Soft-Playing at the No Limit Table

Last week at BSC I saw a hand that reminded me of a great blog post I read sometime back.  I thought it was on Poker Grump's blog and researching it, it turns out I was right.  Grump's post is here.

Two women who were very good friends were playing at the 1/2 game at BSC.  One of the ladies is a terrific dealer there and was playing on the clock, at least to start off.  Her pal was not a dealer. 

I never noticed anything unusual between them, other than the level of chatter between them was both loud and non-stop.  But finally they had a hand when it was only the two of them to see the flop.  The dealer who was playing said to her pal, "Oh, so it's finally just us."

And then the flop, the turn and the river all came and they checked through all three rounds.  I believe the pot was raised to about $10 before the flop, so it was about a twenty buck pot at stake.

The first lady showed 3's full of 4's and assumed she won.  But the off-duty dealer said, "Not good enough!" and showed 4's full of 3's and took it down.

Of course, it was obivous that with two full houses, had either one of them been playing against anyone else at the table, a lot of money would have been bet, raised and called.  No doubt the losing woman would have been stacked (so-to-speak).

Yet neither made a bet with their big hands!  And of course the reason was they were playing against each other....both soft-playing a friend.

But I have to wonder if there was really any harm done since there were no other players in the hand.  As I said, I didn't notice any soft-playing or collusion on any other hand when there were other players involved.