Re: [ba-poker] Ethical guidance needed

["Patti Beadles" <pattib(deleted the rest)>]

>Or like that BARGE where Patti and I each looked at only one of her hole 
>cards and then voted on what to do.

Hey, we didn't violate the one player to a card rule.


Having multiple people making decisions on a hand can be a net win
for the players or a net loss, I think, depending on the players.  
Let me compare it to a situation in backgammon.

Backgammon tournaments often have a side event that's a doubles
tournament.  Two players play as a team, and they consult on all the
decisions.  The way it works is that at any given time, one person
is making rolling the dice and makign the moves, and he's either
consulting with his partner before the move is made, or waiting for
approval after moving and before picking up his dice.

I had a friend named Ed who I usually played these tournaments with.
I'm not a world-class backgammon player, and neither was Ed, but we
were both good solid intermediate players.  Ed and I generally did
extremely well in doubles tournaments, often kicking the asses of
teams of players much stronger than us.

How'd that work?  Ed and I had very similar basic game strategies.
When we played, the net effect was that one of us would play, and
the other would catch and correct mistakes.  It was very rare for us
to outright disagree on a play... mostly if the non-playing player
disagreed with a move, the player would say, "Oh, you're right!  I
didn't see that."

Our opponents often were expert players who had very different
styles and strategies-- one would be very aggressive, while the
other would play a more cautious, more tactical "pure" game.
Because they often disagreed, the net effect is that they wound up 
playing a hybrid strategy that was much weaker than either one of
them playing as an individual.


Bill and Jerrod consulting on a hand probably work out about the
same as Ed and I did at backgammon-- they're playing the same basic
game, and the second opinion just points out things that the player
missed.  If Russ Fox[1] and I tried to consult over nolimit, I think
the end result would be quite messy.

-Patti

[1] I have no intention of picking on Russ... I just grabbed him as
an example of a fairly tight, conservative player.