[LearnedfromTV]

[ QUOTE ]
"I catch his eye for what couldn't have been more than a split second, but we know each other's game so well that I felt almost positive that we were thinking the exact same thing: i.e. the only way one of us was going to take down this sizeable pot was for us to bully out MP2 who we both felt nearly certain held an overpair based on his tightness.."

Yeah, collusion; basically because you're talking about how "one of us" should take down the pot. It's way worse than buddies playing together who will check to the river when they're heads-up together.

[/ QUOTE ]

At first I thought this could be legit, but after further review I think it is cheating. My rationale:

"We know each other's game" could be enough to justify betting when you think your buddy will checkraise your buddy checkraising your bet, but only if each is doing it solely to improve his chance of winning the pot . This isn't possible given the hand OP holds.

When OP bets his 99, he has to expect that some of the time he will be checkraised by a hand that thinks it could be a winner but isn't. The only way the buddy can have a hand worse than 99 and think he has the best hand some of the time is if he thinks that the OP is willing to bet a hand that he knows is a guaranteed loser. The only reason OP would bet such a hand is to set his buddy up to win the pot.

Holding 99, OP's bet only makes sense if he expects Buddy to checkraise with the goal of winning the pot for OP, which he can't do legitimately unless Buddy would expect a bet with Ace high to set up his pair of 8's some of the time. Either the bet or the checkraise is made expecting the other party is colluding. There's no avoiding it.

I think a strong Ten is the weakest hand OP could have that could make what happened justifiable. Then he might have sufficient odds that Buddy will checkraise a worse hand legitimately (i.e. with sufficient odds himself of winning the pot by forcing out the overpair but still having to beat OP).