To spot a tag team (SNG)

Hey there fellow hustlers.

Quick story I'd like to share with you all. In hopes that others may take a lesson as well as be vigilant so that collectively, we can fight the 'scum' I will allude to in this post.

So I was sat at a $3.30 9max SNG playing on ACR. Reaching ITM(Top 3) I was sitting pretty with the middle stack. To my left was big stack, but by only about 3000 chips. And to his left was the short stack who at that point had less than half of my chips.

So I'm BB and the big stack raises... SB folds... and I fold.
Next hand I'm SB... Button folds... and I fold.
Next hand I'm Button... I fold. Then the big stack on SB also folds. (Nothing too strange here)

After this.... Another 3 rounds of the exact same, and thats when I started to take note.

So hand 7 I'm BB and both SB and myself calls the raise. After the flop SB bets, I call and the Button(Big stack) folds. After the turn, SB checks and I shove. After some time he folds and I take the pot.

At this point short stack has suffered a massive dent and is on the Button next hand and folds. I fold too.

Next hand short stack is BB and I fold the Button thinking big stack will do something. He folds!!!

the next hand they played short stack raised. big stack called and when short stack bet again big stack folded. All the while on my BB big stack would raise me. Now I was sure these two were in cahoots and trying to play me off and to make matters worse I was now the short stack.

And so I write a comment and say: 'I think you 2 are homies playing together' ...and I shove with nothing. Theres a brief pause in play as they realise I'm onto them and both fold my shove. No response on the comment though. So I shove the next 3 hands and I'm called on 1 by the previous short stack and I take the pot. The next hand short stack shoves I call and win and his out.

So now myself and the other guy are pretty even in our stacks. He types 'gg wp'
So I say 'ty tell me tho... am I right?' ... And he doesn't reply and so I took that as a yes and because of that decided to play Push/Fold as his punishment lol

He could not handle it and I eventually won the $13.50 ... The whole experience turned out quite satisfactory knowing they thought they had me and I thwarted their plan.

So... the moral of this story is that this kind of thing happens more often than we probably think. They are probably also communicating their cards to each other. Be aware of what's happening on your table and notice the plays that just doesn't seem right and pick up on patterns. And when you notice something then mention it in the chat... You could be wrong but if you're right it could have a beneficial impact .... Then punish those monkeys!

Thanks for reading
Cheers

P.S - I have made a note on both these players but have decided not to name & shame them here. For all I know I could be wrong but felt it's a story worth sharing

Thanks for sharing this story. Collusion is definitely something to look out for, and STTs are the most ideal format for colluders, because they can register and then just sit and wait for victims to join their game. They can also gain a larger advantage than in cash games by using strategies such as softplay or even chip dumping.

I have seen something similar but what I noted was that I saw a few tables with the same 2-3 players registered as the first players in. I keep a lookout of this type of stuff by checking other similar tables or even in a slightly higher or lower buy-in to make sure I am not getting myself into trouble. I also try to make notes on them so I can avoid in the future.

Always fun though to run them into the ground, and great job.

Ha Ha ...yeah it was indeed fun haha.... but only after I won lol. Thanks for your comments, I was very sure others had to experience this. Hope our stories help others too.

Russian player are very good at tag teaming. I see more than two register a freeroll I unregister.

It is very rare. And not so much EV in this. ACR, there is a leaderboard, right!? But this $3.30 is too low. The "team game" usually means something different. For us, the SNG players. This means two or three guys with one account. 18 hours play. Or even 24 hours. And no one cares about this. I talked about that with the support, WPN. 24 hours play from one account. Impossible ofc. They don't care.

In pokerstars, I played one time MTT. There was a russian female and one other russian acc. And the female was short, I was the middle stack. He helped her. They talked to each other, I am a half russian, I understand everything. I lost...But this was not only because "the team game", bad luck mainly, as I said "a little EV in this". I said that to the support. Nothing..Some dumb explanation. You know, because I am a reg, they are not. That's why. No one cares...As I said...Don't think about this things.

I have seen "regulars" appear to support each other in certain situations. It is especially obvious when a chip leader with say 10,000 chips does not call a 150 chip shove when he is last to act. Take notes on these folks so you can recognize them later.

UkoChebuko said:

It is very rare. And not so much EV in this. ACR, there is a leaderboard, right!? But this $3.30 is too low.

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If someone is playing for profit, this would indeed be very silly. Its easy to coordinate with a "buddy", if you play only one table, but if you play for profit, you dont want to play only one table for $3.30. So this was almost certainly two recreational players, which also mean, they are not sitting and doing this 12 hours a day. So I think, OP handled it perfectly fine by saying something in the chat to send them a warning, but other than that just let it go.

UkoChebuko said:

The "team game" usually means something different. For us, the SNG players. This means two or three guys with one account. 18 hours play. Or even 24 hours.

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This could also be a sign of someone using bots. If support dont care about this, I would seriously consider to find another poker site.

UkoChebuko said:

In Pokerstars, I played one time MTT. There was a russian female and one other russian acc. And the female was short, I was the middle stack. He helped her. They talked to each other, I am a half russian, I understand everything. I lost...But this was not only because "the team game", bad luck mainly, as I said "a little EV in this". I said that to the support. Nothing..Some dumb explanation. You know, because I am a reg, they are not. That's why. No one cares...As I said...Don't think about this things.

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If someone is dumb enough to actually use the chat on the poker site itself to collude, they are certainly recreational players, and they probably did not even know each other in advance. So yeah whatever. Likely wont happen again, and as you say there is not that much EV in chip dumping, even though there is some.

I've seen this once (wpn) and reported it...got my $ back. Dude shoved SB and BB only had to call like 50 chips...folded willingly. Same thing happened again, and after I went busto I raised the issue with the online chat.

The one thing that bothers me now, why are there so many "time out" issues on wpn. I feel like it's another way of taking more time, and also sometimes I fear that these players can see all of our hands and the honest players are just sitting ducks (although I don't subscribe to this idea 100%). I know they can't really see our cards...

It is amazing to me how many cheats and thieves there are in the world, it seems to be getting worse!