Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

I had this situation come up the other day, and thought it might provide for some interesting discussion. After playing out my hands for the day, I decided to play some microlimit crazy pineapple on UB (we're talking .25/.50). The game was unusually chatty and friendly, which was fine with me...during the conversation, I let slip that I normally play hold'em & was just relaxing with this game. One of the other players at the table asked me if I wanted to play some heads up hold'em.

A bit about me--I'm a proven winner at online LHE up through 5/10, over the past year+. I have ventured slightly higher than that at times, up to 15/30, with mixed but far from terrible results. I believe, and other 2+2'ers that I've played have confirmed, that one of my strengths is in HU situations. That, plus having observed this guy's play at crazy pineapple, left me with absolutely zero doubt that I would clean him out in a HU match.

Now, as I said, the game was friendly. I was playing seriously and not donking it up, and there were no ill feelings between myself and the challenger; I believe that he honestly just wanted a friendly HE game. I finally declined his offer after he told me that he only had about $30 in his account--that didn't seem nearly worth the effort to me.

Now, here's where the moral issue comes up: even if he'd said that he had $200, I don't think I would have played him. I had absolutely no doubt that I was the (far) superior player, and while the cards can even the field somewhat, it would have taken nothing short of a miraculous run of cards for him to avoid losing money. But I had nothing against the guy, as he wasn't being an ass at the table or anything like that...I guess you could say that I didn't feel he "deserved" to be beaten.

On the other hand, I recognize that I am taking advantage of worse players every single time I play, many of whom seem like genuinely nice people. This doesn't bother me in the least; nobody is forcing them to play poker, and they are free to walk away from the game at any time (or to improve their game). So, assuming that this guy had had enough money to make it "worth my time", why should it have bothered me to take his money, heads up? In fact, I wound up winning about $5 from him in the pineapple game, and this didn't bother me in the least. However, if this guy had been annoying or abusive at the table, I wouldn't have thought twice about taking him up on his challenge, for $5 or $5,000.

If any of you psych guys can shed a little of your insight as to what exactly is going on (am I just a selective "nice guy"?), and/or tell me what you would do in a similar situation, I'd appreciate it.

Or, just tell me what an idiot I would've been for passing up an easy $200. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

Hi Harv,

You seem like your heads up play is very good. You made some impressive moves the last time I played with you.

I probably would have responded the same way. If he told me he had 200 in his account and wanted to play 2/4 hold em, but his usual game was .25/50, then I wouldn't feel that comfortable. OTOH, if I saw the same guy sitting alone at a 2/4 table waiting for a challenger, I'd sit down. There's a difference.

Cheers,
Snowball

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

You clearly feel good about what you did, or rather what you didn't do. I'd guess that's worth more to you than a little money.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

i had a similar situation come up this week. i was playing hu on stars and the guy and the guy and i were being friendly and chatty despite the fact that it was a competitive match. eventually, i went on a rush and picked up some patterns and took him for about 50bbs. at that point it was obvious he was tilting.. he wasn't chatty anymore and he was pretty much going maniacal. for some reason i began to feel shitty and i told him he should leave since he's tilting. he didn't respond and i ended up leaving myself. afterward, i was upset w/ myself as a poker player because i could probably have made another 2k off him, but something inside me just made me stop. i think part of the reason is that i'm a college student and i've made enough playing poker that winning that extra 2k won't affect my life at all. no rent, no insurance, no bills, so no real worries. i think if winning money at poker was necessary to survive, i'd have taken the guy's heads up challenge. sorry this is long-winded, i'm stoned.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

Their opponents in the future won't be so nice. Considering that you were considering not taking advantage of these players who were throwing money away, you should think of yourself as a better person than those who wouldn't give it a second thought (although probably a worse professional gambler based on this "weakness" alone). Think that by letting this person 'off the hook', they'll just do the same thing and lose it to a worse person. Might as well let a noble player like yourself take the profits while teaching the fish a lesson that he/she will learn regardless of whether or not you profit off of it.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

This really isn't much about him, it's about you. And in reading your comments, I can see that you have some moral sense, which not everybody on this forum has.

How you feel about yourself, in a situation like this, has more value than the money (it's sort of "morally +EV"!) and that's a real plus for you.

If you want to feel good about yourself, as you seem to want to, then do the things that make you feel good, and avoid the acts that make you feel bad.

Over the past year, I have read a lot of your posts and you are a terrific player. Your posts have been interesting and helpful. Good to see that you are also a decent human being.

bill

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

I don't think there is anything unethical about taking someone's money playing poker, regardless of whether it was a mismatch, a bad beat, or whatever. The whole goal is to make money and enjoy the thrill of victory. You're not responsible for his having made the decision to open an account online and start playing poker. He shouldn't be there with money he can't afford to lose, true, but (1) you don't know if thats the case, and (2) it's not your problem. People are responsible for their own actions. Would you feel bad about taking it if you found out that his net worth was 300 times yours? How do you know it wasn't? The point is- what someone else chooses to do with their money isn't your problem. You are not stealing by beating someone in a fair game in which there is no cheating. Being much better than someone isn't cheating. There is no unwritten rule that says you have to suck to accept a challenge from someone at a low-limit table. Did it ever occur to you that he was a shark, playing poorly on purpose at a low table, looking for someone weak to try to take down in an HU match? You're a good player that decided to play at a weak table- why do you think no other good player would ever do this?

By the way, assuming he was a bad player, taking a moderate amount of money from him like $200 is probably a good thing for him. Here is why: he's only losing $200 but he's learning a valuable lesson, and maybe it will stick. Maybe he'll think about this experience down the road when he's debating whether or not to make an early withdrawl from his kid's college fund to go play someone in a heads up challenge. Not saying this justifies it, but it could very well be true.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

What if this player realized you were a better player and still wanted to play you? He may want a chance to more closely observe what he feels is a better player, or just trying to improve his heads-up play. There are a few players out there that look upon their accounts as tuition money. Just another way of looking at it. Overall, we all must do what salves our conscience.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

I'm sorry, but this issilly. You didn't knock on the guy's door and challenge him to a match; hell, you didn't even seek him out online. There is no scam, no moral dilemma, nothing wrong at all about playing whomever you run into, because:

You're on a poker site to PLAY POKER.

You don't see Roger Federer refusing to play his first-round matches against a qualifier, do you?

No, you don't.

Accept the challenge, take his money, and know you just gave him a valuable lesson.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

There could be all kinds of reasons the guy wants to play you, none of them having to do with him being a gambling addict hitting rock bottom (which is probably the only case I'd consider turning it down).

He may be hustling - playing like crap for the small money, then increasing the stakes and "getting lucky." (Not a big-time hustler if he's starting out at $30, but it still adds up.)

Or he might want to learn hold'em and considers $30 a small price to pay for some HU experience.

Or he might just consider it fun.

My guess is it's one of the last two.

But, the bottom line is that you said you turned him down because it wasn't worth it to you, and that's a respectable reason - if it's not as much fun or as profitable as you need it to be, don't do it.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

Fish take shots at games far too big, frequently. When they sit in your game you will only notice them in passing, unless the get hit by the deck. Do you want to screen the people who sit in your game?

Perhaps he would have clocked your A$$, since he plays 100/200 and was also slumming at pineapple.

Perhaps you were as good a person to teach him a lesson while busting him, as anyone.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

The poker table is a warzone.

Anyone who enters a warzone voluntarily automatically is responsible for their own safety while they are there.

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But I had nothing against the guy, as he wasn't being an ass at the table or anything like that...

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I think there is a quote from some war movie, probably Full Metal Jacket, that goes something like "If we shot each other and died at the same time, within five minutes we could be embracing and rejoicing together in the next life." You don't have to have anything personal against someone to fight against them in a warzone.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

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In fact, I wound up winning about $5 from him in the pineapple game, and this didn't bother me in the least. However, if this guy had been annoying or abusive at the table, I wouldn't have thought twice about taking him up on his challenge, for $5 or $5,000.

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The value of money is subjective. That $30 may have amounted to twice his total net worth, in which case your $5 win took a huge chunk out of him. Or he may have been a multibillionaire. You are trying to judge the value of a loss of a certain amount of money based on your idea of what that money is worth, but the loss means something different to each person based on how much they have. I don't understand why you would try to judge money this way.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

Poker is about taking money from worse players. If you have a problem with that then you shouldn't be playing. Take the guys money. You play poker to make money, so put yourself in potential money making situations.

If you have a real problem with that, then try informing him that you are a good player and you most likely will win. Of course he will most likely take that as an ego challenge so what can yah do.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

Maybe the guy pegged you as a solid player (or an easy mark [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]) and just wanted to gain some experience playing at a low limit. I can see refusing to play because the stakes were small and weren't worth your time.

Refusing to play him on moral grounds shows an alarming bit of hubris on your part. I have found that I learn a lot from playing against lesser players and it has nothing to do with taking their money (or watching them take my money [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img])

I don't know you and we don't post in the same strategy forums, so this may be off-base and perhaps harsh (but with the best of intentions), but I will say that humility is one trait that a successful player needs. I suck at poker and try to repeat this at least 5 times a session (usually not hard considering the way I play).

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

[ QUOTE ]
The value of money is subjective. That $30 may have amounted to twice his total net worth, in which case your $5 win took a huge chunk out of him. Or he may have been a multibillionaire. You are trying to judge the value of a loss of a certain amount of money based on your idea of what that money is worth, but the loss means something different to each person based on how much they have. I don't understand why you would try to judge money this way.

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I wasn't trying to judge money, just explaining a bit further my rationale, or lack thereof. I found (find) it odd that I would have felt bad for taking $30 from the guy in a heads up hold'em match, but didn't feel at all bad for taking $5 from him (or 1/6th of his current bankroll, on that site at least) in a full ring game of pineapple. I suppose that part of that could stem from the fact that I rarely play pineapple and wouldn't consider myself at all good at the game; but I still recognized that I was quite a bit better at it than he was.

In a way, though, I can see your point and I suppose that it reinforces my OP...if the guy had $200 on the site vs. the $30 he said he had, I suppose that I reckoned that the $200 would mean a lot more to him than to me, at least in a bankroll sense (his net worth may indeed be considerably higher than mine). Again, though, I've gladly sat in at a table while somebody went through buy-in after buy-in (with pauses in between that made it fairly obvious he was reloading his account each time).

Actually, I think I've figured it out...I guess it's a sort of "turf" thing. I consider LHE, or at least the limits I play at & below, to be "my turf"...anyone who steps into it is fair game. So if I'm sitting at a table, or happen to see a LHE table with one or more live ones at it, I have no problem taking their money. But in this case, I was on neutral ground and somebody who probably had no business on "my turf" made a friendly offer to play me, and I shied away because I was content to keep the game where it was.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know you and we don't post in the same strategy forums, so this may be off-base and perhaps harsh (but with the best of intentions), but I will say that humility is one trait that a successful player needs. I suck at poker and try to repeat this at least 5 times a session (usually not hard considering the way I play).

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Point taken. Those who have shared a (2+2) table with me know that I repeat this mantra quite often, and usually mean it. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Seriously, though (and not to sidetrack the thread), I know that I have a lot to improve on when it comes to poker in general, and limit hold'em in particular, but I am also quite confident in my game up through the limits I've played. I know that there are many tables out there where I would be the fish, if I chose to sit in. But against the typical small- or micro-stakes opponent, I believe that I could at least hold my own. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

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You made some impressive moves the last time I played with you.

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Was this on a 2+2 table? I'm just trying to place you. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

I think your actions contradict eachother. If you think you can beat him you should play him. If he was a compulsive or addicted gambler with financial problems that would change things. But this is just straight poker.

Though I don't think it is a great choice, I think it is great that you value people above money.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

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Quote:
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You made some impressive moves the last time I played with you.


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Was this on a 2+2 table? I'm just trying to place you.

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Yeah, it was last week on one of the skins. Good thing it was just a .5/1 game b/c I had you on my left.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

[ QUOTE ]
I think there is a quote from some war movie, probably Full Metal Jacket, that goes something like "If we shot each other and died at the same time, within five minutes we could be embracing and rejoicing together in the next life." You don't have to have anything personal against someone to fight against them in a warzone.

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no way thats from full metal jacket. Also, I don't think that quote means what you think it means, and if it does its either poorly quoted or just plain dumb.

Re: Moral dilemma? (When a low-limit fish challenges you HU)
 

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Yeah, it was last week on one of the skins. Good thing it was just a .5/1 game b/c I had you on my left.

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Okay, I think I've placed you now. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

If I remember correctly, you left with a decent chunk of (my) money. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]