Well, soft play or collusion? This also is left to the TD to determine is it not? Here's one definition of collusion (from Wikipedia): [u]"...Collusion is an agreement between two or more persons, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights..." [/u] I see people all the time doing what the all-in did here: facing a bet that's 99% of their stack and just tossing their extra chip(s) in and calling it all-in. That's not a certain secretive signal to another player to fold. Strangers strike up conversations all the time at the poker table and develop a sort of temporary friendship. It's not uncommon for one of them to play a little softer at their new-found friend (or object of interest). So we have rules against playing soft...
Certain collusion to me is when players act as "partners" pursuant to an agreement between two or more persons at the poker table, sending each other info on the cards they hold, when to raise, when to dump-ship each other chips, etc.
In between these two extremes is a grey area: the two are strangers, didn't come to the event together, but they've sort of struck up a pattern of activity that indicates they have a tacit agreement going on. I don't have enough information in the original post to reach this conclusion but maybe that's what Track observed, I wasn't there. Just based strictly on the long-distance info I have I can only personally say this is soft play, I can't be sure it goes as far as an agreement to ship the chips. Also, if that's what the BB had in mind, would he have exposed his hand, I personally don't think so. But you are certain that this is collusion, fair enough, players attend a tournament and accept the fact that different TDs will rule differently on matters involving discretion, we don't have a way to standardize all rulings. BTW, when I originally read this post I was thinking in terms of the damage already being done, i.e. the cards had been mucked and the chips awarded, by the time the TD arrived to answer the complaining player. If in fact all board cards and hands are still intact, it's in the best interest of the game to declare a call by the BB here. Where's the breakpoint for such action? It's also not determined specifically but as one rule of thumb I think it's proper to say that any level of betting you would call soft play you could also require a call if the board and pot are still intact. If I was able to do that, I wouldn't also issue a penalty in this case if I suspected it was merely friendly one-sided soft play, a warning would suffice for first offense. Again, I 100% respect another TD's alternative ruling, fortunately this sort of ridiculous soft play (or collusion if you want to call it that) is relatively rare. There's enough disagreement regarding soft play over the past year that it's seemingly worth re-visiting at the next Summit, IMO. Thanks for the comments!