Taking Action on your friends at the same table

[DavidC]

A buddy of mine wanted to play $2.5/$5 at a local $5/$10 game, because he was a little nervous about variance (he may have some financial obligations in the future which could prevent him from playing poker).

I told him that I'd take half his action, but that if he did anything remotely like collusion, I'd report him for it. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

However, this got me thinking a little about the math of the situation:

---

I know that if two players choose to take 100% of eachother's action, they can build massive pots and split them up later, using chip talk and whatever to convey when they want a pot built up.

However, in a situation where one player has half the action of another (Action player is player A, other player is player B), but the other player DOESN'T have half the action of the first player, some weird things can happen.

Firstly, player A can build a pot for player B, if he is confident that most of the other players in the pot are drawing dead and that player B represents less than 1/4 of the donators in the pot. The resulting half of the action will give an edge over player A's donations into the pot.

(correction, less than 1/3?)

(However, he'd best not get caught, obviously.)

Player B, though, can't build a pot for player A.

The funnier thing, though, is that in a heads-up pot between player A and player B, player B can profitably draw to some really longshot draws, because essentially player A is only putting in half-bets (he wins if he wins, but he half-loses if he loses).

This means you can probably get in there vs a stl from player B with A LOT of hands.

Anyways, I thought the HU aspect of this agreement was pretty neat (though I was playing normally despite this (since i hadn't thought of it until this morning... and because he's my best friend, I guess. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ).

--Dave.

[DavidC]

bump

[spoohunter]

Stay away from the dark side luke.

[AaronBrown]

If A backs B, then as you say, A can build a pot for B. The key is whether $1 added to the pot by A will increase B's profit by at least $2. With one additional player in the pot, 100% chance of B winning the pot and 0% chance of C (the extra player) folding, it would be breakeven for A, or a loss if it increased the rake. With two additional players or a non-zero chance of C folding, it could be a positive expected value move.

Especially if you're known to be friends, it's hard to get away with this. If you reraise three times, then fold when C folds, people are going to be at least suspicious. If you instead call and go to showdown, then try to muck your hand without showing it, someone is likely to insist on their rights to see it.

However, heads up play is symmetrical. Both players are playing half stakes. If A wins $100, B loses $100, A makes up half the loss so he wins $50 while B loses $50. If A loses $100, B wins $100 and gives half to A, so A loses $50 and B wins $50. Therefore, it doesn't affect the strategy, except both players are paying double rake for the action they are getting.

I took 2 friends (brothers) to the casino and they did that at 5/10, needless to say they see sawed the table for about 4,000 in 4 hours. Its impossible to play correctly at a table where u have any other action because u just dont forget it. Whether it be hey ill just raise him just in case i have him beat, besides i have his action anyways or all out collusion on each play/draw its still cheating and still a bad idea