All well and good but once one team calls the floor you then run the risk of tit-for-tat situations...the floor will have an extremely busy night.
I would hope we"re all more grownup than that.
The point I"m making is that in a team event format, soft play and chip dumping is inevitable. Ultimately the team situation is more important than any individual glory.
Just because it"s inevitable, doesn"t make it right. It"s a honour thing and I"d like to think we"ll all play with honour.
So imagine a situation where the title is close to being decided, and a team has two players left in, and are on the verge of victory. One is huge chip leader and bullying the table, but the other is short-stacked and on the same table. The big stack opens for 2x as he has done for the past ten hands in a row.... his short stacked team mate then shoves for 4x and it folds back round to the original raiser. Clearly, in poker terms he has to call - folding is not an option....... If he calls, he MIGHT lose the hand and double his team-mate up, but he might also win/suckout and bust his team-mate, and hand the title to another team. Therefore, in the team context, folding is absolutely correct - but in poker terms, this would be soft play.
I hate this debate - it"s been going on forever. If we are to continue with "TEAM POKER", surely we just have to bite the bullet and recognise that usual poker rules don"t apply when it comes to chip dumping, soft play, etc. It"s either an Individual tournament or it"s a Team tournament - the rules don"t necessarily fit both formats.
For me, soft play and chip passing should be an integral part of Team Poker, and it"s up to the other teams to see it happening and to take advantage. Like all poker, it"s about adjusting to varying dynamics...... Team Poker could become a really exciting concept if we were to embrace it fully, rather than trying to apply rules that don"t fit the concept.