"Playing" a friend.

[iash]

Just got back from a 3 day Vegas stint, was awesome..truly did nothing but hold 'em & the occasional club. I'd like some opinions on the following:

2/4 no limit game at Mandalay Bay. Playing at a full table with a good friend & a bunch of strangers. One hand, I had pocket Aces. My friend is in early position with pocket Queens. He raises, I re-raise, he calls. Flop is rags, he raises, I re-raise, he calls. The final two steets I simply call his bets. The pot ends up being 200-300 dollars, and I take it down. (This is a fairly large amount of money for my friend.)

Similar situations occured with this friend of mine throughout the next few hours. It just so happens that I was on the winning end of these hands. I would say I played them aggresively, as I would have played them against anyone else.

At one point in the session, a few players criticized me for playing so cut-throat vs. a friend. I have mixed feelings on this.

From one perspective, I'm there to play cards and i'm not going to let up, no matter who i'm playing. And what if I did ease up, say checking or calling when I normally would have bet or raised, and then I get outdrawn? Then I'd be extremely pissed off.

Anyway, a little later on, I ended up feeling bad, and folding pocket Jacks to a pre-flop raise of his. It turns out I would have flopped a boat, and won a $500 pot which my friend ended up losing anyway.

On the flip side, our friendship is worth more to me than a few pots or getting beat or outdrawn or whatever.

In the future, is it ok to let up on friends? What if it comes down to us heads up, can I tell him my hand? Is this ethical? Is this frowned upon? Just curious as to what others would do, or have done.

Hrm, looking back on this post, it reads more like a Dear Abby letter than a 2+2 post, but any advice would be appreciated anyway [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Thanks in advance for any input.

iash

iash

[jdl22]

Poker is a strictly competitive game. If you soft play him then you are being unethical. If you don't want to take his money play at different tables.

It might be better if you played limit with your friends. That way there is less chance that you will lose a large chunk of money to each other.

[Porcupine]

[ QUOTE ]
It might be better if you played limit with your friends. That way there is less chance that you will lose a large chunk of money to each other.

[/ QUOTE ]

True. Also, if you sit across (seats 1 and 4, for example) the table from each other, instead of next to each other, you should be involved in less pots with each other, but can still easily talk.

[fireman664]

it would be unethical to play him any way other than you would play anyone else at the table. Plus, if you guys are good friends, loosing some pots to you wont change that (would you still be his friend if he rivered a Q vs your AA?? of course)...

[TiK]

If you have any reservations about playing against (taking money from) friends, you should just not sit at the same table...

-Tik

[PoorLawyer]

take your boat and then buy him a drink and a lap dance later to make up for the other beats.

[UltimateDickory]

I have one friend that consistently reprimanded me for raising him when he bets in to me. I've also trapped him on numerous occasions. Sometimes it was due to me having a very good read on him as a player. It is completely unfair to the other players at the table for me to play him soft. It took a few sessions in AC for him to understand this. I basically let him know that he should play me the same whether it is at a home game on in a B&M. If he feels I have an unfair advantage over him, he should not sit at my table. Everytime I sit at the table it is a learning experience and I would hope he thinks the same way. It is not really fair that your friend happened to be in that seat. Had a stranger been in that seat, you would have been very happy with the profit you earned from that seat/player. This was the same type of situation where my bankroll was always significantly larger than his. Fortunately I've moved up in limits and this hasn't been a problem lately.

[Homer]

I have one friend that consistently reprimanded me for raising him when he bets in to me.

Maybe he should stop betting.

[Sully]

I've always felt that you should play a friend just like anyone else, until that hand is down to just the two of you, in which case a little softplay never hurt anyone.

On a side note, a lot of people don't understand that when I raise you, it's not a personal attack against you. In more cases, it's an attack against those people yet to act. It's me saying that if you want to get in here, you'd better know what you're doing.

When it gets heads up....well then, that's a different story.

[The Goober]

I used to feel this way too - that its okay to softplay a friend only when its heads up - but I now think its wrong to do that. The problem is that both friends know what will happen, and it will affect their play on earlier streets.

For example, suppose its 3 handed on the flop, and my buddy bets into me. If I can raise and knock out the third player, then I know I can get to the showdown for only 1BB (since my buddy and I will check it down after the third player folds). This is, of course, really unfair to the third player unless he was explicitly told about our agreement, and even then, I don't think that friends softplaying is something that everyone at the table should have to take into account when trying to read hands.

I know most people wouldn't knowlingly make a play like this (and I think that anyone who makes this play *knows* that they are cheating), but I think that this sort of thinking could subconciously affect your play. So basically, you should never soft play a friend at the table.

Of course, having said that, I see friends checking down hands heads-up all the time, and I never complain about it. Why? Because I think that whatever small advantage they might have is outweighed by the fact that by speaking up I would make myself very unpopular at the table, and people would start to see a bullseye on my forward and start to play more agressive and tricky towards me. While a better player might be able to take advantage of this to win even more, I'm not that good and I like to keep the fish nice and passive and predictable.