Last week in my post How To Cheat At A Satellite I spoke of how satellite players don’t care if seats are assigned randomly. Since they didn’t care, why not take advantage of them? After all, rules are made to protect the players and if the players don’t care, are you really cheating?

Partners in live games, online games, satellites and tournaments have been going on since poker was invented. Some use it to cheat and some just use it to hedge their bankroll.

For instance, in a live game, two professionals might share the same bankroll. If one loses a $1,000 and the other makes $1,400 then their bankroll went up by $400. Stock traders call this diversification. A lot of high-limit pros who play in the same game everyday, usually form this type of partnership.

Then there is the tournament player who forms partnerships with other tournament player. They give away 5% of their winnings to 10 other players. If they win, they keep 50% of the prize and split the other 50% ten ways with their partners. Likewise if they lose and one of their ten partner wins, they get 5% of those winning. How much you want to bet that in early stages of a tournament these types of partners will take it easy on each other and not knock them out?

I know one big player tournament player who sometimes sells 200% of himself. Lets say the buy-in is $10,000. He’ll get 10 people to put up $2,000 each. He raises $20,000. He buys-in for $10,000, then gets himself knocked out the first day and now has a $10,000 profit for a few hours play. he then goes to the live game with his other $10,000. If he runs it up, he’ll have the money to pay for himself to get in a tourney (which he does win occasionally which is how he can get so many sponsors). If he loses, he just gets more sponsors at the next tournament.

Then there is the partners at the satellite table. Most casinos use a computer to randomly generate a table and seat to play in a tournament. However, for a satellite, most players just choose their own seat. This allows two partners to take a seat at opposite ends of the table. They can use signals to tell each other when to squeeze the other players in the middle. Or maybe they choose seats side by side so they can pass signals under the table. Or the player with the good hand just checks while his partner bets and after everyone calls the original partner then raises and they steal all the chips in the pot so far.

When you let players in a satellite choose their own seats, there are so many variations to cheating that can be accomplished. So again I ask.. if players don’t care is it really cheating?