[bubbafry]

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A certain player at the game plays differently against certain players. For instance, if he makes a monster and is heads up with player A he will often flip open his hand and he basically tells his opponent to stop betting and they wlil just check it down. Now, if this same player is in the same sitaution with my friend, he will play normally and try to extract maximum chips. There are other situations where this certain player will play "differently" against my friend as opposed to how he would the rest of the table.

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Keep in mind that most good players play "differently" against different opponents based on style. The fact that the "certain player" plays differently against different people shouldn't really affect your friend or his EV in a cash game. Once your friend is out of the pot, whatever else happens doesn't affect him. Of course, your example is kind of extreme and I guess no way based on strategy, but still the only thing that really should matter to your friend is how the guy plays against him, not how he plays against other people (assuming there's no collusion going on). In tournaments, it's a little different because he could be "chip dumping" (losing on purpose to his partner in crime so his partner can have lots of chips and therefore have a better chance of winning the tournament), but your example doesn't seem like chip dumping to me.

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In addition, the players at this game have fallen into some bad habits by not following the "show-one, show-all" rule, and the "one player to a hand" rule.

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I'm not so sure what the official rules are on this, but if it bothers him I would definitely speak up about this, although it personally never bothers me when people don't follow the "show one show all" rule because I don't feel like I'm losing anything because of it.

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My friend doesn't think that these players are softplaying in order to collude, but he feels that they play this way because they feel that he (my friend) is a strong player, and they dont' like to give him any edge.

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I actually do the same thing sometimes when I'm just with my friends. Some of my friends are more serious about poker than others, and I feel bad taking money from my friends who aren't that good. On the other hand, I have to play better against the better players, otherwise I'm gonna lose all my money (which I also don't like [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]). But my home games are more just for an excuse to hang out rather than to make money, so I guess my situation's a little different. Again, IMHO, how the guy plays against other people doesn't really affect your friend.