Absolute Poker's "Absolute Buddy"

Normally I would never stray from Pokerstars and Full Tilt but I figured why not deposit a little cash back on AP and give it another whirl. I had my money out of there after the superuser fiasco but I was playing real well before that happened. So I decided to deposit yesterday and I checked out some of the new features and here's what I found:


Absolute Buddy

Sounds like a solid feature at first glance but does any one else get the sinking suspicion that this will just lead to collusion in there future? If everyone and their friends are playing at ring games that could easily be IM'ing each other and stating their hands and how they are going to play it. This would obviously be more beneficial in tournament (i.e. systematic blind stealing, etc.) play but could definitely make an impact in ring games and sit in goes.

If AP is pushing for people to make more friends via this new tool, I can just imagine this getting even worse. This obviously means that they aren't checking tables for the same group of ip's heading into the same table/sng. Normally this type of behavior is enforced and regulated against if it reaches a certain level of regularity. I just found it very interesting.

Thoughts?

Probably should have explained it a bit better. It's essentially a buddy list within AP's browser. It allows you to see what users you know are online and what rooms/games they are currently in. Although other software has features where you can search for other players and etc., Absolute Poker is encouraging people to play in games with their friends and what not. With their history already on shaky footing, why risk adding a feature that could deteriorate your reputation any further?

Yeah, but it also allows they to keep tabs on who you're watching. So they can spot fraudulent activity easier.

And people who collude are going to do it over the phone, or via instant messenger (MS Messenger, AOL IM, ICQ, Google Talk, Yahoo Chat, etc.).

I'm sure they keep logs of any of the conversations going on with it so really it would just be an easy way to catch people that are dumb enough to collude in that way.

UB does the same thing with Ultimate Buddy.
I use it to track people on my dead money list, and it has come in handy on a few occasions.
Althought I suppose it could lead to cheating, it's not like it is hard to search your friends on other sites either. And if they are IMing each other like you stated, they could just as easily find each other by simply asking where each other was playing.
Personally I like feature and I am sure there are others who agree.

if you're gonna be on AP, you should get the hole card cam asap

Just to go & trash talk a little to someone I liked at a previous table at their new table. All in good fun, and my buddies usually get a kick out of it. So I love the feature, but I guess it can be used for collusion, so they probably should not allow it. But have a buddy there, gave him my yahoo IM name, and collusion would have been possible. He just gave me play chips.

One thing I do NOT get is that Carbon has the same buddy thing, even let's you know when they are signed in, but you can't talk at a table unless you're in it, not even locate the table they're in, so what good is it at all?!?!??

Not saying they would collude over the actually absolute (or ultimate) buddy, all they have to do is ask for someone's AIM or whatever and go from there. I'm not paranoid or worried about it in any way, I just think it's a feature that could lead to problems down the road.