Episode 122: Ethics and Strategy

Nate and Andrew field some mailbag questions related to both poker strategy and ethics, including collusion, what exactly a “guaranteed” prize pool should entail, when to rebuy, and how to add more aggression to your game.

Strategy

Villain #1 opens to $4 from the hijack. His stack is ~$100. Villain #2 calls. His stack is ~$450. The button folds, the SB folds and raises to $12 with Ts Th. Both players call, so it’s $37 in the pot going to flop (no rake).

The flop is 6c-7c-8s. Hero bets $24. HJ shoves for $70 more. CO raises another $100 on top. Hero folds.

 

18 thoughts on “Episode 122: Ethics and Strategy”

  1. What a hilarious question. This should definitely be made known to everyone in poker group since the commissioner is part of it. However it sounds like the commissioner may not be on the same page. I would assume the commissioner is the guy being written to. If that is the case, he is doubly cheating, since he sounds like he is colluding with the other guy and abusing the other guy to get even further benefit.

  2. I love your guests, but the show never skips a beat when you simply go all mailbag on us.

    The homegamers are cheating but apparently they suck at that as much as poker, so karma.

    I ship the 10s, not because it is poker right, but it is $1/$2 poker right.

    And I envy Elron’s commute.

    • Don’t envy me the commute. It takes a toll on your life, I leave home at 5:30am and don’t get home until 7:15pm.

  3. Your discussion of collusion was interesting. However, I think there’s an interesting distinction to be made between explicit and implicit collusion. If you collude like the clowns you described on the show, it’s explicit, and against the rules of course. However, in implicit collusion, the players only signal through the legal means available in the game. This is much more subtle and hard to work out for poker, but this is at the heart of multiplayer game theory. Have a look at this paper http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/271215/1/ECAI-604.PDF on the Lemonade Stand Game. It’s a bit mathematical, but the game is simple and explained in sections 3 and 4. The way to win is to signal, within the means available in the game, to one of the players that you’re prepared to collude against the third player.

    An interesting question is whether you think this sort of thing is ethical if the rules don’t exclude it. The obvious example is when a group of good players sit down with a huge whale. They’re not going to try to outplay each other; they’re just waiting for the whale to donate. It’s not against the rules of the game, but it’s implicit collusion. Personally I think it’s a bit of an ethical grey area. I’m a mathematician not a philosopher, but Nate is both, so I expect he’ll have a sensible opinion, even if it does involve the prefix ‘meta’ somewhere….

  4. Your remark about your “pet peeve” held my interest. About “waiting for a better spot”. You ended by saying something like “if you don’t want to gamble, don’t play poker”.

    I started questioning myself. I play smaller stakes because I don’t want to gamble, I want to steal. I don’t play higher stakes because then you cant.
    I guess what Im trying to say is that Action vs Profit is a contradiction not resolved in myself.

    Also about ethics. I been gambling with a couple guys who are friends lately. Ill go on a streak and win pot after pot. Sometimes I will dump off some money back in order to keep everyone happy and to end the game so it wont go deep into the night with angry birds trying to get their money back. Sometimes winning isn’t so important as to keep the karma on an even keel. But I guess that has nothing to do with the Professional world. Cause in my profession Ill cut your throat gladly in order to get the first prize. And I would expect you to do the same.

      • Thanks, wait’ll you hear the next one! Plenty of Nate and Andrew, plus another of your favorite people!

    • Yeah, I don’t necessarily approach friendly games where I am far and away the best player with that attitude (MO there is to get drunk enough that I don’t have a skill edge), but basically you should be playing stakes where you are comfortable “gambling” for whatever money is involved. If you find yourself afraid to take risks, you are playing too big.

      • “MO there is to get drunk enough that I don’t have a skill edge”

        This alone is reason enough for 2015 to be the first year of the Annual Nitcast Meetup Home Game.

  5. I take a more pragmatic approach to the colluding situation. The way they described their collusion is probably how they would play anyway. Sure they are potentially taking away equity from other players, depending on skill levels of course. But they are so predictable that having their money in the prize pool is better than not for most thinking players. At most I would send an email to both saying something like “you guys do know that this is text book definition collusion, right?” and leave it at that. They probably don’t even think what they are doing is collusion because they are not signalling their exact hole cards. If they bring it up don’t get angry or make a big deal out of it, just say “I brought it up in case you guys didn’t know”. Keep playing.

    • I’ve certainly done this before. Softplaying was rampant in the big game in Pittsburgh, and I put up with it because I generally knew who was softplaying whom, making them in some cases easier to play against, and overall those people were not bad for the game (even if they weren’t bad players, we might not have had a game without them filling seats). You can definitely be utilitarian about it as a professional, but I wouldn’t want to play in a home game where the organizer was cheating. Also in a tournament it’s far more problematic than in a cash game, where their softplaying doesn’t often hurt me if I know they’re doing it.

  6. I was surprised to hear this on the podcast, though grateful for the advice. I believe for my game, my best course of action will be to try to focus on a concept for a few visits and see how it works. I will start with never limping since that seems to be the most concrete, as well as what I deer as my biggest problem preflop. This will most likely lead me to fold hands I have been trying to add to my game (for now).

    As a recreational player, I understand that it is unlikely that I will ever be a big winner, especially since I rarely get to play more than once or twice a month.
    I take no offence at all at the assumption that I am probably a long term losing player as without losing players, there are no winners. I have only played microstakes online and 1/2 live, but have always been a small winner. My 3k bankroll is actually double what I started with and I have been able to give my wife about as much as I have managed to grow my bankroll by (thus she does not complain much when I go play.) I have had swings of course, that is part of the game, but I have managed to always have a generally upward trajectory to my bankroll. I do not think I am at all a good player, maybe just tight enough, and willing to fold enough that when I am involved in a larger pit I tend to win, or at least get most of the money on good. I probably get bluffed off to many hands, but that is part and parcel of being a nit when the board gets very scary.
    At work, so I silk probably come back tomorrow evening with any more comments I think of.

    • The number of hands that this is over is so small that I could just be on a hot streak. I do not believe I can know if I am a winning player at these stakes with the amount I play. I was a winning player at up to 5 cent 10 cent online, but not a big winner. I only ever deposited once online, $20.

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