Ok, as someone looking from the outside at this IMPARTIALLY (there hasnt been any of that so far, most of what has been posted has been bordering on Hysteria) I would say that Leigh has made it fairly clear that APAT are against OBVIOUS foul play ie the chip dumping example shown earlier.
Dont be OBVIOUS and there wont be an issue.
Am i wrong?
Stu, yes mate you are. I will try to explain why. Feel free to disagree with me (like you need telling *lol*). Also it is not just a question of if APAT are for or against it but the BOSS Network. We still do not know how they view the team game and it appears they see it as any other game. APAT are not in a position to be able to say don"t be obvious and it won"t be an issue as they don"t know if this is the case or not and in fact the rules say don"t do it at all.
As I have said to you before I have thought of moving most of my online play and money that is currently sat on Pokerstars (which is not a HUGE amount but a 4 figure sum which is not exactly insignificant) onto APAT poker. Now let"s just say I did that.
Currently I am fully aware of what Pokerstars policies are on these things and if I am on the same cash table with say for example yourself, Curly or Darren Shallis then I will be playing 100% optimally against you and trying to win. This is also true if we end up on the same table in any tournaments. There is no blurring of the lines we all know this and we know where we stand.
Now let"s say I move the cash to APAT. If I am playing you one night in a tournament (or PLO cash game) we will obviously both be trying to win and beat each other as we would at a live event just as hard (actually if we are honest a little harder) than against any other player. Now let"s say in a league event that I happen to be playing I am in the BB with a shortish stack and AKs and a player in the same team as me (Let"s say Darren Shallis, who has a VERY good handle on my game and how I play, who has a big stack raises me from late position. Now in a normal event when it folds to me I am shoving all day long against this player with this hand but in this case due to it being a team event I decide it is OK to fold as the chips stay within the team (this to me seem perfectly reasonable and to be the +EV play). However somebody watching the game may see this as soft play, which, if you go hard line by the letter of the law, it actually is. I know that he knows that my range for doing this to him is very wide and he will call lighter than normal and I get called by loads of hands I crush.
So this happens and somebody reports it to the network and the hand is reviewed and deemed to be soft play and my account is suspended and the funds frozen. This has happened due to something I honestly and sincerely thought was fine.
Here lies the problem we are potentially talking about people accounts that contain real money being frozen. For now my take on this is that Team Play is banned and I will ensure that in future events I am playing my A game against everybody including people in my own team until the end of this current league game. As I said it would be nice if we can get some sort of dispensation for next time but I would very much understand why this is not possible.
One other thing on another subject kind of. I agree and support the two players who were disqualified being allowed to play the rest of the events. I do not understand why the points from last Sunday have been returned to them, the rules were broken, OK they did not mean too but that is besides the point. This sets a strange precedence for me, what happens if the same thing is picked up by another team next week. APAT cannot take action against them as another team has been caught doing it and basically just given a warning (I think). I might be looking at this the wrong way and as I said I will 100% treat the rest of this event as if it was a normal individual event (so in the AK example above I would shove not fold which I would otherwise have done in a team event). Not sure if I am being a bit pedantic here tbh (entirely possible) but this feel like the right thing to do in this case.