Does this feel like collusion?

Playing $200 NL trying to get a feel for the table that just started up. I limp from mp with suited K10 (3 limpers ahead). Two young guys who are pretty good friends are in the blinds. Small blind limps and bb raises to 27. Now, I'm saying squeeze and am happy to play my hand in position to this fellow, assuming everyone else will fold. The small blind shoves and his buddy 3 second folds. Now I'm in a shitty spot. I felt like this was a whipsaw.and was looking at atc here. I called and he showed 79o. I won but felt cheated. This limp/raise between these two happened like 6 times. Does this feel like collusion, and if so is there anything you can do about it?

It has that feel, but;


If you were to gather many many more hands with this similar dynamic, you could present those hands, and a detailed explanation about the situation to the poker site. Any site worth playing at will give it a look, but probably never get back to you with results. You just might not see them ever again. If this were live at a casino, stay away from tables with either of them, voice your concern to the management, and leave for a few weeks.

The problem is that you way overvalued a shitty hand, regardless of what the outcome was. I assume you are playing live, and the best thing about playing live is that people suck and they are playing with more money than they would online because the minimum is higher. With 3 limpers, I can understand why you called as you were already getting 4.5:1 on your call, but calling the raise of 13bb getting 8:5 was terrible, especially with someone left to act behind you. What are you hoping to the flop to be? Broadway? Because other than that or a flopped boat, you have no clue where you are. Your King or 10 will be outkicked many times when you flop a pair, without the Ace on board you will only have the 2nd nut flush. Just fold.

As far as the move that he made, you could bring it up to management, but I know there are sometimes that when I have a friend at the table, I might(or he might) make moves like this just to joke around with him. Now in your hand above, I might make that same move against you. You showed no ambition to raise the hand up, which shows that you don't have a good hand in many cases. You're being as passive as can be, so if he pushes enough money in, surely someone wouldn't call with a crappy double gutter, would he? To be honest, I like his play a hell of a lot more than yours.

Not trying to beat you down, but this hand was played very poorly imo.

You played the hand badly.

You then refused to fold a hand that doesnt do well getting all in preflop hand and got lucky.

Yep, I'm horrible. I think that's been established in other threads. I didn't go into details because for me this is more about their play than mine. I did have reasons and a plan though. We were 20 hands in and bb had raised 8 or 9 of them. He had also folded the flop on all but 2 of those. I half expected a raise from him again. I flatted fully intending to pop no matter what if he checked and repop if he bet and I hit a piece. It was the all in by his buddy that surprised me. When the bb instafolded I felt trapped by a whipsaw. I finally decided that I was prolly good if that was the case. I couldn't think of a hand that limp shoves that had me crushed. That may be a mistake but at least I had a plan, if imperfect.

pop, repop, whatever.. Flatting KTs in a 3bet pot with or without position is terrible, how does your plan get past that?

KTs plays well in a normal raised pot with initiative, why did your plan invlove limping?

The OP here is asking about the collusion possibility, not his play.

I did have position. 3 limpers ahead and all folds behind. Small blind limped and bb raised. Fold fold fold call by me shove by sb.

The SB limps in a 4way pot, the BB raises (he may well steal here) and if they know each other then he ,may well know this.

OP limp calls (which suggests that he has a weak hand)

SB shoves thinking BB is stealing and OP has a weak hand which he should fold.

Why is that collusion?

Positional value is reduced in a 3bet pot.

You should have raised preflop, thus getting value from weaker hands and preventing people from stealing light (because when they shove this is a fold)

Because these are the things I need to learn and the main reason I am here I guess this is part of what I'm talking about in another thread. I don't know the standard play with a hand like K10 in mp. I do appreciate the input. Seriously. I take all advice into consideration.

OP (semi) detailed a situation on the table involving what he says are friends or friendlies. Suspicious but also probably something that regulars do when they think they can get away with it.

Since OP the rest of the thread has turned into a play critique.

just saying......

What exactly is suspicious here?

I don't think anything, thus my original response, but OP might. He thought the friends might have something going. He had a 'feeling'.... do I need to post it again???????

Nah, when explained as stu did it makes some sense. Sitting at the table it felt pretty fishy. I flatted K10 suited on the effective button with one raise in front. I guess I thought that was kinda standard. It wasn't a 3 bet pot when I called. It was then an all in fromvthe small blind and a fold from the original raiser. I felt like I must be beating a limp shove a pretty good % of thevtime plus he only had 110 total so I had to call 81 to win 170. I thought it was an easy call given the situation. This is where I fully admit to less than expert play.

The raise was big enough to make it play like a 3bet pot.

Right, that makes sense. Ugh. So much to learn.

if we can ever get past OP's play, i'd say this is a pretty good candidate for collusion by SB and BB

BB is trying to get someone to call the $27 raise (everyone's holdings are likely marginal since it's limped around) with a hand they're not willing to call a shove with so his buddy SB can jam over the top and pick up the pot. it's about as clear as it gets. doesn't really matter what OP's cards/play were


edit: if this was in a casino, i'd consider calling the floor over (though these guys probably suck balls and are still beatable even if they're colluding)

If this happened in a raised pot then Id be more inclined to agree with you, but in a limped pot, BB isnt allowed to raise 4 limpers and his friend dosent know him well enough to know he usually folds when shoved on in this situation?

So, I order of magnitude, my mistakes were:

1. Flatting what is effectively a 3 bet with K10.
2. Not raising from mp with a raisable hand.
3. Calling the limp shove.

Is this right?

so SB is overlimp/jamming from the SB in a 6way pot for value? or he's doing it as a bluff because he expects BB to have a really wide range of hands that he's raising from the BB over limpers that he's folding most of to when facing a ridiculous-looking SB overlimp/jam?


it looks suspicious as ****. if you disagree, then hopefully you're don't work the floor of any casinos

He is overlimping with what he considers a speculative hand (an unsuited 1 gapper.. people do play these) Yet he expects his friend to bluff raise with ahigh frequency so he is planning on shoving if his friend raises.

Its caused by OP overlimoing rather than raising.

The same principle comes into play when you have a wide CO raiser, you are on the BTN with a medium hand that is ahead of CO opening range yet not good enough to call / raise a 3bet. The blinds are particulay 3bet happy and will 3bet very wide if the CO opens and the BTN calls. Therefore to prevent this you 3bet your weakish hand yourself to prevent the blinds from squeezing, yet would prefer to play the hand in a non-3bet pot.

and lol, it happened six times according to OP. six times!


it's fun to play devil's advocate on CC, but in all seriousness, plays like this are collusion 99% of the time. everyone limps, friend X raises, people fold or call (no one limp/jams), then friend Y swoops in with the overbet jam and collects all the money (since everyone's ranges are super weighted towards stuff they're not happy calling a shove with).


if you see this again, report it, especially if they try to pull this more than once. and yeh, work on hand selection etc

Stu, he had it happened like 6 times. So while the 1st call might have been bad, seems like he caught on, and decided to play the bastidge. Sounds like collusion to me. Maybe report it, and let them do the work.

you're really a stubborn one aren't you?

i bet if SB and BB high fived each other and openly discussed how they're going to split their winnings, you'd probably say "hey, that's not that suspicious, they're probably referring to winnings from the blackjack they played earlier that day, and are both in a great mood and are high fiving for fun"

c'mon man. you really think a limp-happy 1/2 game has legitimate backraising spots and these two "friends" are really set out on creating really uncommon super aggressive dynamics between each other, rather than just colluding (in a manner that's pretty lol-tastic and easy to identify, as OP did) to take some easy cash from some bad live 1/2 players?


if you're just arguing that this doesn't 100% prove they're colluding, okay i guess... but it's just about as suspicious as it gets.

i think OP did a good job of identifying a collusion spot in this game.

After seeing them do this 6 times I would

a) never limp with KTs (not that I would if I hadnt seen them do this)
b) limping with QQ+AK
c) limp shoving myself with some % as a high equity bluff.

If they were colluding it would make them easier to beat IMO.

rofl ok

It certainly "feels" like it to me. Esp if this pattern repeats .... That said not sure if it can be proved or what a casino could/would do in this case. This is where an online site might be more likely to take action as they seem track these types of patterns statistically (and have all the hand histories at their disposal).

I guess the easiest action is to get up and move to another table.

At casinos, just change tables if there are (competent) friends at the table. Not worth the risk they are colluding. Even if they aren't explicitly colluding, they will almost always softplay each other.

When I go with my friends, I would never sit at the same table as them. When people do, I instantly find it suspicious.

PS. If the friends are bad/drunk, they will probably just encourage each other to be worse/drunker, so I would stick around.

Do you play live very often? Because if you do then I would imagine that you would realize that it is fairly often out of your hands as to what table you're playing at. Many casinos don't have a ton of tables to choose from at your stakes, so if you're wanting to play, when your name comes up on the list, you're taking that spot. When I play with friends at the table, I don't slowplay them at all, they are just someone else at the table. I chat with everyone, so everyone at any given time can be a friend or an enemy.

At one of our local cash games recently there were two friends sitting at the same table, and everytime one of them would raise to $35 (which was a strange sized bet) the other one would fold. It was almost their way of saying to each other "stay out of this one, Ive got a monster". It even got to the point where one of them raised to $35 and another regular at the table turned to the second guy and said "he just raised $35, I think you're meant to fold."

It was a weak plan but there's no doubt in my mind they had planned it out beforehand. i spoke to the dealer afterwards and he said he knew exactly what they were doing but it was impossible for him to prove.

Are there lots of ways of people colluding at a live cash table?

This guy is an idiot.

He is more concerned with everyone knowing he knows than the advantage he has by knowing.

If you could hear him commenting on the $35 raise, then the people doing it could too.

If people are doing things like this, why would anyone do anything that might stop them?

agree. thing was though every $35 bet, everyone would keep folding (after it became obvious) and am sure they used this to their advantage to steal with less than premium hands.