Unethical may be, MAYBE, looking at your opponent's cards before you decide what to do, if he's dumb enough to not keep them covered. Unethical is not the question. Is it a good strategic move to leave the short stack alive so you can attack the middle stacks? Absolutely! It's what you should do!

Welcome to BTP.

CJ

I happened to catch a KC lowball tournament on ESPN a couple of weeks ago from the 2004 WSOP. Barry Greenstein did indeed use this strategy.

There were four or five players left, and Greenstein had the big stack. He caught a monster hand and was heads-up against Lederer, who also had a strong hand but a smallish stack. Greenstein knew exactly how many chips Lederer had and made a big bet, but one chip short of Lederer's entire stack. Lederer called, Greenstein won the hand, and Lederer, who thought he was all-in, got up to leave the table. But Greenstein made the dealer count out the chips, and sure enough, Lederer still had one chip left.

Greenestein told the table that he did that on purpose because he wanted Lederer to stick around for another hand or two in hopes that it would keep the table tight for a couple of hands.

Sure enough, a couple of hands later, after Lederer doubled up to two chips, Greenstein went all-in with a marginal hand heads-up with another player, who folded with the best hand because he didn't want to risk going out before Lederer did.

Umm, I dont think you quite have a grasp on poker ethics. Coming from someone with both poker and ethics listed on my resume (which apparently was one of the big selling points in getting my job, as I learned the other night), allow me a moment of digression.

If you asked something like, would it be ethical to not knock out a smaller stack because they were your friend or because you had staked them or something like that, that would be a question about poker ethics.

Your strategic plays dont have anything to do with ethics.

The question you are asking would be the same as something like "is it ok to valuebet the nuts as opposed to pushing so that people will give me more respect on later hands."

-Jus

Check raising. Un ethical.