When you have a friend at the table

The following occured last week when in Vegas.

I had a friend at the table, the rest were strangers. In a hand I was dealt KJ, decided to play it and the flop come JJ7. Great hand! My friend is also in the hand. I speak first and check/call his bet, we are heads up after the flop. The turn and river is blank and I clean him up for all his chips (this was a cash game).

After the hand he turns to me and says something like "Was that really nescesarry? You are not supposed to take MY money, you could have checked the turn and river".

I was really surprised at that attitude, its the first time I play with him and when I play I dont really go easy on my friends if I have a great hand, I mean I hope he does well but I play to get the max $ from my hands and dont really care who the opponent is. I dont think any other friends I play with would expect this. The endgame if this was that we agreed to not sit at the same table again which was fine by both of us.

So do you usually "go easy" on friends if you are two at the table with a bunch of strangers?

By the way, he played that hand poorly, after check calling I lead out on the turn and River and he should have figured I had the jack and folded, I think he only had a middle pair or something.

I know better than to sit down with friends at a table unless it is a home game ...where everyone kinda learns the unspoken rules but at a casino neverrrrrrrrrrr

My best friend who is a black jack player and not a poker player sat down with me once in a 1/2 game at the casino. I had pocket 4's and I flopped quads. He thought it might be funny to try and bluff me off my hand, but, since i held the absolute nuts, its sort of hard. We ended up all in, but, no hard feelings. Both of us understand that gambling is gambling...but in all honesty, i would hate to play for money with a table full of friends. I don't want to take my friends money, its awkward and unsettling.

Dump the " friend " he wants you to cheat, to win dump his Ass.

Poker is Poker.
He knew the rules when he bought in.

If he dont want to lose money to you then its up to him to stay out of the way.


Not something you should feel bad about in the least. Sure you couldve checked the turn and river BUT he also couldve folded.

Just my .02¢

This is why I make a rule of never playing for money against friends or family.
ironically I have lost more friends this way because ultimately most of my friends don't really like me and only want to use me and think they would rather win my money. very complimentary which ultimately makes beating them when the time comes more satisfactory.

However yeah It is generally not a good idea to play friends or family because you either feel bad for taking there money which gets awkward or you feel bad for losing there is no winning there.

Generally I feel bad about the prospect of hurting anyone significantly full stop. I hope all my opponents can afford to lose what they do when they do. Ultimately though there are people who need that money more, and its my moral obligation to make sure the more needy get help.

it does disturb me though that East european players and people from less developed countries play online I could be hurting the very people I ultimately want to help.

This is why I don't normally play with friends for money. Personally, if I'm at a Casino with a friend, I'm not trying to bust him even if we are in a hand together. You probably don't have to worry about it in the future. I'm sure your friend knows where he stands and won't play with you again.

It should always be established that everyone is playing to win before you play. I tell everyone my motto is "all's fair in love and poker". You should not play at the same table if this is not understood.

I have to lol at this, wtf did he think was happening when he was calling, was he playing for a split pot, your friend need to stop playing poker, he has no idea.
As for playing with friends I cant think of anything better, playing poker with your mates and taking their money is one of the best feelings in the world, especially knowing that they would take pleasure in taking my money.
I consider alot of ppl here at CC my friends and at no time do any of them hesitate to take my money and I theirs.

Yep, wouldnt it possibly be considered softplaying if we checked down such a strong hand when heads up, especially since it was known to everyone else at the table that we knew each other well, or would it still be acceptable since it was not the Nuts? I was wondering about that later.

It would definitely be soft playing and almost collusion. You knew you had the better hand. He played poorly. He kept on calling, which is basically him saying he was willing to take your money, but whine about losing to you. If he wanted to be friendly, he would have folded. He was trying to take your money. It says a lot about your friend. Dump him, he's not really a friend and you can't trust cheaters.

My friends know better than to play against me in a serious game.

He should find another table if he doesn't like your style. There are many who would be pleased to scoop his chips just to hear him wine.

He sounds a little inexperienced. In some anal casinos, the floorman might even be called over and your friend may be reprimanded for encouraging collusion.

I think anyone who goes to the table and expects to be treated with kid gloves by their friends should look to play at another table.

I play a regular monthly tournament (24-30 people) and there are several friends in it. We NEVER go easy on each other. It's poker!!

Definitely don't change your play to just accomodate a friend. Great stuff here from the other replies. Only other thing I might add is that people seem to be making a difference between specific "poker friends" as opposed to more general life friends. The people who are friends and also poker players will (or need to) understand the "all's fair in love and poker" type of agreement.

Just sour grapes! Friendly games are nice, but when you sit down at a table in a casino being "friendly" is unfair to the other players and yourself. Your friend should have folded!

If you can't play your best poker and keep your friends they are not real friends.If you knew this guy was not a good player you might have warned him beforehand but other than that he is a whiner.

Your friend took a chance and lost. He must have had a hand that could beat most anything except trips. Maybe you have a history of bluffing. Would he have felt bad if you were? All is fair on the felt. It's not fair to call your friendship into question over a poker hand.

He said it in Norwegian, not english, and Im surprised the dealer didnt give a warning for that.

I sat with a few friends at a casino before.. Once u sit down in a live game theres no such thing as friends. Simple as that.. Nothing else needed to be said. Poker is poker and friends is friends. When ur in the same game there like oil and water

I concur .

If your friend can't take a beating by you he shouldn't sit down with you in the first place.

A lot of the regular members I socialise with at CC are as close as online friends can be.

Maybe I'll meet a few one day - Zorb for instance is more than one continent away from me.

Nevertheless I'm always happy to see him sit at my table - and we take turns taking each other out .

No hard feelings - that's poker.

We have enough "buddies" to feed our BR apart from the CC games .

Thanks for the replies. I always thought I did the right thing and good to see it confirmed. I would do it again.

Further on we are still friends so no big lifelong grudges, just a bit of whining and probably some lost pride, he want to be the best in what he does and being cleaned out by someone he knows well must have been painful for his confidence.

The next day we both had winning sessions, although naturally on different tables and I that kinda killed the tension.


For the last day of Cashgames I had another winning session and he lost 2 buyins, so I kinda established that Im the better player after all :-)

I played with my best friend in San Diego a few months ago at the $1/$2 tables. We did our very best to take each other's money. The whole table knew were great friends, but when we were HU the money well all-in. One of guys at the table looked at both of us and said, "this is sooooo brutal."

I kept asking her if she wanted to race. 'Let's just put our stacks all-in and then deal the cards' but she kept chickening out. The table thought both of us were crazy.

either play hard against your friend, or dont get involved in pots when he/she's in. for myself, whenever i go to live games to grind with my friend, we stay outta each other's way. no point in taking each other's money when we are there for the sole purpose of gettin the others' money.

^^
Here is the key.

He was playing for ALL YOUR CHIPS. That's what he wanted.

When he lost he threw a little guilt your way... understandable though contemptible.

Bottom line is he had at least 3 or 4 chances to save his chips. There is only one reason he didn't take one of those chances.

Ive played multiple times in vegas with 3 friends at the table. 2 of them are kind of nitty so i do not play a lot of pots against them, but my other friend he also tends to play LAG like me in live poker. So i played a lot of hands against him. Best hand was UTG raises to 10 (1-2 game), i call in middle position and my friend raises to 20 in the BB. UTG calls i call. Flop: 3c-8c-Js Utg checks, i bet 40, my friend folds, UTG folds. I take the pot and turn over 72 off . Obviously this move will kill you if you do it to often, but just wanted to turn it over in a decent size pot once as a bluff .

i personally dont care who i sit with to play. me and my boss used to play heads games for 5 or 10 bucks when werent busy. if you sit down with me and lose its not my problem. everyone plays for the same reasons, so they wouldnt have a problem taking my money. and i for sure wouldnt feel bad about taking money from friends and family. my family knowns not to play poker with me because i am a very serious play and i dont like to mess around with ppl who dont know how to play. which is why i hate playing for free when playing live.

I play against my dad all the time at the casino. I have quite a few people tell me they were surprised at how hard we play against each other.

If he is a good friend he would know how you play and would have got out

I wouldn't play with friends unless it is a home game. At casinos, I go with my friends and we always sit at different tables. It usually works out pretty well.

For me it depends on how my stack is doing and how his or hers is doing. If Im up allot and he or she is down allot I will take it easy on them and win a smaller pot. If he or she is a friend outside poker then this stands true even more. But if she or he is a poker friend then this pretty much doesn't apply , I just take their money.. The Poker friend no matter what they say totally knows the truth without any words being said. Your friend if he is a poker friend is acting like a unexperienced player. If he is a friend outside of poker and he was loosing allot and you where winning then you could apply what I said above.

If you check that to showdown, some eyebrows are going to be raised. You had the best hand, and didn't give him an opportunity to trap himself.

i usually play everyone the same. i may not have check-raised my friend though, but sometimes that's a move you want to make if you know they'll c-bet. i probably would have bet it out. if your friend was that great he would have probably realized he was beat. there weren't many hands he could have held that would have beat you...even if he did give up a good handful of chips before folding. and you gotta realize...if he'd sucked you out...he would have been riding you for months on end. buy him a big mac meal and hope he learned his lesson

Not sure I would dump a friend for that, but you make excellent points (in bold).

As far as collusion goes, would you be allowed to say something like "buddy, you might be in big trouble" as you shove your stack to the middle? If you were stupid enough to say that to a stranger, they might actually think it's part of your bluff. But don't the pros say stuff like that all the time on TV? Tell you the truth, friends could easily sport a 'tell' to indicate they should fold or that they are bluffing. Bet it happens all the time. Let the floor guy prove my nose didn't itch.

At any rate, right or wrong, if HU, I'd try to do something to get a friend to fold, like shove. lol If he calls, his problem. He had no right to be mad at anyone but himself for his bad call.