How much EV is this collusion costing me?

[mostsmooth]

if you are going to continue playing with these guys, be happy they arent cheating to win a lot of money. they are almost cheating themselves the way you are describing it.

[Beavis68]

I have a player that I play with from time to time, we chat in IM a lot while playing, we do NOT tell each hands. Most of the time we stay out of each others way, because we both know a lot about the others game, so we know a pretty tight range of hands the other person holds.

We also will spontaneously decide we are going to use this to our own advantage by stealing pots from the other, hence crazy ass raising and reraising and then a fold on the turn or river.

He does this more often then I do, especially if I am having a bad night he will try to screw me out of a pot.

[flub]

This is just how good colluders operate. They don't play when the other is in the hand so the other players at the table never get the odds they would normally.

For example if the colluders had AT and A9 on a flop of AJ7 with 2 hearts the guy with A9 would be giving better odds for someone drawing to a flush so he'll fold.

Or they'd never play TT vs QQ.

Or they will never both have draws to the same flush.

By doing these things the other players won't be making as much money on their good hands.

Also colluding this way is nearly impossible to detect.

They would have to jam aces since if one of them folded it would send up a pretty big red flag.

-flub

[Alobar]

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They would have to jam aces since if one of them folded it would send up a pretty big red flag.

-flub

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah, cuz you should NEVER fold aces [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[roy_miami]

Yes, this is exactly the type of colluding that I believe is going on. Is it possible to calculate how much this type of activity costs the other players at the table.

I also agree it would be very difficult to prove, which is one of the reasons I'm not going to report them just yet. I'm not even 100% sure this is what happening, it could be just selective memory. I am keeping an eye on them though.

I am also sure this type of collusion must be running rampant in online poker. Hell, I've even done it myself playing with a buddy at low limit. We weren't doing it to gouge the other players, I just happened to see him and my dad at the same table so I joined for a few orbits. He called me after I joined and would tell me to get out of the hand when he had something good because he didn't want to take my money. To be honest, it didn't really feel like cheating (although I did mention it to him it in fact was, I'm pretty paranoid about not getting banned). We know this stuff is going on and most of the people doing it probably don't even realize they are cheating the rest of the table. So, how much is it costing me?

[roy_miami]

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Are they bad players? If so it probably makes the game better if anything EV wise.

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No, they're not too bad. They are both a little too loose preflop and maybe a tad too aggressive (they both have a very similar style).