Fair enough, but the point still stands that it is much less costly in terms of EV than people seem to think, simply because it is so hard for a hand to beat AA and still lose to another hand, and because of his massive chip lead. The small EV he gave can easily be recouped by any slightest advantage he gained from it – ie, he gave up .1% here by not paying attention anymore but maybe it meant he could focus more on another table, gaining him EV there? It just seems so elementary that it’s hard not give him/her the benefit of the doubt, unless there’s further evidence to support.

My thoughts exactly.

Obviously it’s not a big fail in terms of the person’s actual equity in the sat, especially since he is big chip leader. The fail is that it is a clear cut mathematically -EV play to do anything other than check it down, and anyone who plays poker even half-seriously should realize this pretty easily.

In order to beat AA, a random hand needs to make 2 pair or better, which will happen around about 15% of the time. In order for another hand to beat that 2 pair, it needs to itself make 2 pair or better, which will also happen 15% of the time. With 2 other hands potentially in there, very crudely, you are giving up at most a 5% chance where the shortstack’s hand would have improved to beat AA, but been in turn beaten by one of the other hands.

AA guy has a huge stack. Running the numbers through ICM, if the shortstack wins the hand, AA guy’s chance to place 4th goes up to 1.8%, and since he’s given up a 5% chance to knock shortstack out, he has increased his chance to come 4th by somewhere around 0.1%.

Not exactly a super fail.. unless there is evidence that guy would do this with a less favourable stack/payout situation

VR isn’t a Team Online Pro. This is a new designation for primarily online players who put in huge volume (pretty much all SNE I think). I guess if he’s mass multitabling and has already counted this one as a win, I could see paying like 0 attention to it.

possibly an oversight on villains part, but the fact remains if you are unaware of the current situation / dynamic – you are demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding of the situation.

Making a fundamentally wrong play because you we’re ‘aware’ shouldn’t be considered a reasonable justification.

I figure the chances of a TPS pro doing something like that approach zero, not only because it would be immensely stupid to risk losing whatever compensation they get from PS, but also because most cheats aren’t clever enough to figure out a play like this.

But it’s interesting from a theoretical perspective.

Fair point, though my suspicions are allayed by the fact that it was this same player who crippled the short stack in the previous hand. The BB (in this hand, who was UTG in the previous) min-raised to 800, the now-short-stack made it 2K, “BB” shoves 8K with TT, and “short stack” calls with KK but gets sucked out on. They were almost dead even in chips, so I think colluders would have nothing at all to gain from such a confrontation on the bubble.

“None of us here has an interest in anything other than maximizing the odds of busting the short stack on this hand.”

Collusion between Villain and Button is theoretically possible.

If Villain weren’t in the BB, the best way to help his all-in partner would be to fold. But because doing that in an unraised pot on the bubble in a high buy-in satellite would risk getting him reported to security, his best play is to raise, knock the other players out of the pot, and hope his buddy can crack his aces.

As a bonus, one of the other players might call and lose both the side and main pots, giving Button an immediate win rather than having to grind back from a tiny stack.

If anyone finds his raise suspicious, he can always claim he didn’t notice the all-in, and it would be hard to prove otherwise. But it would hard for him to claim that he didn’t realize he was BB when he folded, as the software makes you click twice to fold when you could check.

In short, cheaters would have everything to gain and nothing to lose. They’re guaranteed at least one seat no matter what, and they non-trivially increase their chances of winning a second seat if BB shoves pre.

I think the bar for moral authority is lowered considerably when the target is someone who accepts remuneration in part (if not in whole) to be an example that others are supposed to learn from, then makes a mistake 95% of $1.10 players would not have made.

Failing to know how many places pay or that someone is all in on the absolute bubble are themselves pretty big satellite fails, though I don’t really have the moral authority to criticize anyone for that sort of oversight.

It might also be that he didn’t notice the one player all-in. I’ve made that mistake myself a couple times in similar situations.