Hand from the Borgata Poker Open sparks talk of collusion

Allen Kessler took to his Twitter account on Sunday where he detailed a scenario that took place at the tail-end of Day 1a of the Borgata Poker Open Main Event, where four players apparently decided to go all-in blind before the start of the hand –the tournament was a reentry event and assumedly all four players involved were intent on reentering.

Kessler tweeted to Matt Savage and Borgata Tournament Director Tab Duchateau for their thoughts on the situation:

@SavagePoker last hand of day 1a. Four players openly agree to shove all in blind preflop. Acceptable? How to stop? @TabDuchateau

The problem is, he didn’t provide enough details for anyone to make a decision on whether this is collusion or not. If the players openly discussed this in front of the other players at the table (as Kessler states in his tweet) than everyone in the game had the same information and had the same opportunity to move all-in –In fact the other players could look at their cards before deciding, giving them a massive advantage. On the other hand, if they decided this privately, or even after just one player had folded than it is collusion.

Judging by Kessler’s tweet it would seem the four players decided this openly and before the hand played out, so I have no issue with what they did if this is in fact what occurred.

An article on the website PokerUpdate.com discussed this situation earlier today with the author saying:

“Agreeing to play a hand a certain way before the hand is played is technically collusion by the letter of the rule…”

I wholeheartedly disagree with this, and I think this is where most people go off the rails when they cry collusion. Collusion requires secrecy or the passing of information a player should not be privy to: Here is the definition of collusion from the Merriam Webster Dictionary:

Collusion: secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose

And here is a definition from FlopTurnRiver.com’s Poker Dictionary:

A term to define a method in which multiple players cheat by sharing information with each other and acting with knowledge they shouldn’t have had.

As you can see, for something to be considered collusion there must be an element of secrecy and “inside information” involved. This was not the case in the scenario described by Allen Kessler. Furthermore, there needs to be an advantage (as the PokerUpdate article rightly points out), and each of these four players is making a –EV decision and therefore increasing the equity of every player in the tournament.

These four players are only hurting themselves and are increasing yours and everyone else’s equity in the tournament, and as long as they are not talking privately or excluding other players from their talks they are not colluding.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•