Would You Play On This Table?

[BluffTHIS!]

So I just got done running my mouth in these forums and logged on to stars. I play both plo and nl on the 1K/2K tables and checked out the plo first. I see 2 2K tables and one with a healthy 1500 pot average. Then I see 4 players from amsterdam on it. 1 is a very good player, 1 is a tricky somewhat lag, and the other 2 are total donks. I've played with all of them before and don't mind playing with any of them. But 4 players from 1 city on a 9 handed table is too much for me. Even though it is just as likely that these 4 are regulars in the games there like Rolf and happen to be playing online when a local game doesn't go, this still is too much for me to trust.

Ray Zee made a comment a few years back about the danger of collusion in online games where you have more hidden cards like omaha and triple draw. So even if two or more players weren't making any funny protection bets and raises, the possibility of shared card knowledge could strongly influence calls especially on drawing boards.

Now out of fairness, I should mention that I frequently play with a lot of english players and it is not uncommon to have 2 from London and a couple from elsewhere. But I have never seen anything funny from them and in fact they relish playing big pots headsup with each other. But regarding one of those Dutch players, I have NEVER seen that person play without at least one other Dutch player on the table.

There are bounds to my trust in the fairness of online games and this type of situation exceeds them. So since the party plo games suck right now I'll just go play no limit which is fine since that is 65% of what I play anyway.

Rolf if you read this, I would be interested in your comments. Again I have never seen any of these Dutch players do anything funny together in hand like I have those of a certain other nationality (think bear-skin hats and onion domes), but I still don't like such situations. Maybe however you know who all of them are in the B&M world though and don't think there is a problem. Again, I would be interested in your thoughts.

I would just sit at another table unless you cant find one near as juicy. I mean, why would you ever want to take a chance if you feel something is fishy?

Not to mention if you play in this game, you wont feel as confident, and that could lead to less than premium results.

[beset7]

I've noticed this same phenomenon a number of times,(double average pot size, half the table from amsterdam). I've datamined these games, gone over hands, discussed them with people and I've never seen anything that looked like outright collusion to me.

Though depending on the screen names there are a few live ones who I'd be more then happy to play with. Even if I suspected the game was dirty. Especially if I had some sense of which players were working together. Maybe that's stupid but that's the truth.

It's a little annoying when they chat in dutch the whole time but online translators are more then enough to get the drift of the conversation.

Or, if your name is TheRempel, you can start typing "my [censored] is swollen and infected" in dutch over and over again.

[dibbs]

there were some recent posts about how a group of players from the 75 O8 were bragging about how they shared hole cards and were killing that game.

Now I know theres a huge congestion of players from that area so it doesnt prove anything, but personally I wouldnt feel so great about it. Thing is I think the softer collusion is harder for sites to monitor, so Id have a funny feeling about it.

Interested in hearing what people far more knowledgeable than myself have to say however.

[BluffTHIS!]

Well beset, like I said too, I have never seen anything in a certain hand. But shared card knowledge could allow a couple players to know when you or they might be drawing better or thinner on a draw, or that a 3rd player is unlikely to have the hand represented on the river thus allowing one of them to make a "miraculous" call.

I've played with colluders in limit games in B&M cardrooms, and they really don't bother me there since there are actually ways to exploit that, and since a good cardroom manager will be willing to have a 3rd player's hand exposed from the muck when he didn't call the last bet in order to prove what is going on. But in big bet games online it's just not worth the risk if there is even a smaller possibility.

[joewatch]

The most common sort of collusion that I imagine happens quite frequently is players sitting in the same room playing at the same table online, and players using instant messaging to talk to each other during a hand.

[Big Dave D]

I'm guessing the Doctor was in the house /images/graemlins/wink.gif

I've played with a lot of the Dutch, and never seen anything untoward either. FWIW, I dont think Rolf plays online, or at least in that game, so I wouldn't think he would know much about it. From my conversations with the Amsterdam crew, the amsterdam game died over a year back. That is why they are now playing online.

Also, I think collusion is much weaker in Omaha. Most collusion involves running someone into the nuts. But this is much less effective in PLO. If you have top set, or a big drawing hand, there isnt much damage that collusion can do to you. OK, the "I know I have the nut flush" coup can happen, but hell, those guys call with lower than the 2nd nut flush anyway /images/graemlins/smile.gif

And also, I know in the US world geography is not a major topic, but Amsterdam is a major city...over 1 million people. Europe is not one big village y'know /images/graemlins/smile.gif

dd

[TheRempel]

[ QUOTE ]
Or, if your name is TheRempel, you can start typing "my [censored] is swollen and infected" in dutch over and over again.

[/ QUOTE ]

It was!

[BluffTHIS!]

Hi Dave,

FWIW, I would have made the same comments if 4 of them were from Houston. And I do actually realize the size of amsterdam. Overt collusion does involve either running someone into the nuts like in a situation where you have the nut full and someone has quads but 2 other players passively called your flop or turn bet, duping you into thinking they must each only have a board set (although of course one of them might just be a retard drawing when the board is paired), or when someone makes a protection bet so his bud can ratchet up the action and make you have to play an average draw for your entire stack in order to get you to fold.

But don't underestimate the softer forms where card knowledge is shared in games with more than 2 unseen cards held by each player. Also if two such players either always play the same pot or never do, then that is suspicious as well.

And actually for the brief time I viewed the table, I didn't notice Doc, if you are referring to whom I think you are and not making a sly reference to yourself (that mutha has put some horrendous beats on me, but I like and want the action).

[punter11235]

I am considering playing in that game. Thank you for sharing your doubts. I played only for few hours there and didnt notice anything suspicious so far. I will let you know if I change my mind.

[TheRempel]

There are three players who play at the $100 and $200 level on stars from the same city, know each other, and have played from the same IP address. I have witnessed them squeezing pots and softplaying each other on more than one occasion and forwarded my complain to stars support. Nothing came of it.

[RickyG]

If you are pretty sure they are colluding, why dont you post their names. Maybe stars wont do anything about it, but we can save ourselves from playing against them.

[Big Dave D]

No my 2k plo days are over. I was of course referring to Dr Cobben. But he is far from Donk, just an exceptionally dangerous gambler. And makes the game good fun too, in a sick way.

I still think you are overestimating the effect of collusion in PLO...if someone was to say I had to play in a game with colluders, but I could choose it, I would probably chose PLO.

gl

dd

[beset7]

Dr. Cobben seems beyond donkish to me. I'm curious dave. You've talked before about how players who seem to be fish often times are not. At what point and how have you made this determination? I can usually spot tricky LAGs after a while but I'm curious about this.

[TheRempel]

TILTKason, The Nizz and Tiltejezz.

[asswasp]

[ QUOTE ]
and have played from the same IP address

[/ QUOTE ]
How do you know this?

[TheRempel]

Support confirmed it but said they had no indication of any direct collusion.

[BluffTHIS!]

Rempel, the thing is regarding the same IP address, that lots of even major cities in both the US and europe have only one major dsl provider. Now regarding actually having the same specific IP address, this is going to happen lots for all the collge players who use their college's server (assuming the firewall doesn't block their access to poker sites or they can get around it). But the only way to demostrate actual collusion is with players on whom you can collect evidence over time making protection bets and raises and where those two players often make sure that one of their hands is not shown down. The more sophisticated kind involving just sharing and using card knowledge as I mentioned above is just about impossible to prove.

Dave, regading "Doc" that one was in the house but not the one I was referring too. I am not going to comment further since I think it is very counterproductive and disrespectful to discuss specific online players and their play, even though they are essentially anonymous. I have criticized this practice in the high limit nl forums even though most there disagree with me.

beset, regarding your question for Dave, regarding tricky lags and whether they might actually be exremely good players, I will try to start a thread on this in the next few days and perhaps Dave will resond there as well. This is actually an important topic in any game, but particularly in big bet.

[TheRempel]

This is the main body of the email I recieved from Stars support:

"The first thing that I look for in such cases is a relationship between the two players. In this instance, they all live in Sweden . They have also logged in from a common computer or internet connection. I believe these players do know each other.

I then look for frequency of play together. I am looking to see if these players seem to be seeking each other out. Although a high frequency of play is not necessarily an indictment, it can be a harbinger of unethical play. In this case, the players have only played one tournament together,and that was a heads up tournament between "tiltjezz" and "thenizz". "thenizz" and "tiltjezz" have played 799 hands together, out of a combined total of over 16,000 in the last two months. In fact, many players have similar totals, as you have played 492 hands against "thenizz" during the same time period. "thenizz" and "TILTkason" have played 562
hands out of over 9,000, and finally, "TILTkason" and "tiltjezz" have
played 722 out of over 16,000 hands.

With that said, the strongest evidence will be revealed from an in
depth, "hand by hand" analysis of their play together. One of the
advantages of online poker is that there is a full record of every hand, and after the fact, we can look through the hands with all cards face up; as a result, cheaters cannot hide what they are doing.

While investigating for ring game collusion, I look specifically for:

1) Pot building-The players put in small bets to intice others to call, and one bets or raises with a weak hand when his partner is holding a strong hand.

2)Squeeze play(Whipsawing)-Both players exercise unwarranted aggression, in an effort to drive other players out of the pot.

3)Chip dumping-The player with the larger stack purposely loses, or "dumps" to the smaller stack to ensure both players remain in the game. This help indicate that the players might be using a shared bankroll.

4)Best hand play-The players will not play hands that duplicate or
counterfeit one another before the flop, and/or after the flop only the better hand will continue any further. This can only be done sucessfully by sharing hole cards, and can be difficult to spot even for the most experienced professionals. To look for this form of collusion, we often must look for examples that don't fit the criteria. For instance when the better hand folds on the flop, whilst the weaker hand continues. This is usually is a good indicator that the players are not employing a best hand strategy.

After reviewing many hands between these players, particularly focusing on the sessions you were involved in; I found no evidence of the above techniques being used. They play hard against each other and on several occasions, and in a number of perfect pot-building scenarios, the weaker hand was actually folded rather than raising or betting. I saw a number of hands where they played similar or even dominated hands against each other.

In many instances they played aggressively against each other, whether heads up or with others involved.

There were also times that the players seemed to "slow down" when heads up. These situations seemed to coincide with the players both holding mediocre hands. In situations when the players were heads up and held strong hands, or even weak hands, they played aggressivily or folded. This supports the
opinion that these players know each other, as a degree of soft playing is common when "friends" play heads up in a ring game. If this was occurring during a tournament, this would be illegal and I would take action. In a ring game, there is nothing wrong with checking down a pot since other players no longer have an interest in it. We really must focus on whether the players use their relationship as an unfair advantage to the other players, and when looking at the cards face up these instances become very obvious. I honestly saw nothing to indicate that they are involved in
unethical play, and there were many times their play resulted in damage to their collective stack, which would also be inconsistent with a collusive effort.

Given the evidence that is available, I can only conclude that these
players are not working together in the games at this point. However, I have placed a note in each of the players’ accounts so that we may continue to monitor their play in the future."

So yeah, I am not horribly worried about their colluding but they have a tendency to play together on multiple tables and I have noticed situations where it seems as though they are either softplaying each other purposely or are in some sort of communication regarding their holecards.

[BluffTHIS!]

Well PS has checked very thoroughly their play and I would conclude the same except for 1 thing. And that is that the softest form of collusion is for multiple players to share the same bankroll and play at the same tables even while making no funny plays or sharing card knowledge. So if you were playing on a 9 handed table there against 8 players with a shared bankroll, the level of their play could even be horrible all around and it would still be difficult to win because they would always have an effective freeroll to suckout with weak draws. This is an implicit form of collusion. Even just 2 players like this on a 9 handed table could hurt your earn considerably.

That being said, Sweden is where a lot of online players got started in internet cafes like Erik Sagstrom. So it could actually be harmless and they are all just playing in a place like that and helping each other to analyze situations afterwards like we do here and become better players. But I still wouldn't like it because of the shared bankroll possibility.

[Rolf Slotboom]

Hi guys,

Sorry I'm a little late jumping in. The fact is that there are simply a high number of good or very good PLO players in Amsterdam - the exact reason why our regular B&M game has died out somewhat. I know all of the regular PLO $2K players from Amsterdam very well, and the 7/8 regular players I have in mind are without exception VERY trustworthy. This includes people like Dr. Cobben on Stars, but also the 5 or 6 players who play regularly (and successfully) on Party. In fact, because we have played with each other so often, we know each other's tendencies and often simply like to chop each other's heads off - if only for the bragging rights. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Rolf Slotboom
www.rolfslotboom.com (http://www.rolfslotboom.com)

[beset7]

Thanks Rolf. That is good to know.

[Filip]

Sorry to inform you that Amsterdam isnt in Sweden.

[beset7]

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry to inform you that Amsterdam isnt in Sweden.

[/ QUOTE ]

OMGWTF!

No wonder all my dutch friends when I lived in Spain used to look at me funny when I said, "YAH SURE YA BETCHA!!!11" and giggle. Oh wait those are norwegians.

Damn US public schools.