ive had some very engaging conversations today concering the trading of favors in kdice. so i thought i would ramble on them in an overly long forum post, since i am montecarlo.

1) PREGAME FAVORS
its agreed by all that these should never be made. high tables are renowned for pregame favors, which is why a lot of newer players refuse to play at higher tables.

"whenever i sit there, people give me last place because they dont know my."

"everyone says hi to each other, except for me."

"my flag is never respected up there because people don't want to see their friends lose points."

ad infinitum.

i used to get upset when i saw newer players state this all the time. no! thats not true! but now i have realized that, whereas it may not be true for me, it definitely is true for some other high table players. rewarding your friendly friends, and picking on the newer players. im not saying everyone does it up there, but a lot of players do it. and the thing that sucks is that the ENTIRE top players get branded as point whore pga otfs because of the sins of a few.

the other funny thing about the newer players who bitch endlessly about the elite class is that they quickly assume the 'holier-than-thou' stance. its like when i would teach sunday school for high schoolers at my church. there was this one dude who sort of a geek (arent we all?), and he was always saying the right things, like 'premarital sex is wrong, because blah blah blah', 'gettin drunk is wrong because blah blah blah'. finally i had to pull this guy aside and be like, dude, have you EVER had a girl try to make out with you? no? then you cant judge others, because youve never had to deal with that temptation. so stfu. except i didnt say stfu, cus i was a sunday school teacher, ofc. anyway, the point of that montecarlo long story was that a lot of these newer players love saying the right thing: 'pga is bad, trading favors is bad, blah blah blah.' but honestly they have NEVER had someone offer them a silent pga truce at a high table before. ive seen this personally several times. as soon as a newer player feels the giddiness of how much easier the game is when a new high player friend of theirs refuses to attack them, they LOVE it. and then the newer player is absorbed into the pga/trading favors upper echelon.

this is not good. let me tell you from personal experience, it is fucking hard to say no to a silent pga. ive had two specific players try to offer them to me in the past few months: bsn and detenmile. both of these guys are class acts, very likeable, good personalities. there happened to be a couple consecutive games in both cases where we truced ingame and won, and shared drinks and laughs and prostitutes afterwards. then this unspoken question comes up. 'hmmm, weve won two games in a row, i'll assume that monte wont attack me this game, and i wont pwn him with my early 8stack but go the other way.' jesus, it is hard to turn that down. i remember bsn saying things in chatbox like 'monte???' when i would attack him.

so this brings us to:

2) INGAME FAVORS
without realizing it, this became one of my strongest strategies in a lot of games. and im not alone, lots of people (especially at the top tables) play this way. ill just give you a case in point, one which happened in a tourney today between a relative newcomer (Zergme) and a complete kdice loser (me).

round 1: my turn is before Zergme's turn. Zergme has 3 stacks near each other, but my 4stack is planted right in the middle of them. he has a 5stack next to my 4stack. ive got two options here: connect to the 4stack, and leave it there and itll probably become a 5stack (hopefully), and then ill have Zergme as an enemy the rest of the game, because ive got his 5stack in my back. the other option is be nice to Zergme, move the 4stack out of his way and connect elsewhere with it, then he gets a very easy start and connects everything. before i moved i said in chatbox: 'no worries Zergme, im moving that 4 north, take one from me and connect'. my ultimate meaning behind this was: 'lets truce, run your 5 east, and we have very strong position on everyone.' Zerg said: 'thanks.' so i moved the 4 north, connected, spread out a little, because i assumed Zerg would be nice and we were basically truced. wrong. Zerg didnt run the 5 east, he just took one of mine to connect and left his big stacks pointed at me. a couple turns later, someone said lets counter the Zerg/monte truce, and Zerg was like, huh? we arent truced. and he ate my tail and started taking my territories. i got completely blinded with rage, because where i come from, this is a backstab. i fuckin gave you a favor by not destroying your game in round 1 by leaving you cut, so you owe me, asshole. but lets look at this from Zergs perspective. he didnt ask me to move that 4stack, he just said thanks afterwards. basically i was trying to bully him into a truce that i could take advantage of. i forcibly gave him a favor. and forcible expected him to be grateful.

i realize now that this isnt really that fair, or logical. but this happens ALL the time on higher tables, and its the reason a bunch of the elite players bitch so much about newcomers. all of the elite class can tell stories about newer players who sit in a top game, they are neighbors with each other, then the elite player moves away from the newer player, basically implying 'dont worry about me, i didnt pwn you, and i dont want to fight you because if i do, we both get last.' but then the newer player interprets it as 'haha, hes running away from me, and now i can eat all his short stacks he left behind.' its a fairly common miscommunication at the higher tables.

anyways, im not sure if its fair to forcibly give someone a favor and then get pissed at them if they dont accept the favor. i publicly apologize to ZergMe for the next several rounds of the tournament where i followed him in the chatbox and kept telling everyone to kill him because he was a backstabber. we talked afterwards, and after hearing his perspective, and seeing his perspective, i agree with him: it wasnt a backstab at all, it was me forcing him into a tough situation, and he happened to make the choice to attack me instead of whatever else. sorry Zerg.

ok, thats enough. start discussion. in your replies please make it clear whether you are talking about 1) PREGAME FAVORS or 2) INGAME FAVORS.


and on a side note, tourneys are really really awesome, and these pregame favors are threatening to force Ryan to close them down because they are becoming rampant at the end of the tourney. this is up to the joiners of the tourney, to tell themselves from round to round, "i will play this next game as though i did not have any previous memory of what happened in the rest of this tournament." believe me, its a hard thing to force yourself to do, but it is possible (i speak from experience).