For the serious player, poker is war. The truly dedicated player is willing to bust anyone-friend, lover, relative, elderly grandmother on a pension-to get ahead in a poker game.
But for many others, the game of poker is mainly a social activity, a pleasant way to pass the time and hang out. And when these recreational players find themselves involved in a hand against a good friend or a family member, they will often resort to soft playing. So they'll check instead of bet, call instead of raise, fold instead of call-all because they don't want to take money away from people they care about. It can be a spoken or unspoken agreement between the two players, but the end result is always the same. By never playing aggressively against each other, these soft-peddling players are giving each other preferential treatment.
Is it unethical to soft play? There are almost as many opinions about this as there are poker players. The most benign form of soft playing-two friends in a ring game checking it through to the river when heads-up-is considered acceptable by many because it does not affect any of the other players at the table. But some people believe that any form of soft playing is wrong and pollutes the integrity of the game. At the very least, it often results in some kind of resentment by others in the game.
Even in the benign example above, the two players who checked it down likely have some kind of understanding between them to go easy on each other and this changes the game for everybody. For example, other players with marginal cards might decide to muck their hands rather than overcall if they see that both of these players have already entered the pot.
But what if the two friends take it even further? Suppose these two players, let's call them Damon and Pythias, are involved in a hand with a third player, and they keep raising each other's bets in an effort to drive out that cumbersome third player. Then as soon as Mr. Third Wheel is out of the pot and the two of them are heads-up, they simply check it down for the rest of the hand. By any definition, this is collusion. A seemingly harmless case of two friends helping each other out to save a few bets has turned into a full-blown case of cheating.
The ethics of soft playing may be a bit murky in a normal ring game, but in tournaments it is always considered verboten because in tournaments there is never such a thing as a hand that does not affect the other players. Every single hand played has the potential to impact every person in the tournament.
The problem then becomes one of defining what exactly is or is not soft play in a tournament situation. If a player with a huge stack seems to be taking it too easy on an extremely short stacked opponent-if he is not trying to bust the short stack out as he "should" be doing-there could be other, non-softplay-related reasons for this. Maybe the big stack has lousy cards and doesn't want to risk doubling up his opponent in that spot. Or maybe the big stack wants to keep the tourney on the bubble for a little while longer, so he can continue to bully the other players at the table. Or perhaps he's just a lucky idiot who has no real concept of good tournament play.
Barbara Connors is a sucker for classic old movies, science fiction, and the St. Louis Cardinals. Her life's ambition is to figure out the unusual behavior patterns of that unique breed of humans who call themselves poker players. Contact her at fyreflye222@yahoo.com.
