Betfair.net

In recent weeks, the online player 'Stoxtrader' has caused a massive amount of controversy after he was accused of multi-accounting and colluding with other short stack players. This kind of player is commonly referred to as a 'rat-holer' and the meaning of this term, as well as the reasons why this recent practice is so damaging, needs some explanation.

The term 'rat-holing' refers to a style of play where a player sits down at the table with the minimum buy in and then simply plays push/fold poker before leaving the moment they double up. This style of play takes advantage of deep stacked games because those playing deep stacks end up calling against each other with weak hands due to the huge implied odds of deep stacked poker. This is a point that rat-holers use to shove over the weaker ranges without having to play much post flop poker (where they would struggle with regards to skill levels against talented deep stacked players).

This phenomenon purely belongs to the online world. This is because it is only online that players have instantly been able to sit in a new game. In live games, players are not allowed to take chips off the table or sit back down at a table with less chips than they left with inside a certain time period. The relatively small amount of tables in live arenas means that this policy was always effective at stopping rat-holing on a large scale basis.

However, online, there are so many tables available, and so many tables break and re-start quickly. This has allowed rat holing to become an extremely profitable way to take advantage of deep stacked games. It looks like 'Stoxtrader' and others had not only been looking habitually to play this style in many high stake games but also to collude amongst themselves to minimize their losses against each other and maximize their returns.