Posted by Dr Fro 8:52 AM
Disconnect Protect

A bread and butter play of mine goes like this. Preflop me and A get heads up after he raises, I reraise and he calls. The flop comes up ragged. I go all-in. My thought is that he has high cards, but not a high pair or else he would have re-re-raised me. Thus, I feel confident that a board full of rags did him no help. Thus, I can go all in and steal a decent sized pot. This exact fact pattern doesn't happen often, so it is the sort of move I use once maybe every 4 hours.

I sat down at Party Poker last night and had 2 of these opportunities in the first 5 minutes.

Both times the opponent waited forever to call and time expired. I never saw the disconnected-countdown thing. They seemed to just be playing possum. Regardless, they got disconnect protection, I got my bet back, the turn and river were dealt and when the made a pair on the river, they got the pot.

Disconnect protect is there to protect you. If you have a great hand but have the unfortunate luck to get disconnected mid-hand, you are treated as all-in for whatever you put in the pot before you were disconnected. The opportunity for abuse is enormous, especially in NL. The 2 best opportunities for abuse is to not have call a large, somewhat obvious steal. The second is to get a cheap draw. This is not as valuable as the first option, as you can't bet your hand when it comes. However, if someone bets 2x the pot on the turn you are still better off disconnecting and getting the free draw than calling if you have the 4-flush.

So, to curb this abuse, Party Poker only allows a maximum disconnect protection of twice per session (I think...I don't know how the limit works, because I have never needed to use it. The point is, there is a limit). Based on my experience last night, I have a feeling people milk this for what it is worth and us their maximum number of disc/prots they can get. I don't know if Party Poker actively monitors chronic users/abuser, or if they only react to complaints.
I am considering writing a complaint, but I am still in wait and see mode. At a minimum, I have made notes on the two players and I refuse to play with them again just in case. As a matter of fact, last night, I bumped into one of them at another table and got up and left.

If anyone has any thoughts on this matter, pls let me know. I am going to post on rgp and see who bits.

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