Re: [ba-poker] Ethical guidance needed

["James Kittock" <james(deleted the rest)>]

Uncle Roger asked:

>  Here is my ethical question: Is it OK to have a friend look over my
> shoulder while I play online, and to discuss the hands with my
> friend while I am playing them?

An interesting question, probably with no clear answer.

Beth replied:

> Well, first of all, my understanding of the "one player to a hand"
> rule is that it does refer to cheating/maintaining the standard of
> play, not preventing delay.

I agree.  If anything, saying that it is to prevent delay is just
putting a friendlier face on it--nobody likes being accused of cheating!

> Technically, I suppose this is still collusion though.

If someone is just sweating you, I don't think that is "collusion",
since that implies two (or more) players in the same game working
together against the other players.

I think that having a person sweat you and give advice is one of many
possible ways to get assistance while playing online.  In particular,
I would say it is roughly equivalent to referring to a poker book while
playing, using a calculator to compute odds on the fly, or using a program
like PokerTracker to recall and predict an opponent's actions.

Since any player could potentially do any of these things, I don't believe
any of them give an "unfair" advantage.  From that point of view, I suppose
that I would consider any of these actions to be ethical for online poker,
but still not ethical for brick & mortar poker, where they are explicitly
not allowed.  It is not too surprising that there might be different ethics
for the two realms--consider the situation of privately held vs. publicly
traded companies, where the rules are quite different.

BTW, I personally don't find an appeal to unenforceability very
convincing.  But, of course, all of this is just one person's opinion.

--james

PS This makes me think of that classic New Yorker cartoon: "On the Internet,
nobody knows you're a dog."