Great topic Kickboy... and a potentially emotive one too.

You hit on the enforcability aspect already, this is virtually impossible to track - especially when the 'play' is advised over MSN rather than switching computers (and thus IP addresses which can be tracked).

There is no doubt in my mind that this is prevalent at the mid to higher buy-in levels, with many excellent players ghosting their 'Horses' once they build up chips. While I personally believe that this is just plain cheating, it is so difficult to enforce that it is not worth losing any sleep over... what will be will be.

The lower levels are safer IMO - though it does not stop the occasional (and usually very badly executed) collusion from 'kids' in many games.

Where there is money then people will lie, cheat and deceive to get it. At the same time these 'cheats' rely on the fact that there is a 'decent' majority who stick to the rules - after all if everyone cheated there would be no games to play at all! But now we get on to Philosophy + game theory!

Cheers, Mark