Tourney Was this couple colluding? (1 Viewer)

[Poker Zombie]

1) @Poker Zombie When Boyfriend is in the SB with almost nothing left, no one can get a read on his hand when he puts that last .25BB in pre. Including Girlfriend.

So sure: You can read your wife’s moves like a book and vice-versa, and you guys may pay it totally straight. But this situation is different. He’d be wrong to fold even 72o in that spot. He’s getting something like 24-1 odds on his last few hundred chips, which would be almost impossible to build back into a useable stack if he folds instead.

It’s meaningless for opponents to guess at his range. It’s the whole deck minus your own holdings.

2) It is of course quite possible that both hands represent Girlfriend just being a protective Mama Hen toward Boyfriend, without any actual sharing of hands between them.

In Hand #1, she may have started out trying to trap me (the initial raiser) by flatting with aces; but then when he re-raised she panicked and felt she needed to signal to him with a 5bet: “No! Don’t put any more chips in this pot!”

In Hand #2, she likewise may have just independently decided to get him back to ~6BB (I forgot there were antes) by flatting with a plan to reraise any preflop steal attempts or else to bomb the flop/turn. Which again, is uncharacteristic aggression from this player especially considering the stacks she’s facing.

These are less malicious than outright collusion but still problematic.

3) A good point is made above that Girlfriend’s A6o is one of the worst aces in the deck on the flop. It loses to every other A except A3 and A5, and some of those combos have draws. On the turn A3 pulls ahead and A5 is the nut straight. AcXc also has her in additional danger. So it’s really iffy to double barrel bluff there. Either it’s terrible play, or an epic baller move from a tight passive newbie, or just being protective of BF.

I'm just going to fall back on "Online poker is rigged".

I miss it, but I never have trusted it. Too many ways to angle-shoot. Same-house play, players texting offline, dashboards and bots. You either have to have implicit faith that your friends aren't cheating, or you quit. In my home games, I trust everyone - but I take every anti-cheating precaution. Online... you can't take even one precaution.

 

[JustinInMN]

I thought about it when we started, but we are abnormally competitive. One of us would wind up thread-crapping the thread and get banned from PCF.

Thread crapping is fine outside of classifieds, I thought . Otherwise I need to probably take back about half of my post count.

 

[upNdown]

I'm just going to fall back on "Online poker is rigged".

I miss it, but I never have trusted it. Too many ways to angle-shoot. Same-house play, players texting offline, dashboards and bots. You either have to have implicit faith that your friends aren't cheating, or you quit. In my home games, I trust everyone - but I take every anti-cheating precaution. Online... you can't take even one precaution.

I agree with this 100% - it’s why I only only play online for low stakes. I’m sure some cheaters got rich this year.

 

[Poker Zombie]

Thread crapping is fine outside of classifieds, I thought . Otherwise I need to probably take back about half of my post count.

No, I mean thread crapping - as in "someone took a shit in the pocket of my work pants".

 

[Taghkanic]

I don’t know that I have much more to say on this, but:

(a) I cashed out most of my account, taking my original deposit + a profit, leaving a small balance to freeroll with (and observe this dynamic a little longer)

(b) The lack of response from either of The Couple when I raised these concerns with them is one further element which bolsters my suspicions.

Boyfriend is a very active talker in-game. He responds to almost everything someone says in the chat box. Not to this.

If false suspicion was raised against me, I would most definitely reply. Probably by laughing at the accusation or firmly rebutting it, or both. Sure, a guilty person might push back similarly with a deny, deny deny strategy. But to go suddenly silent? To me it speaks volumes.

 

[upNdown]

I don’t know that I have much more to say on this, but:

(a) I cashed out most of my account, taking my original deposit + a profit, leaving a small balance to freeroll with (and observe this dynamic a little longer)

(b) The lack of response from either of The Couple when I raised these concerns with them is one further element which bolsters my suspicions.

Boyfriend is a very active talker in-game. He responds to almost everything someone says in the chat box. Not to this.

If false suspicion was raised against me, I would most definitely reply. Probably by laughing at the accusation or firmly rebutting it, or both. Sure, a guilty person might push back similarly with a deny, deny deny strategy. But to go suddenly silent? To me it speaks volumes.

When I get knocked out of a tournament, I usually close the window before anybody can say GG, or maybe 40% of the time I'm in a decent enough mood to say gg guys, before I quickly close out. Does he usually hang around and chat afterward?

 

[Taghkanic]

Update:

1) Since withdrawing all deposits and almost all profit, I’ve spun up the small remainder about 3x. Hard to quit this game even when trying. There are some decent players but it is about 1/3rd total fish. I get to play some real poker here and there, especially in late stages. But mostly it just requires pot controlling with marginal made hands and trying to get well paid when you gave TPTK or better. These players never seem to believe big bets and will float to the river with unimproved draws and to showdown with as little as middle/bottom pair... One of said fish bought in six times yesterday and still finished far out of the money. If only all games were like this.

2) Since I confronted the couple and raised my concern with the host, Boyfriend and Girlfriend have not shown up simultaneously. One solo appearance by her the day after, then three solo by him, none overlapping. Might be coincidence, but with hope they got scared or the host said something. Guess I’ll see over time if that holds.

In any case I’m completely freerolling now. Will either keep spinning it up or quit if I somehow go broke.

 

[JustinInMN]

Since I confronted the couple and raised my concern with the host, Boyfriend and Girlfriend have not shown up simultaneously. One solo appearance by her the day after, then three solo by him, none overlapping. Might be coincidence, but with hope they got scared or the host said something. Guess I’ll see over time if that holds

Glad this seems to have had a pretty good ending.

 

[hex]

Well if they were cheating they weren’t very good, unless you suspect he was dumping chips off to her, but that doesn’t make sense when she has aces. Novice players do strange things but also her boyfriend opened the store back up so once those chips went in with you calling I can totally see her jamming AA. He said AK could have had KQ, KJ QJ all kinds of stuff.

my advice would be to see how passive they are together. I play with quite a few couples online and the wives are pretty brutal to their husbands usually

 

[Silverback]

Even if they were colluding, they will have a hard time making chips of the collusion, so just play your normal game, and take notes.
If you get more ammo, you can let them know that you suspect foul play