Forced check

Replay Poker Poker Discussion
22

I posted a hand about this a while back. There were three players left in MTT. I was UTG and folded. The SB was automatically all-in with not enough chips to complete the BB and the BB folded, thus giving the SB more chips than he could have won if he had the better hand as the blinds were very, very high.

I thought this was cheating, especially as I ended up in 3rd place, probably tilting at the injustice of it all. I wrote to RP poker about this and they responded that they though the player who folded just didn’t know what he was doing and that this is an error in the software, and that folding should not be allowed.

Thanks a lot for your report. I just escalated this to our Poker Operations Manager to review. After analyzing the hand, he has shared that this was not premeditated collusion. This was an action by someone who seems to lack poker experience, and the real cause is by our software. Mxyzdonk shouldn’t have the option to fold, and this is something we’re looking at correcting with our new software.

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23

You always have the option to muck your hand at a live table, but I believe in a “real” tournament this would be considered “Soft Play” which is punishable by a penalty at the discretion of the floor/tournament manager. By not playing those cards against the all in (any two cards have at least some equity against any other hand, so you should obviously be letting it play out) at no additional cost, you are essentially cheating the rest of the tournament players by not trying to knock the other player out. Soft play also includes not raising with the nuts on the river when you are last to act and things like that.

Even though there may be strategic reasons for letting an extremely small stack linger (big stack putting pressure on middle stacks), I believe the prohibition against soft play trumps this so it is not allowed.

In a cash game you’re just wasting your own chips so there is no penalty. You are only hurting yourself.

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24

BTW, I’m not seeing what’s wrong with the 2nd example in the OP. Because UTG+1 limped a full BB, the SB would need to commit 750 more chips in order to call even though he had the BB’s All-in covered. Folding has to be an option there for the SB. If the limp hadn’t happened it would be a different story, more like the first example.