney with a total of 109 hands.

[david050173]

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Okay, Pokerstars $11 SNG. Stack sizes: Me ~5k, everyone else around 2000-2500. Blinds at 100/200. Smallest stack (to my right) disconnects. We play for about 3 hands until I realize that both the remaining players will fold to any raise until disconnect is out.

I steal EVERY blind with a 3xbb raise (occasionally when I'm BB, Button will limp and then fold to a 3xbb raise). I do this until disconnected guy is out with absolutely NO RESISTANCE. The most fight I got was someone saying "you're kinda gay" in the chat room.

By the time disconnected guy was out, I had >T10k, the other stacks were T500 and T1000 and I easily take first.

Has anyone seen anything like this? I almost felt bad for them, but then I realized how fun it was to have 34 wins without showdown in a tourney with a total of 109 hands.

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Did you reply "Your kinda of cute"? Althought I don't know if setting the guy on tilt is a good play in this case.

I am not sure how bad your opponents play is. Getting guarenteed 3rd or 2nd place money is probably ev+ versus gambling trying for first. It just doesn't feel right though

[sofere]

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I am not sure how bad your opponents play is. Getting guarenteed 3rd or 2nd place money is probably ev+ versus gambling trying for first.

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I really disagree with this. It may be +ev if the disconnected guy (I'll refer to him as "DG") has less than half your stack, or you short stacked but ahead of the DG. In this case, everyone (including DG) has >10xbb and the other 2 are only slightly ahead of DG in stack size. Not to mention that you are NOT guaranteed 3rd. What if DG gets reconnected? Actually in this case, for some reason DG had disconnect protection and was able to play his last hand as an all-in. If he had won, the next stack would've been all-in on his next blind and was 50/50 for finishing OTM

I made some educated guesses at probability of winning if you played normal bubble poker and had T2500 on the bubble, going against T5000, T2500, and T2000 with T2000 being disconnected and dead money. This is what I came up with, please feel free to comment:

1st place: 2500/(5000+2500+2500) = 25% (% of chips that are playing)
OTM: (1-.25)/2 = 37.5%
2nd: 37.5/2 = 18.75%
3rd: 37.5/2 = 18.75%

Stars $11 payouts = 45/27/18
45 * .25 = 11.25
27 * .1875 = 5.0625
18 * .1875 = 3.375

11.25 + 5.0625 + 3.375 = 19.6875

Even if you did limp to 3rd every time (which isn't necessarily true) Its higher EV to play. Of course I just pulled these #s out of my arse, so feel free to tear apart my reasoning.

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It just doesn't feel right though

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What I did? Or just limping into the $$$? I have absolutely no qualms about taking advantage of their weak play.

[etgryphon]

Right on sofere...
This only happened to me once and just last week. A guy got disconnected, but the other player was playing fast and furious and I busted him. Then I proceeded to play against the disconnected guy. To be honest, I was an idiot and didn't figure out that he was disconnected for awhile I just thought he was scared of me. Then I felt bad, but didn't know what else to do so I just raised every hand till I won.

-Gryph

PS I did feel bad about it till I saw the $100 in my account.

[KenProspero]

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Then I felt bad, but didn't know what else to do so I just raised every hand till I won.

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I wouldn't feel bad at all (though I guess I'd sheepishly apologize if the guy came back).

However, I would do the following -- given the situation, I guess I'd feel that some of the money I won was because of the unfortunate disconnect. (maybe 1-2 entries). Make a mental note of this (or even write it down), and the next time you disconnect from a game, remember the situation and call it even.

[sofere]

If you were heads up, its no contest. You have no other choice but to raise till you win, what are you supposed to do, fold your blinds to keep it even until he comes back? Its not like its collusion or anything unless on some metaphysical level one can collude with oneself.

[Marcotte]

The closest I've been to this situation was a SNG on Gaming Club months back. We were on the bubble or maybe 5 left(this was before I knew what the bubble was, or how to play there). All of the sudden, "Away" signs started popping up on all the other players. With 10-15 seconds, I was the only one left. Although this was early in my poker career, I knew enough to raise every hand. Well, not every hand. I wanted to be as fair as I could, so I would fold to the all-in BB. I guess I wanted to give each other player an equal chance to reconnect with at least some of a stack /images/graemlins/grin.gif. When it finally got down to 2 or 3 handed, one person finally reconnected. He said something about my big stack, I said sorry, won the last couple hands and took my $50.

Nothing wrong with it. It is part of the game. If you were playing in a B&M with a guy with IBS*, would you let him skip his blind if he had to run to the restroom?


*Irritable Bowel Syndrome

[etgryphon]

I'm not saying I was spouting tear or anything...

It was more the feeling you get when you see some kid in the mall with his friends who lets his mom dress him still... /images/graemlins/grin.gif

What the word for it "Pity"

-Gryph

[TMFS9]

A similar situation happened to me on paradise just the other day we get down to the final 3 and a loose maniac had ~5000 while me and the other player had ~2500. The loose maniac had been having problems with his connection the whole time, he was the BB while I was SB. Well I noticed well before the other player that the loose maniac was completely disconnected so I started raising every hand. By the time that the 3rd player realized what I was doing I had him completely dominated in chips, and he began begging me to stop raising him and to allow him to come in second. He didn't even realize that if he would of raised I would have gotten out of the way, he even started to fold every single SB to me. I ended up getting him dangerously close to being blinded out, but he ended up getting into second place with 200 chips with blinds 250/500. I would of felt bad if he wouldn't of made it to 2nd, but he had every chance to take advantage of it just like I did. I just wanted to make sure he didn't have a chance after I blinded out the loose maniac.

[UMTerp]

I've got a story pretty silimar to that. Same type of situation happened to me on Stars, we're three handed, and there's a disconnected player among the three. Stacks are something like Me - 8000, 1500 for the disconnected guy on my left, and 4000 for the third guy.

Anyway, it became apparent that Player #3 was content with giving me blinds til it got down to heads up, then he'd take his chances with the 4.5:1 chip deficit. So for a while, it'd be me raise and take the blinds, me raise and take the blinds, him fold his SB to me, repeat ad nauseum. Well, when the stacks got to about:

Me - 10500
Disconnected - 300
Player 3 - 2700

I decided to start folding my small blind to the disconnected player so I could whittle the other guy down somemore. The first time I guess Player 3 blew it off as a misclick, but after the second time I did it, it was met by a fury of expletives.

I couldn't decide whether it was ethically wrong or not to do that, but I decided to just bust out the disconnected player because I felt bad for the 3rd guy. After all, he was in effect giving me a free pass ro a huge chip lead.

We ended up heads up at 12000-1500 or something, and I won easily.