Suspected on line collusion

Hagar · 27-09-2005 10:45am #1

There are two guys playing at a table in Pokerstars at the moment on table Telephus. (playmoney).

The address of one guy is Waldorf and the other guy is Stettler. These are the names of the two old guys on the Muppet show. They joined the table at the same time, well seconds apart. One is logged in as .com the other is .net.
I suspect they are playing from the same place and colluding. They are obviously amateurs.

What's to stop this happening on a money table?
Has anyone else ever spotted anything like this?

blahblah06 · 27-09-2005 10:46am

id love to know how this actually works.

Culchie · 27-09-2005 10:47am

Hagar wrote:

There are two guys playing at a table in Pokerstars at the moment on table Telephus. (playmoney).

The address of one guy is Waldorf and the other guy is Stettler. These are the names of the two old guys on the Muppet show. They joined the table at the same time, well seconds apart. One is logged in as .com the other is .net.
I suspect they are playing from the same place and colluding. They are obviously amateurs.

What's to stop this happening on a money table?
Has anyone else ever spotted anything like this?

Maybe they are friends and trying to learn how to play poker together on the play money tables? :rolleyes:

Hagar · 27-09-2005 10:47am

Simple, you tell you buddy your hole cards. Then you know twice what everone else knows.

blahblah06 · 27-09-2005 10:49am

Ye but i mean working a 9 man table or 6 man aint gonna work out is it

Hagar · 27-09-2005 10:50am

There's only 5 at this table, They sat down at a 3 table.

I'm Spot On btw

karlh · 27-09-2005 10:52am

Hagar wrote:

Simple, you tell you buddy your hole cards. Then you know twice what everone else knows.

.....and you can enter a pot with your friend to increase pot odds for another player to entice their bet into the pot.

betting patterns are are logged and examined on real money tables. it wouldn't take too long for any site to pick up on two players losing too much to eachother (which would be necessary in most collusion), playing together too often, and softplaying certain hands for eachother's benefit.

i don't think any site would be too worried about collusion on play money though tbh

Hagar · 27-09-2005 10:54am

Culchie wrote:

Maybe they are friends and trying to learn how to play poker together on the play money tables? :rolleyes:

Your trust touches me deeply, but this is poker we're talking about

Hagar · 27-09-2005 10:57am

Yeah I know nobody is concerned about the playmoney tables. I was just interested to know if anyone came across it. I think you could loose a lot of real money to guys like these before the house closes them down.
#

I haven't seen any chat between them.

Culchie · 27-09-2005 11:01am

Hagar wrote:

Your trust touches me deeply, but this is poker we're talking about

Your paranoia is laughable (so is my spelling) . This is play money tables.

If you want to learn how to play poker with a friends, where's the harm?

Hagar · 27-09-2005 11:05am

It's not paranoia.

It's just a simple topic of conversation, an observation if you will.

The other two guys are friends and they are chatting.

Imposter · 27-09-2005 11:18am

As has been said the play money tables are unlikely to attract much interest in trying to detect collusion there.

On the real money tables the various poker sites all swear that they are doing everything they can to ensure it doesn't happen. In reality they can't really stop it if the colluders have thought it through.

The various sites seem to be trying to catch collusion early expecting that people who are colluding will play regularly together (same accounts/IP addresses or whatever other way they have of identifying people), dump money to each other etc etc (Apparently Party Poker also monitors use of chat programs while a person is playing but again using a means of communication from another computer or another form of communication gets around this). In reality players don't need to do anything overly suspicious in order to collude and make money providing they are relatively ok poker players to begin with.

The sites also don't want to pull people up for collusion as they seem to be afraid of the potential backlash that can happen from such a thing (PPP/Tribeca being the only exception i have seen to this). This means that if you are colluded against you have no comeback. The sites won't give you the extra info they have, that they claim proves collusion wasn't happening no matter how good your case looks. It just becomes your word against theirs and they find it far more convenient to do nothing despite any evidence you may have.

Rodge · 27-09-2005 11:20am

Play money is irrelevant, if they tried to collude on Real money tables they would be caught almost instantly as they are making it obvious that they are friends.

Hagar · 27-09-2005 11:41am

I think I'd already said nobody was concerned about play money.

I know play money tables are probably looked down upon by some of the posters on this forum.
I'm only there to learn the game properly, and I'm getting better. When I'm good enough I'll play for real money. From reading some of the other posts some people are trying to learn the basics on the real tables. An expensive way to learn.

Another poster said they just might be friends playing together, agreed.

But the way they played made me think it was a practice session to get their act together for the real tables. If someone as in-experienced as I could be suspicious about them I don't doubt that they would be caught on to very quickly.

I'm not sure that all "double-acts" would be caught instantly.

PPP-Pit Boss · 27-09-2005 11:57am

Well maybe I can help.. we admittedly don't really monitor play money tables as.. well they are player money and there is simply nothing to be gained here. HOWEVER we monitor real money cash tables and tournaments for collusion / chip dumping / fraud and have reporting mechanisms in place to spot it.. Big Brother is ALWAYS WATCHING! (unless your at the play money table)

Imposter · 27-09-2005 12:03pm

PPP-Pit Boss wrote:

HOWEVER we monitor real money cash tables and tournaments for collusion / chip dumping / fraud and have reporting mechanisms in place to spot it

Can you elaborate on that?
How would you stop 2 guys who have never played together before (or not played enough together to make you suspicious) from colluding (assuming they were using a variety of tactics)?

PPP-Pit Boss · 27-09-2005 12:19pm

No can do Imp. Im sorry. As colluders attempt to circumnavigate we keep our methods close to our chests.

Imposter · 27-09-2005 12:33pm

PPP-Pit Boss wrote:

No can do Imp. Im sorry. As colluders attempt to circumnavigate we keep our methods close to our chests.

You must be gwtting sick of this but i hope you realise i'm obviously not just picking on PPP with this, it's just that's you're being nice and answering questions and stuff which is more than can be said for others!

How do you respond to something like i've said above in my first post in this thread (and by that I don't mean we "take it very seriously blah blah")? How would you actually go about reassuring someone who seemingly has a genuine complaint, that nothing untoward happened?

PPP-Pit Boss · 27-09-2005 12:56pm

Imposter wrote:

You must be gwtting sick of this but i hope you realise i'm obviously not just picking on PPP with this, it's just that's you're being nice and answering questions and stuff which is more than can be said for others!

How do you respond to something like i've said above in my first post in this thread (and by that I don't mean we "take it very seriously blah blah")? How would you actually go about reassuring someone who seemingly has a genuine complaint, that nothing untoward happened?

It's a difficult one becuase fundamentally it involves trust in the site. We put a huge emphasis on this not just at PPP but Paddy Power in general. From the outset PP stuck its neck out and became the bookmaker with a difference. The first to refund bets. Even if it was simply bad luck. When we view a customer complaint we see the upset of the customer as a far greater expense than a lousy $10 / whatever refund. (within reason obviously). It is the ethos of the company really, I can only speak for us. PPP is run by a bunch of professionals.. but all are poker players too.. it makes it so much easier for us to see things from the customer perspective. It is absolutely fundamental to our future success in this business that we take collusion and customer greivance as a number one priority.. a marketing tool even to gain customers.. sure you can play with 5 billion people online at the same time. But can you honestly say that your online poker provider really gives a damn about you?
As I said it is difficult. But we believe in our standpoint 100% and if we keep doing what we are doing and proving that we will take the necessary stepi to stamp out this crap regardless of repercussions. Then hopefully we will achieve our goals.
Im sorry if that sounded like a sermon from the mount. Im off to London ;0) ENJOY!!!!!! Dont forget to watch all the PPP's on the poker chanel tonight and tomorrow!
Nikki

Suspected on line collusion

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