blonde poker forum

Antonius: “The online games aren’t fair anymore”

http://www.highstakesdb.com/6095-antonius-the-online-games-arent-fair-anymore.aspx#

" “It’s a little sad, but it looks like technology has advanced so much that it’s become a totally different game”, he replied when asked about his disappearance.

“Nowadays players use software that gives them so much information and so much data that it has become more a game of numbers.”

“I never used any programs. I never used any technology to gain an edge. I’m more of a feel player who’s living in the moment. But the players today know what they’re doing. They’re basing their play on what the software tells them to do so it feels like you’re playing against a computer these days.”

“I lost a million straight and realised I couldn’t beat the ring games anymore and that was largely down to tracking software.”

“If you don’t use poker software it’s not a fair game anymore in Hold’em and Omaha, but I do still like to play Mixed Games.”"

and

" “The big games I was playing in kind of dried out. In Macau the games moved more and more into private games and the game in Vegas wasn’t the same anymore, either.”

“Suddenly there were no more games in London and nothing in Monaco. You know, things just change in our industry. So I stepped back and cut down on poker.”"


now he is back playing live....

If you can't beat em ........

I've never been a fan of HUD's and I don't use one. May be viewed as a leak these days but it's just a personal preference as I enjoy playing live so don't want to become reliant on one and also I think they'll be banned from a lot of sites soon anyway.

Don't think anyone should call them 'unfair' though, it's legal and there if you want to use it.

It's almost like complaining 20 years ago that the guy who just beat you has read Super System and you haven't

Pretty sure he's not talking about HUD's either.

He specifically names tracking software. What else?

Great post from 2+2 about this:



CREV - $99
flopzilla - $35
HM2 - $100
Note Caddy - $90
Note Caddy Edge - $99
Table Ninja - $150
Pro Poker Tools - $89
Run It Once coaching - $100 /mo
Deposit - $500


You're now ready to play 10NL

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=48007581&postcount=13

pt4 not hm2 innit ;tk;


I imagine antonius never practiced before his tennis matches, or had a coach, or worked on his game. you all just turn up and play and hope right?

he's famous so people listen like he knows something special, all he's really saying is he doesn't want to put in the necessary work.

yes that is what recreational players do..and why not?

and without them there is no new money to funnel into the system you need to grow or else all you grinders are just passing money to each other in pretty little circles....

Anotonius is a rec eh??


it's lucky that those running the sites are so ethical and long term minded eh

Why does the first eh get two question marks and the second eh get none?

oh the sites definitely got it wrong

pandered to the grinders for years and let the entrance to the funnel shrink and close

you get my general point, its not a level playing field for a rec wanting to just play, on most sites

could I just be a trader or a absolutely anything without a smidgeon of work? why is everyone entitled to win?


this is an article from someone complaining they had it easy and now dont want to work. why is this even being discussed.

there are myriad problems not least with the sites attitudes themselves, but with how they handle a range of other issues, like seating scripts, multi accounting, account purchasing deep etc etc all of which have a much more direct affect on the health of the system than 'HUDS'.


if you took out his picture, and replaced it with your average joe recreational player, you wouldnt be able to tell the difference from the 'I dont use huds, but it tells them what to do' bullshit.

maybe we should remove timebanks and brains so we just mash buttons with our face and gamble like the good old days (some will say many mtts regs already do this daily  rotflmfao  ).

edit
the online games in terms of rake have never been fair, yet no one even notices even though we are getting to the stage where formats can become unbeatable.  similar costs to live poker.... oh wait no but yeh same rake, and never change it, whilst reducing rake back and complaining the players are the ones breaking the ecosystem.

Silly silly post. Just makes no sense. Half the tools do the same thing for one. You wouldn't want table ninja as someone starting out. I've never used hotkeys and I've played 25 tables at a time, so someone learning to play poker certainly wont. There are many free resources out there for microstakes players and its just simply bullshit to extrapolate Antonious "I can't beat nosebleeds without software" to fucking 10nl.

Making microstakes rake beatable might be useful for a start but as per usual people never look at the sites in this regard and keep blaming completely stupid stuff. I must say I feel absolutely no sympathy for poor old Antonious who can't add to his pile of money anymore without doing any real work.

I'm not sure how many more times I can explain this. Recs lose because they aren't very good. Not because of software. It is my profession to beat these people, don't blame me when I do lol. I'm sorry the skill level is too high for you to rofl up and make a few quid now, but its the exact same in almost every profession.

HUD's have been around for 10 years, and PA for sure knew people were using them back when he was playing nosebleeds. Poker theory (esp at high stakes) has gone waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond the old school sickos, this last year or two. People may be better at interpreting their HUDs now but it's only from off the table work using the newly available software. I'm sure PA knows of these things but I'm certain he isn't willing to put 10+ hours a day into off the table work on his computer.

Titaniumbean I don't really agree with your posts.

I'm a professional poker player. I work on my game. I watch videos. I discuss hands with friends. I'll occasionally even crunch some numbers. I for sure play more hands and more often than 99.x% of recs keeping me sharper and making less mistakes. I have started using a HUD again because I feel I have to in order to not fall behind other pros and not give them a headstart on me that I don't have on them.

These are things that in my mind, give me a fair edge and don't put me in the bracket of 'lazy' that you put Patrik Antonius in. APART from the HUD bit.

I am against HUDS being allowed in games.

(http://www.husng.com/files/u2/awehud4_hm1_stats_display.jpg)

Why should anyone be able to see someone's flop fold to cbet percentage in 3bet pots or their button open % etc etc? HUDS totally lend themselves to helping pros and recs need some protection from them.

Call me old school but poker talent to me doesn't equate to sitting down and playing from a bunch of numbers that a program has given you that you couldn't work out for yourself.

I could ramble about this all day BUT at the end of the day, most recs have this huge fear of them. A HUD isn't some magical programme that means you can't beat the player using it but when used effectively it gives a bigger advantage than I'd deem fair.

I'd love to see ALL sites scrap them.

Recs are scared of HUDS. Recs don't use HUDS. Recs don't want to play when other people CAN use HUDS. Why should HUDs be allowed again?

Remind me....what needs to happen for you to rofl up and win a few quid again? Someone like me has to rofl up and lose a few quid, right?

huds are near the bottom of the pile when it comes to sorting online poker, im in agreement with titbean and rfggg

but the perception is that it is much higher up the pile, by the recs yes?

(they might not be aware of account buying, scripts etc)

so sorting that perception makes a big difference, yes?

the way to sort that perception..because you can't compel the recs to use the software, learn it or even afford it ..is to remove it?

I don't rofl up. Notice I said you, and not myself. I work very hard at my poker game, nearly every single day. I would beat you with or without a HUD.

Greekstein, how many recs do you have a hand sample on that makes their fold to cbet in a 3bet pot sample relevant?

to remove huds from a site would require too much effort for almost any site. The costs would be huge to keep up to date.  If you provide hand histories programmers will develop ways to use that information. If you dont show hand histories then you allow scandals to go on, for example the ipoker and microgaming botting rings were discovered by hud use/tracking software as was the UB scandal.

Anyone would classify themselves as a recreational player who wants to play headsup any game up to 5/10$ online

Texas Hold’em
Omaha Hold’em
Omaha Hi/Low 8-or-better
Pot Limit Omaha
Pot Limit Omaha 8-or-better
Stud Games
Stud Games
Stud Hi
Razz
Stud Hi/Low 8-or-better
Draw Games
2-7 Triple Draw
NL 2-7 Single Draw
Pot Limit 5 Card Draw
Badeucey
Badacey
Mixed Games
HORSE
Triple Stud
7 Game
8 Game
9 Game
10 Game
12 Game
Dealer’s Choice

I will play you on stream without a HUD. You can have a HUD. Lets go.

but after 6 hands your turn double barrel frequency will have converged and the hud will beep and say OMG DO THIS MOVE and you'll like be beaten and not win monies and shit yo     ;whistle; ;whistle; ;whistle;

so the people who don't know anything think one thing so we all change to allow for that. rather than target the problems yeh?

the perception is the problem right? especially of the under informed group??


we should run poker like we do politics, get people with fuck all clue making biased decisions for personal benefit.... yeh seems a good idea.


fix the underlying problems, educate the recs that the bulk of the pros with huds don't know what 99% of the numbers mean, nor do they know what sample size is required for the information to be of absolutely any value what so ever.

I am not here arguing for HUDS as my fellow big nosed gentlemen seems to think, i'm arguing against the stupid and childishly put point that 'huds do all the work because I know nothing about them so they should be banned". I'm arguing against the idea that because hes famous and has won millions without putting the work in that he is entitled to have that keep happening.

the recs sure will notice quick enough that when they sit at an online poker game, the table fills AUTOMATICALLY with 5 regular players who wont play a pot vs each other to save their lives.  that's cool. it's the huds though, they do all the work.... and ofc the players who ruin the ecosystem not the sites who structure it.

No. You stop HEM/PT4 running and someone will work out a way to get a working HUD anyway. Just like people have managed to do on Sky. It only got stopped because they tried to sell it. It wouldn't surprise me at all if other people had a HUD working on Sky anyway. It can't be that hard to scrape the data off the screen.

Honestly if getting rid of HUDs was going to do something Sky and Unibet would be much bigger then they are. A decent proportion of recreational players like trying to work hard on their game and emulating professionals. 

people have working HUDs on Sky?

is this widespread?

That is likely the case over a small sample and definitely the case over a large sample.

However, I've been around poker a long time, I've worked in the industry etc so I know that you'd beat me with or without a HUD.

Your average rec doesn't know this. It's the old saying 'it must be fair and it must be seen to be fair'.

Also I have to be honest, I think there's such a great deal of arrogance from most regs (and I'm not specifically talking about Adam here) that they know what is good for the industry to the exclusion of all others that it is absolutely cringe.

Mentioning stuff like seating scripts being worse than HUDs etc etc - can't you see that to a rec who is just starting out they are the same thing? They are the one magic black box which allows them to externalise their loss. Nobody likes accepting that they are shit at poker and certainly not when they first start. Dunning-Krueger etc.

The rec has no concept of whether a seating script beat him by getting his game filled with people he can never beat or if someone beat him because they knew how often he'd rfi over a 13 hand sample. The rec knows there are tools he cannot understand which the regs use. And surely these are the reasons he's been beaten, not the fact that RegA has been thinking about SB 3b ranges v rec button opens every day for the last 5 years.

If regs don't understand that perception drives reality for recs then the game is done for - maybe you can all sit around the table losing to the rake or the one reg who really does work 10hrs a day off the table whilst people like me punt roulette or blackjack because whilst I'm a confirmed loser long term EV at those, at least I know the rules of the game.

People have previously made working Huds yes. There are none currently afaik.


Your post above is very good Mulhuzz but on this forum there is a lot of misinformation that is repeated ad nauseam on these boards who aren't "fresh off the boat" recreational players and this is very tiresome. Your telling me that even on these hudless sites that recreational players that want to deny their lack of poker skills on every other site just hold their hand up to it and say "Oh I must be bad" and that this is in some way good for the industry. People are desperate to look for excuses and there will always be something. You know there is a topic on 2+2 with thousands if not tens of thousands of posts about how xyz site is rigged? If peopel want to believe there is a reason for their poker losses that isn't their ability than removing huds simply isn't a viable solution to this and won't save an industry that is dying. Perhaps looking at the rake levels some of these sites take will have a much greater effect but no single operator afaik has ever considered such a crazy measure. I do wonder how a site called "cheap poker- half the rake of pokerstars" would do, but I'm fairly inclined to not think very well as it appears to me that people are just clueless regarding most of these issues (and tbh I can't blame them too much for that, when i go out on the town for a few beers I don't look for the cheapest pub, I look for one that suits my mood)

i believe you need 3rd party software

but yeah

lol

no they never have  ;whistle; sky has a security department and it constantly works to protect us.....

This is your new area Alex I believe?  Hopefully you'll have some good things to contribute in this field.

Regarding the HHs.. it must be possible to stop 3rd parties scraping all the tables, but producing HHs for security use.  Then it is a matter of employing people in security that can actually find the sort of outlier results that it normally takes someone on 2+2 to prove from time to time while security depts claim to have investigated and found no wrongdoing.

if you show me the HH on my computer screen. I can have it if I want.

unless I have to come down to HQ and go in a vault and not take electronics and look on your screen then no it cant be protected against.

Its not like I've given this much thought.... but hopefully someone paid to combat it will have.

What happens if only players that sit at a table are able to obtain a HH?  That is, no-one is allowed to spectate.

You can make it prohibitively expensive to capture and process, though.

screen scraping is pretty cheap, and there are tonnes of school kids learning python ......

whotfru a russian site manage to track zoom hands somehow so this solution doesn't work either.

lol funny thread, some people having bad days:(

It's a bit rich of Antonius to moan about asymmetric information, who back in the day had a new account "allthewomen" to take kid poker for $300k, and not tell him who he was till after he won.

It's funny that 10+ years ago everyone was scrambling to prove that poker was a skill game but struggled to prove the difference in capabilities of groups of players beyond the fortune of hitting the right cards at the right time.

These days we've swung too far in the other direction so it's abundantly clear there is a massive gap between the hard-working, software toting players and the casual players. Hence the seemingly unceasing descent into irrelevance/obscurity for the game as it stands in many formats.

Anything that maintains/increases the skill gap is bad longterm, whereas anything that can be done to make the game more about luck has the potential to bring back bundles of cash from those looking for a (pseudo-)skill gamble. Most casual players don't really care if they lose over time, they just need to feel like they have a fair chance and actually experience a winning high now and again.

just to defend PA for a minute, I read the article in full, and came by it the same way tighty did I imagine through HSDB/Pokerlistings and it's a VERY misleading title;
He never once used the word "fair" as far as I could tell. He said after playing in the ring games and losing $1m he realised he can no longer beat the games as he doesn't want to start using the software and if you don't have then its not a "fair game" as you're at too big a disadvantage. He's almost certainly not complaining that it isn't "fair."

You know, things just change in our industry. So I stepped back and cut down on poker

Seems like he knows whats needed, but doesn't want to do it, so isn't going to...which seems utterly fair enough to me.

But I want to be better than someone at poker, not at operating and interpreting software programmes.

If we follow this to it's conclusion, shouldn't I be allowed to use my motorbike to win the Tour de France?

Can use a mountain bike with flat tyres instead of investing time, money and training into improving the design and materials used to create the bike and how you ride it. Just like a 20 stone kebab eating, beer drinking enthusiast can enter a triathlon using a tricycle and wearing stilettos  - he's probably not going to win.

I had a discussion about this article around a poker table tonight, mostly players who have played/play semi-professionally in times gone by, they thought it was very scary that "Patrick Antonious" big name professional was now saying this.

My point was you wouldn't expect Michael Phelps to rock up to the olympics 4 years later without doing any training or eating correctly and win gold medals, I'm sure he could turn up to his local or regional pool and win some medals now with his knowledge just the same as Ricky Hatton when he binged out after fights.


The closest example would probably be Chess grandmasters - I don't know if your game can deteriorate or if the curve is anywhere near as fast as poker but I imagine if a top player stopped playing or cut his hours tenfold he wouldn't be able to compete at the top level either. Players now can evaluate their plays using computer programmes and tens of thousands of games have been recorded they can study from, if they refuse to use these resources they will probably lag behind too.


tl/dr

I also wish HUDs, seating scripts, poker trackers, sharkscope or other result recording websites were never invented and would very much support them all being banned.

Saying that recs should put in more work if they want to keep up is absolute bullshit to be honest. You work at your job and if your job isn't poker why the f**k would you want to work at it? I put in enough f**king work every day earning the money which I then use to fund hobbies, one of which used to be poker.

To be told be professional poker players that I should work a bit harder at my hobby just pisses me right off!! Even if I put in a bit of work it still won't be as much as the pros so all I'm doing is slowing the rate at which they're getting better than me. It's far easier to just select a new hobby that doesn't require any hard work.

Pros and better recs used to take money off me slowly. I'd happily lose a few thousand a year because I enjoyed the game and there was always a punchers chance that I may bink a decent score one day. I've completely given up with online poker as I don't feel I have a chance any more. Whether it be HUDs or whatever doesn't matter, the fun goes out of poker if you think you haven't even got a hope of that lucky bink. I won't be putting in 8 hours a day to get better, I won't be buying HUDs and learning how to use them to try to narrow the gap. I'm just not going to spend any more money at online poker.

Hobbies are supposed to be fun and the way that poker has gone recently both live and online has ripped most of the fun out of poker for me. Even in live comps I now feel like my puncher's chance has been massively reduced because of the multi-entry/re-entry thing that's being debated elsewhere on the forum.

The thing is I'm not stupid, I'm actually quite intelligent. I understand the math behind re-entry and multi-entry, I understand that a HUD won't make much difference against me because you won't play enough hands against me to ever gain any more of an edge than you already have. I understand that my recent losing run might have nothing to do with any of the above, it might just be variance. None of this matters though. I've got to the point where the combination of variance, HUDs, better players, multi entry blah blah blah has just gotten too much.

I know that I can combat most of these problems by putting in more effort or more money but I just don't want to. It seemed far easier to just drastically reduce my £10k a year contribution to the pros weekly food bills and go on a few more holidays instead.

Good luck for the future.......

I think HUD's are a big reason for the continual decline of online poker.  New players are not interested in taking on HUD grinders and when it is HUD grinders v HUD grinders and they are playing for a diminishing amount of money, some will go broke.

Not sure if banning them now will make much difference, it has probably gone too far to change the perception.  Future is not looking good for professional HUD grinders.

If that's the closest example then you've got problems because quite frankly it's shit.

The deteriorating chess grandmaster isn't having to go to work for 8 hours a day and then funnel a % of his hard earned wage to the other grandmasters is he?
 

I lolled Matt, but that's a fantastic post.

You were a good customer for years, Matt, but they've lost you now.

This is what so many pros don't realise. People like me are their customers and they really need to keep their customers happy. There was a great post by Stu (Honeybadger) a few years ago talking about keeping the recs happy, let them see a few flops, don't call them fish, don't moan at them when they make a bad call and get there, take their money slowly etc. Smart guy that one! Shame he can't hold down a half decent bank account.......

Feel like posting one of the various rants I've had about this topic over the last week or so on here, but I'll keep this one short:

I would love it if HUDs were banned across every site, but they won't be. And while there is basically no chance of them being banned, I kinda feel like we have to address this problem. HUDs are not the issue here, it is "recs" perception of them that is the problem. I mean, as I posted on another thread recently, poker is already outrageously unfair against the regs by its very nature, because my mum (who just about knows the rules) could sit down heads up with Phil Ivey and win. It is completely fair that the pros win because they work for it, and random punters can sit down and win anyway just by getting lucky. I completely cannot see why people seem to think a rec should have the same chance of winning as a pro, despite putting in no work to get there.

And now we're sat here, with this absurd impression of good players as these big, bad, evil people with software that lets them cheat their way to winning. It's insulting, it's completely wrong, and it takes the piss out of all the work myself and various others have done to get ok at this game.

Lol, I've been up a long time and just finished playing 12 hours of live poker without a Hud or seating script, just my brain, my conversation/terrible jokes and money (I rebought no less than 20 times in a cash game over the course of the night/morning) I was prepared to lose. It was very enjoyable for all at the table (pros, recs, fish, dealers, supervisors, valets whatever term want to use for any of the people present) with laughs all night long even from those who lost significant money - a fun game and enjoyable atmosphere to play in and I'm sure thats why most of us choose to play, these guys won't be sitting at home playing on their computers, they want to come out have a beer, flirt with the staff and have some banter with the characters in the game. Online really doesn't compare to a good live game of cards and I don't think it ever has or could. Didn't read any of it back just typed and pressed enter, why it may not make any sense and this one probably won't either.

He doesn't have to do that, no. But if he wants to be better than his opponents he will have to practice some more, just that that hobby needs a chess board and pieces to play, doesn't cost him anything but time.

I really haven't put a lot of hours into online poker in a few years now, when I do it's full schedule of Sunday MTTs otherwise its 5 and 6card PLO, without a seating script, without a HUD or any form of 3rd party software. Actually a big % of my hours has been HUD-less cash on sky.

I'm on the Recs side of this argument and firmly believe all the softwares should be banned, but I don't think it's "unfair". I'm sure in any business or industry the people who are trying to make the most money are using every tool or piece of software they can get their hands on to maximise profits. Economies of scale for Tesco are going to be more prevelant than a local family run Greengrocers - does that make it unfair on the small shop that they haven't got the same resources than Tescos do?

Perfect decision to quit playing if you no longer think you are getting value for money or enough enjoyment, more people should be doing the same but a lot can't/won't give it up finding excuses as to why they seem to lose over time. It does make me sad seeing the same guys do their money over and over and I'm always happy for them when they walk away a winner even with my money, even worse when some who had given up the game for a period of time but come back to it. Some people just have too much disposable income and too much love for the game I guess. It's a catch 22 playing poker for a part of income, if I could play vs the house or robots and win i'd far rather do that, I'm not sure there's too many professional players that like the idea they are making others worse off by playing the game.

Online has been in steady decline for a long time and I really don't think it can be stopped now, it's too far gone, make the games as rec friendly as possible over night and it still can't be saved, the decline may slow but won't ever come close to what it was.

I'll stop posting now and get to bed, read this back and be embarassed when I wake up



Edit: Forgot to say a big thank you for typing out that post I read it with a big smile, great post haha

 rotflmfao fantastic rant.

Here's the problem, PRO POKER PLAYERS AND THEIR EGO'S.

Just like any industry, poker has its inside secrets, the more of them you know the more successful you could potentially be.

If you saw a few car salesman having a drink one night you'd probably hear them talking about some lil trick they have which got them an extra monkey off Mrs COllins when she bought her new VW Golf, perfected over time this lil trick of the trade has proved pretty successful at getting a slightly better price and a lil more commission. They aren't ripping her off, its the job, get the best price you can get for the car. Mrs Collins is nonethewiser and enjoying her new golf. If she ever heard this conversation she'd probably feel like a bit of a mug, she never really stood a chance of getting the lowest possible price against this guy and all his experience and lil tricks. Under no circumstances does this make her a mug.

SO what you will NOT see happening is the car dealers finding a local forum where most of their customers will see and talking about the techniques they use to get a better price for their cars, nor will they be making training videos that anyone in the world get get hold off virtually for free, neither will they be found openly bragging in front of their customers about it. (There may well be a car salesman forum before anyone brings one up, but i imagine not one that is often frequented by thier customers)

The ugly reality of poker is that it has a few ugly parts to it, as does everything. In fact poker's part's aren;t even really that ugly...they just don't look so good, none of them are immoral, against the spirit of the game par se or even remotely out of line, but the perception they create by being public knowledge is highly toxic. SO WHY THE FUCK DID EVERYONE MAKE THEM PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE.

I'll tell you why, stupid kids with big ego's thinking that sharing all the inside secrets of the game to make themselves sound really clever would be a good idea, and it's nowadays its gotten ridiculously out of hand. Now we have training sites that basically give stuff away (I must have watched 200+ training videos lifetime and never paid a penny in subscription to any of them) articles, forums, and even more incredibly this new craze of "twitching" where for absolutely free you let people actually watch you play. Galfond/Taylor Caby+CR guys/Mason/Jason Summerville/Krantz to one side (who actually made some real money out of opening the book for everyone) well done to you all you utter, utter morons.

99% of recreational player shouldn't even know HUDs exist.

Whenever I speak to recreational players now (who I like ;) ) about online poker I say the same thing STAY WELL CLEAR as you literally stand no chance whatsoever and it's nothing to do with HUD's its to do with the environment of online poker now, no=one cares about maintaining an environment that is pleasurable for losing players (a duty that anyone calling themself a "pro" should take very seriously, it's simply about taking the money as fast as possible, with high rake and swarms of other regulars scrapping over any lose action it's the only way to win now.

I think this is what Antonius is saying when he say its "shame" because it really is, it's absolutely horrible, but we only have ourselves to blame.

Really nice post evilpie.

I would say the terms "rec" and "pro" are often misused. For example, someone earning 20K a year playing poker, do you really think you can call that professional?

These two terms are way too simplistic imo, there is probably a lot of categories.

The folk saying "recs" should work on their game don't seem to get poker. As Evilpie eloquently put it - it is a bit of fun for him, and certainly that's what it should be, it is why we all stated playing in the first place. Technology is helping the industry eat itself to an extent.

It also seems some of the posts in this thread look at the issue in a very singular way.

For a healthy economy you need to have the right balance between new money coming into the game, healthy player pools and reasonable rake structures. Rake structures have pretty much not changed. I would say liquidity in cash games is reducing, with less money coming into the poker economy. As EvilPie's post shows certainly some have stopped playing online because it has ceased to be fun, with more folk using programmes and software to help them play, it just becomes robotic.

  

Poker is a battle of wits against other humans, what % of the population can lose gracefully at anything competitive let alone when there's money at stake - especially when they believe to be winners in the first place. What % of Fifa matches or Call of Duty games end with "well played mate I was outclassed there" as opposed to excuses and moans, that's without money on the line just ego and pride.

Players can take comfort in having excuses as to why they lose and any chance they have, I know I really hate losing at anything. If it isn't HUDs it's rigged poker sites or "guys with 5 red stars always get rewarded like team pros and people who pay more rake" Kings run into Aces way more often online so they take more rake.

These are the thoughts from thousands of recs, spoken in cardrooms all over the world, forums and facebook, they won't be swayed. Not everyone is as intelligent as an average Blonde poster.




Edit: Dave's post is great as usual.

Was about to say you wouldn't find people advertising the best panning spot for gold back in the gold rush days.

If that was to happen now you would for sure find the same morons posting their finds and locations on social media to get some likes or attention or quick recognition from online peers.

I now play on a site that doesn't allow tracking software. Someone on here said that even sites that don't allow it can have workaround programmes written. I don't know if that's true or not, but even if it is the number of people using it would be insignificant.

None of that may be accurate but it's how I see it and that's what matters.

I'd say that's pretty accurate.

Maybe the answer is to integrate the player aids with the game software?

Good posts Matt and Red. Totally agree with both.

The problem with most poker pros is they are selfish and greedy and want the extra 3bb/100 that a HUD (or insert name of other software here) gives them. They don't understand that losing x amount of recs who drop $1k, $10k, $100k etc etc a year and effectively pay their wages is far worse. Of course not having HUDS and still having these people playing online is more than that HUD would ever earn and keeps the poker eco system healthier but that greed just doesn't seem to want to let it be.

Recs are our customers. If I'm playing with a 'fish' (I don't like the word but w/e) and he says he wants everyone to put the straddle on or he wants to box his chips for 2hours for a long dinner break when the rule is 1 hour, or he wants to rabbit hunt the river that gets the thumbs up from me every time. I would never expect the same luxury afforded to me and wouldn't be giving it to other pros. We have to keep these people happy but my frustrations are that most pros seem too selfish or too short sighted (or a combination of both) to realise that.

Just the fact that everyone's perception of HUDS is so negative is argument enough for me to want them scrapped especially since that perception will not change. Pros will make money anyway. Let's just keep the recs happy because their happiness is more important than any professional's happiness when it comes to poker.

So nobody should try to get better at poker so they dont make everyone else feel outclassed?

If you are going to reduce the debate to that level you will need to precisely define 'poker' and 'getting better'.

I didn't say that at all.

I can only encourage people studying to get better.

When I was at school I was fucking good at languages. Part of it was that I was naturally better at them than I was relative to other subjects but part of it was that I was willing to study a bit harder and take a bit more care and time with my work at home.

Then we had GCSE written exams in which we were allowed to take a dictionary. It was within the rules but I thought it was bullshit and a bit unfair. I still had an edge on people worse than me but this closened the gap.

This is kind of similar in my mind.

Software crosses the boundary of what I believe is acceptable in game time. Billy rec is already worse at poker than Barry Pro. Why should Barry pro be able to see in the middle of a pot when Billy rec raises him that Billy has a 64% check-raise on the turn in 3bet pots and therefore Barry is happy to shove 3rd nuts. It's just not right and can be more advantageous than having someone else helping you. Just feels to me like a clever way around '1 person to a hand'.

I understand why half the pros who actually lack real aptitude for the game don't want to lose their HUDS but it's just good all around if they were banned. Good for recs, good for sites and good for the game.

Gd post Cos.

These conversation's about huds are so frustrating,  it's blown totally out of proportion, 80% of the ppl using HUDs even don't know how to use them properly, in games like Antonius is talking about where the player pool is very small (nosebleeds) they are in the hands of very clever pros who really really know how to use them and in an environment where there are very useful.  It's so honestly true that mist recreation players are hardly affected by thier existence.

This is not to be said they shouldn't be banned,  10000% they should but if we were going to make a list of what's wrong with online poker then HUDs would honestly struggle to make the top ten.

tufffish used a HUD.

tuff-fish.

i have spoken with the owner of a training site who sells an extremely high spec and format specific HUD and most of his customers are losing players.

HUDs, training sites etc CLOSE the gap. not widen it. regs are doing more and more study, working in ares of the game previously thought to be barren in terms of edge all to maintain winrate.

recs, regs, good and bad all enjoy using HUDs.

Tracking software is incredibly cheap for the service it provides, and available to all hobbist players

it's hardly surprising that when you post $400-$1000 as a blind that people bothered to put the work in. Antonius just doesn't want to have to work.

Last paragraph nails it. This thread seems to be forgetting that we have very little ability to change anything, and those that do give very few shits.

I have the ability to change where or if I play. Seems very empowering to me.

Do you think it would be good in the long run or just a short term fix?

Think it would give a boost to rec players for a short time until they discover that HUD's aren't the reason they are losing and infact it's just that they are bad. They stop depositing anyway. They may even stop playing live as they don't have any excuses to why they lose online as they are on exactly the same footing as everyone else, leading them to recognise is an incredibly skilled game whether online or live.

The sites lose an entire layer of players, who play loads of tables, generate tons of rake and make up a massive chunk of online players now. These players can't play as many tables, and even if it may improve their winrate it will for sure decrease their hourly, which is infinitly more important to people who play for a living. These players now can't make a substantial living from playing poker so just quit. This may lead to many of the medium sized networks/sites just collapsing completely.

Do you think an industry wide blanket ban on rakeback/bonuses etc and a significant decrease in rake would be any better for online poker as a whole?

yes you could play on a site where you are the only player. except that doesn't work. there is no centralised structure for the players to have a voice/empower themselves (lets not pretend someone like D Neg is fighting the average players fight). So the players have little chance to change something. The changes have to come from the site, this is why it's so good to see Rob fighting the players fight and trying to affect changes in the industry, but as you can see for all the good will and effort in the world dealing with party/or whoever getting changes made is exceptionally hard especially when they dont directly lead to increased revenues.

So Matt (or anyone else for that matter), what could online pro's do to make you want to play online again ?

Obv any reg who has a chat war with a rec is a complete moron.

fwiw i think Antonius isn't talking about HUD's. Hes more likely talking about PLO "dream machines" built by the likes of hollywood Haxton and a few other at the nosebleeds have access to which can help you make decisions IN GAME.

Huds should defo be banned now since the lines have become so blurred. I would just like a something to track how many hands I've played and how much I've lost.

Disclaimer: Much of this post is based on rumour and hearsay from third parties and may not be 100% factually correct.

Lose to him.

I feel like I said close to the same thing in Matt in places. I don't expect rec players to work hard, but unfortunately don't expect them to moan when they lose, just like I don't moan when a better hearthstone player beats me. I accept they are better and although they use some software I don't because I can't be bothered, I don't feel like it gives me the right to moan. Poker involves too much ego to last long term.

I think any losing player wants to have a reason to blame other than themselves, ofc some people are self aware enough to know were they are at but the vast majority of people playing poker will find something or someone else to blame. So we could ban huds because that's the reason poker is not attracting as many new players or keeping the losing ones happy, but then what happens when the losing player still loses ? "Oh it's because he can play more tables than I can", ok lets ban people from being able to play more than 4 tables, and so on and so on it goes.

A recreational player who loses over a period of time that they think is a long time to not get much fun out of a hobby because they aren't winning is very likely to quit no matter whether there are huds, cheating scandals or anything else for that matter.

How many proper 'recs' even know what a hud is seriously?  If you asked 200 proper recs who play small stakes stuff online now and again on a Friday night who are not on poker forums etc but just play for the craic now and again how many would know?

Poker to so many proper recs was just a short term fad for them like numerous other leisure activities which become fashionable like poker did 10 years ago on tv etc.  People get bored of doing stuff in their spare time and move on to the next fad especially when they are losing/spending money and getting nothing in return for it other than an 'experience'.  HUD's have nothing to do with this.

Tournaments are the answer and that is where poker is going. Dull conversation really, not sure anyone will change their mind or anything new has been added to the topic since last time. I'm sure it'll still piss me off in 6 months when Negreanu admits he can't win online

Lil Dave hits the nail on the head Ray and I'm afraid it's too late for me as unfortunately I already know too much.

I don't need to win I just need to feel I have a chance of winning but the information I have tells me that that's not possible.

I've been told about all these devices and tools that have perfected the game to the point where I mathematically can't win. Apparently even when I walk away with cold hard cash I've actually lost long in EV terms because the other guy is playing perfectly. This doesn't sound like a fun way of killing a few hours every evening.

Maybe it's Blonde that's ruined the game for me because that's where I get all of my poker information and that's where I've found out how bad I really am. PHA probably hasn't helped particularly as I no longer feel qualified to comment on there for fear of someone telling me that I'm wrong because ICM says I am. It's like opinions don't matter any more. Everything is down to facts and it doesn't matter what I think, Mr Smart Arse has ran it through such and such poker tool so what I think is wrong and that's that. I can have my opinion fixed if I purchase such and such poker tool and learn how to use it but again this doesn't sound like fun.

So unfortunately Ray there's nothing the pros can do to get me back as I'm too far gone. I'll have to stick to a few live tournaments and cash games every now and then to get my gambling fix now.

Best post i have read for a while.

Not enough Rec's in this thread.....

I agree with Evil Pie, i have been playing poker for a while and go through phases of playing every so often, then playing non stop for a week or month ;)

The biggest problem with Huds for me is your average player wont want to a) Pay for them b) play against them

Its clear to everyone Huds do give a edge to anyone regardless who you are, but being a recreational player why would you take the time to study or to even play enough to get the best use from them.

Its not as simple as work harder and get with the times, although it technically is. In theory it is not in the spirit of the game and is a deterrant

Do they impact whether i play less or more? NO

Playing poker is a hobby which does cost most, yet all the additional things on top just make it not very appealing

To RFGGBASSDS:

How about turning your hud and all your tools off for a couple of weeks and play and see if your winrate is the same as when your are using the software.

How useful is a hud in MTTs?

Can it reflect shifts in play as blind levels increase and the bubble approaches?

Depends. Not particularly useful but you certainly can get a hud that changes for blind levels and stack sizes etc. Hard to get a significant sample again.

As for Tractor, more than happy to play you without a hud. If you promise enough action ill even pay someone to teach you about a hud. I use mine fairly infrequently, and will be using it lesins on less tables. Most of the cash I play involves games without a hud. More the list of games I offered to play earlier in the thread. If you do find a badeucey hud though I would be interested!

I'm not even a major his supporter I'm just realistic. You can't get rid of them. I'm also tired of seeing them blamed for weaker poker players losing. Matt expresses dismay that he can't post in pha because people use software to get the right answer. I don't even think pha is that software heavy in the responses but I don't think lowering the quality of answer so people can join in is a great idea even though I sympathise with his view. I certainly hope people feel like they can try and answer, they just might have to be prepared they are on the wrong path.

Question for all the recs/casual players in this thread. Do you think online pros that put a lot of work into their game and use a HUD have any less of an edge/advantage over you playing live than they do online?

I'm a rec and I think an online pro does has less of an edge over me when playing live. It doesn't matter that his edge is probably the same its all about the perception.

I don't think anyone on here is actually a rec in the traditional sense. Cos a rec probably doesnt give a shit about any of this

What is the definition of a traditional rec?

Someone who plays poker as a hobby. Knows sweet FA about huds. Drinks 4 cans of special brew during a session

2/3 a rec for me then :)

Most "recs" who played cash games previously would always lose at big loss rates. They aren't the guys who are complaining.

This was a very small % of Recs and it is getting smaller as online cash games are basically dead/dying.

In terms of MTT recs, they are the ones who complain the loudest, they are usually the ones who still think PokerStars is rigged (note blaming the unblamble) and the fact is their argument of "I quit because you guys use huds" is so ridiculous and backwards.

These kind of sample sizes are very difficult. Let's say red dog is playing one table of s €100 tournament. His opponents are playing 12 tables. The one stat they can see on him after the first 1-2 hours is vpip/pfr (how tight/loose) he is pre flop. He is playing one table and can access this information super super easily, it's just paying attention to what's going on. Stuff like turn float in 3bet pot etc I don't even have enough against guys I've played thousands of hands against. In MTTs the player pool (especially low and micro where Recs are based) is so big that huds for regs against a rec who plays a small
Volume of tournaments 1/2 times a week is completely useless. Useless may not be the word, but it will have little to no advantage over the Rec.

The funny thing is huds are actually s great thing for mtt recs. it allows their opponents to try and play 15 tables whilst not thinking about the hand deeply. The rec can really think through the hand, limit the mistakes, think logically whilst the mtt "reg"
Is trying to navigate (usually unsuccessfully) 15+ tables.

If you are a cash game rec and you're put off, don't worry I was a cash game reg and I'm put off. Cash games are dying, mtts are thriving.

If you are an mtt rec you sincerely have nothing at all to worry about. There is no special tool that is going to make you a losing player.

The problem often is that there is two ways for a rec to start

1-

 1a/ rec plays poker
 1b/ rec gets extremely lucky, with very little knowledge/skill somehow wins at poker
 1c/ rec stays and enjoys it
 1d/ rec starts losing
 1e/ rec starts blaming some other factor, huds, cheating site etc

2

   2a/ rec plays poker
   2b/ rec loses
   2c/ rec loses interest

Do you think anything can be done to "save" online cash?

I'm told you can buy a piece of hardware called a 'Piggy Bank'.

I don't agree that online cash is in the dire straits suggested, (and I'm basing that on actual data), at least, not on "regular" sites, 'Stars, of course, may be an exception. It remains healthy elsewhere, except on the Rooms which are already in terminal decline. I have no idea how it is doing on 'Stars, I'd be the first to admit, other than poker media chatter.

Incidentally, did you see the PokerStars news about how business picked up dramatically of late? I'll look up the link & post it. Good news, we like that.

There you go......


http://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-room-news/27302-pokerstars-dream-team-marketing-drives-online-poker-traffic/


I know that numbers can be spun all sorts of misleading ways, but this seemed generally positive, even reading between the lines.


Since the campaign launched in the dot-com market two weeks ago, PokerStars cash game traffic has increased by 8.6%, reaching their highest traffic level in two months

In Italy, PokerStars has spiked nearly 30% since the promotion started there, achieving the highest traffic levels since May and boosting PokerStars.IT back into the top five online poker rooms in the world based on cash game traffic

PokerStars’ Spanish online poker room was one of the first to see the benefits as the promotion kicked off there about a month ago. Since then, cash game traffic has jumped 20% reaching levels last seen in April.

With only a week since the promotion started in France, traffic at PokerStars.FR is already up more than 9%, and additional gains will likely follow as the Dream Team Collection promotion runs through the end of the month.



I most certainly don't want to teach you to suck eggs, but in viewing those numbers, bear in mind that they refer to Northern Hemisphere traffic generally, which always dips in the summer months, & generally does not increase much until around the time BST ends, in October.

Also, in viewing those % increases, the numbers which really matter are not W-o-W, or M-o-M, but Y-o-Y.

I read elsewhere, too, that Pokerstars acquisition (new sign-ups) have increased dramatically of late, so, if true, that's good too. They spend plenty on Acquisition, as do many Sites, & that is the seedcorn for so many things.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of those numbers, but they look pretty good to me at face value.

Right now I'm grinding 50nl on party and, while it has all the usual problems (seating scripts, noone wants to start a table, as soon as someone half decent sits down or the "fish" leaves the table breaks etc) there are always games running. 50nl is a bollocks level as well, like 100nl+ seems to run a lot. Either way, doesn't seem to be in decline as such, the regs often play worse than the "fish" :p Basically just wondering if there were things that people thought could be done that would actually make a difference to help boost the games.

Party's cash game liquidity has improved recently, though fair to say it had declined substantially before that rebound, so it has improved from a very low baseline. The point is, like several Rooms, they are now actually managing their poker business rather than just running it as a cash cow.

As to nobody wanting to start a table, that's always been the case, but some Rooms offer additional rakeback to table starters.

People continue to get better, recs continue to blame things other than themselves.

Nothing changes really.

I think you're missing the point. Recs are just stating that they want to enjoy the game as recs and not want to put the same amount of effort as a pro, ergo recs do blame themselves but aren't willing to do anything about it.

So as a rec myself, who just wants to play win or lose and who doesn't want to start studying the game and all the tools that a pro would do, I wont play online.

My question to you is - Do you want more people like me to play online?

Yes, but how do we fix that?

Of course I want you to play, I'd like everyone to play.

I can't help that the game has evolved in a way that is pushing a select few out of the games. There are tons and tons of recs always signing up to play poker online and the new recs just see huds as part of the game.

Give me the impression that I've got a fighting chance to win.

If you understand the game enough that there is a lot of skill involved and that you know you need to put a lot of effort in and you aren't prepared to do so, then I can't do that.

are there Dan? not the understanding i have. the amount of money funnelling into the system from new entrants has dried up, has it not?

Doubly wrong - the 'tons and tons of recs' aren't happening any more and those that do are mostly oblivious to huds.

I don't have anything to back this up but I would be really surprised if the retention rate of new sign ups is anything to shout about. You need recs to stick at it long term.

I am not party to the numbers on how many people are signing up to poker sites but I do hear players moaning about the liquidity in the game is diminishing and how much harder it is to earn the kind of money of just a few years ago.

Encourage recs like me to play by giving me the impression of a level playing field and you'll make money and we wont cry about losing.

I feel I have the skill to get lucky against you but I also feel that in the current age of trackers and huds and tools luck isn't enough.

You play golf right? Why bother with the handicap system? There is a lot of skill involved in golf and you need to put a lot of effort in!! If you don't work as hard as the pros why should you get free shots when you play them??

Just when I think you deserve the finger you write something good.

I disagree with you Mantis. With golf, it is very very clear who is better and who is not. In poker, not so.

In golf and just like poker, you can choose which games to play. In golf there is hardly an incentive for me to invest thousands in to becoming professional because the gap is just so so large.

In poker, the gap is pretty marginal. It's extremely marginal if you think that if I gave my girlfriend a mouse and a computer that she could beat Luke Fields in a HU reg speed NLHE sng 20% of the time by just going allin.

I don't seem me beating Mcllroy any time soon.

Is there actually anything we as individuals can do about this?

Move down limits
Play sites with softer opponents
Play live

Most people playing mid stakes online definitely don't know how to use a hud, including a lot of the regs. I'm talking of course mtt's. I can't talk for the cash world.

In terms of making an impact I'd say nothing (apart from voting with your feet). If a load of recs keep dropping out of the player pools then the sites will do something about it if they are smart.

FWIW, I am just arguing the other side of the coin. I have started much more thorough note taking in my games in case hud's get banished altogether.

Think you've misunderstood what I'm getting at - is there anything the regs can do to encourage the recs to play?

Online? Probably not.

Don't play against them I suppose and let them play against each other.

That's a great idea.

HUD free tables or maybe anonymous tables where HUDs are meaningless.

Tables for players who have up to 10k hands of experience, up to 50k, up to 100k etc. Let these guys get there slowly and then face the monster of the pro infested arena where it's no holds barred.

Just level the field a bit is all it takes to keep people interested and provide the illusions that they might actually be good at the game.

If a poker site ran anonymous tables I'd play a couple alongside my regular ones for sure, if the games ran.

Actually the more I think about it the more I think that's a great idea, because people can still run Huds for review purposes etc, but stats on specific players could never correlate, so they'd be meaningless.

Why can't all tables be anonymous?  Stops bum hunting, makes HUD's redundant, stops/limits collusion as it is totally random which table you are sat on compared to your 'team mates', keeps recs happy as they would think they have more of a chance against a random field and means proper pros will have to rely on their pure poker skills to make a living against random players who could be anyone.

Seems too obvious to me.  There is no advantage to a pure rec knowing the online names of people he is playing as he doesn't care.  There is a big advantage to a pro of knowing other regs/recs names.

There is no reason to know the online names of the people you are playing against for any other reason than to gain an advantage.  This advantage is always in the reg's favour.  Therefore to give a bit back to the rec's it might make more people play.  Who knows.  All the pro's keep saying they will beat rec's whatever because they are better (which is true) so what's not to like?

Why do they all have to be? Keep everyone happy and have both :p

Fair point.

Are bots more of a risk on anonymous tables?

I have no idea.  Was just putting the idea out there.  There are a lot of positives imo.  Sure there will be some negatives as well but most of them will be moaning pros who have their edge reduced imo because they can't bum hunt any more.  Not saying all pros do this btw before i get lynched.

Pretty sure that it'll be hard to find a legit reg (who actually works on their game) who thinks seating scripts are good in any way :p

Who's idea?


No way you're getting the credit when this becomes the biggest thing since Facebook.

hey matt, what do you play? mtts or cash? or what did you play?

I put it out there months ago when i started a debate that all THE trades on betfair are anonymous (players have no idea who they are playing against every time they have a bet - it could be Tony Bloom or pissed up Dave down the pub) and i said there was no reason why online poker couldn't be the same and it might help level the playing field by reducing bum hunting/collusion/use of software etc being meaningless.

I don't want any credit!

Jeeez..."all my trades on betfair" give it a rest mate....

fixed my post sorry you took offense.

I put it out there months ago when i started a debate that all THE trades on betfair are anonymous (players have no idea who they are playing against every time they have a bet - it could be Tony Bloom or pissed up Dave down the pub)

Is that less offensive?  Had a tough day at work?  Need to let off some steam?  Me too.  

What is your suggestion for improving the games? 

I think chatting to everyone at the table and not abusing the fish would be a good start.  Don't make every pot a 3 or 4 bet pre flop.  

I started playing a lot of o8 STTs a year or so ago.  There were a couple of people with potty mouths but people chatted etc.  I thought that is a refreshing change.  A year on, the abuse of fish has got ridiculous.  Players play too many table so stalling is a real issue.  The biggest player has a little bloke saying FU as an avatar.  One of the others regs has something equally abusive as an avatar.  People still can't stop themselves referring to sharkscope, others bad stats etc.

I play there regularly and still get a bunch of people giving me the wtfs, starred out abuse and calling me a fish and a whale.  

Just beggars belief how far people are removed from how they should behave if they want to keep making money.  

I got sick of one person's abuse to the tables that I eventually reported him.  Stars banned his chat, a day later he was bragging on 2+2 how he had got it overturned.  It really should be once then a months chat ban, 2nd time two months, 3rd time complete ban and not just chat.

Would ban the software.  I remember reading how note caddy was going to go, but even that still seems ok.  I would get rid of supernova up, and I say that as somebody who was getting the benefits until a couple of months ago.

Microgaming had anonymous tables years back.

Yes they are not a new concept at all.   Onny used to play them on Lolbrokes way back in the day i think.

Stop calling them fish donks and whales for a start. The language itself is demeaning. Do u think pro sportsman use this language. Federer "played this absolute whale in the first round- couldn't even play a slice backhand" laughs with all the other pros.

I am your typical rec player....work 40 hours a week and play at nights to unwind/relax. I can accept players being better than me and working harder than me in becoming better. What I'm totally against is the idea someone gains an advantage by being more tech savvy than me and gaining an advantage purely because they have software that enables this advantage. This is poker. A game of minds. To me it is anyway. If it's about having the latest software to process information to gain an edge then I have no interest. I've started going to the casino to play instead to get what I perceive as a fair game....I'll be going again tonight. It's far more enjoyable to me and I'm safe in the knowledge that it's purely a mind game without technology aiding opponents.

There's something quite satisfying about the thought of HUD using pros suffocating the rec money in online poker so they only have each other to squeeze money out of.

Been a long time since I've said anything like that to a player who wasn't a friend :p and honestly, aren't most of the chatbox warriors losers as opposed to pro grinders?

Re arrboy....I was only messing. Just on the wind up. Please don't take it how it wasn't intended.

What would I do? If possible I'd remove all HUDs, seating scripts etc..basically all software that aids players. I want to sit down in front of my screen and it be as if I was sitting at the casino. Mind v minds is what I play for. If I'm worse than the other players in that situation I can accept it but not when I'm up against mind+tech advantages.

Look, I totally agree that seating scripts are dreadful but HUDs giving regs an advantage over recs is a misconception, they just don't, and most don't even know what difference the stats make anyway. Either way HUDs will not be getting banned any time soon so we need to look elsewhere for answers.

Don't ever remember the old laddies having them, but we used to prop them when they first came about ~2010 iirc.

What?

What possible advantage can a HUD have over someone who by definition doesn't play very much? You need loads and loads of hands on people before stats converge into anything meaningful, and we're just not going to get that on a rec. The basic stuff like vpip and pfr isn't something you need a hud to have a rough idea of :p

Online I used to play quite a lot of mtts in the $11 to $109 range with the million and warm up thrown in occasionally. Played the $55 and $22 1r1a most evenings with the latter always being my favourite comp.

I never played a lot of holdem cash but played a chunk of PLO for a fair few years on ipoker.

Live I used to love mtts and was a regular at DTD which is about 5 minutes away from my house. Played a few weekday comps and everything I could get to at the weekends.

Again never much of a holdem cash fan but loved plo and dealers choice. All about the gamble innit :D

Poker for me has always been about the gamble!! I used to have a severe gambling problem and poker fixed it by allowing me to get that same buzz whilst being able to justify it (rightly or wrongly) as actually being +EV. Such a beautiful game when played in the right company with a few friendly drunken gamblers at the table. Such a shit game when you're sat there with a bunch of mood hoovers who only care about their hourly win rate.

Of course they give an advantage or people wouldn't pay money for them.

The first time I used a HUD I was amazed at what a powerful tool it was. I set the thing up and then started a session with about 10 mtts or so running along happily.

Fast forward 2 or 3 hours and I'm a little bit short on one of the tables with about 15 bigs. Some fella who I had no idea who he was had just raised and I had one of those maybe or maybe not 3 bet shove hands. So what do I do? I have a look at my shiny new HUD of course. Oh wow!! This guy has raised 60% of his last 50 hands that I've not been watching.... His range must be really wide...... let's get it in..... Oh look he's folded. Thank you Mr HUD you are the best thing ever!!!

To claim they don't give an advantage is laughable. I'll accept anything with a bit of evidence behind it but just saying it ain't gonna make it so.

I think the biggest risk on anonymous tables is collusion and it being very hard to spot.

Most sites are inept anyway or just dont care and given I (and you) like playing PLO cash I'd be worried playing it vs anons.

It gives an advantage against other regs, because those are the people you get data on, and it means you can store and review hands easily. 50 hands, in your example, is nowhere near enough of a sample to make a judgement on someone's stats. I play approximately 29% of hands according to my vpip stat, but over 50 hands I could play way over or way less than that. Moreover, in your example, you can see the guy on your table is playing 60% of hands. If I was Sat at that table without a hud, I'd be able to watch and see that he's in almost every pot. I wouldn't have the exact number, but I'd be able to guess and wouldn't be far off. Again, by definition, a rec isn't someone that wants to seriously grind 10+ tables at once.

So by definition what is a rec?

And EvilPie just gave you a perfect example of a situation where a HUD gave statistics (during a single mtt sample size)he wouldn't have otherwise had without it showing that it affected his play in a positive way giving him an edge through software alone. So your argument that you need thousands of hands for them to be worthwhile is flawed in my opinion.

What is wrong with the idea of only using the software that starts when you open up the poker site? Same for all users then surely? May the best man win.

For clarity I haven't always been a rec. I used to play enough and take it seriously enough to consider myself a reg and a winning one at that. I was pretty good and could hold my own at most tables in my bankroll whether live or online.

Things have changed for me massively and I didn't have the time to dedicate to poker so I am now a rec. I wouldn't dream of firing up 10 tables and committing myself to a 10+ hour grind as my life elsewhere doesn't allow for that any more.

At the time of my example I was very much a reg and that's my whole point. I was playing 10+ tables so I had no idea what anybody's VPIP was or even how many hands I'd played against them. Whether that guy was a reg or a rec I have no idea but at that particular moment my HUD had provided me with information that I could use to my advantage. After a while when I'd built up 100k+ hands or whatever one of the most useful things was just knowing who the regs were. As soon as someone turns up in your regular games whom you have zero hands against you automatically assume they're a rec and therefore an easy target. If you've got 1000 hands against someone you play with caution because you know they play a lot and also you know that they may have 1000 hands worth of stats against you as well.

I don't know of a world in which that wouldn't constitute an advantage.

Are you going to be able to remember this 6 months later when he pops up again?

How is it flawed? What I'm saying is that for most stats you need thousands of hands to have enough of a sample for that stat to be relevant. Over 50 hands, it is a FACT that the % of hands I play can vary between drastically, eventually evening out at about 29%. There is absolutely no disputing this. Furthermore, as with this example and this stat, I CAN SEE. I can use my eyes while I'm watching the table and see that this player is playing lots of hands. My eyes told me that, my HUD didn't have to. That example is a one off occasion too, can you not see that it's results orientated? If the guy happened to have AA that time, then what?


EXACTLY. The bog standard rec that we're talking about doesn't fire up ten tables, he fires up a couple and plays them. He watches the action, and by watching he can see exactly the same information that you can. If anything, by paying less attention to each individual table, you have given the rec a slight advantage because they can see and note everything going on. One guy might go bet bet jam with bottom pair and show it, now the rec watching the table has seen that and you haven't. He now has information on that player that you don't. So where is this advantage?

Yes, if you have loads of hands built up then you can see who the regs are, and the recs don't know that. On the flip side, I don't know anything about that particular rec. They might not even be a rec, they might be a reg from a higher stake dropping down or from a lower stake moving up. I have to watch and learn how they play before I make adjustments, exactly the same as they have to watch how I play.

The simple fact that you play more enables you to know who the regs are. You don't need a HUD to recognise a screen name, or make a note on someone that they play a lot. The rec doesn't have access to this information BECAUSE THEY DONT PLAY AS MUCH AS YOU. I mean, what we're now saying is that we should actively give recs this sort of information, because it's unfair that I've played more and hence know who the regs are because I'm one myself, right?


Not necessarily, but in the first place I don't have many hands on him to go by. Also, in those 6 months, all sorts of things could have changed. He could have read something he saw in a magazine that's changed how he thinks about the game. He could be a little strapped for cash so he plays tighter. He could be drunk. All these things make my ridiculously small sample even more worthless.

Dave has it right that its really just a PR issue

Truth is that when a recreational player jumps onto a 50NL or 100NL table to play ~100 hands of poker, the difference between their likelihood of winning in that game now and the likelihood of them winning in that game 8 years ago is very very small.

Now if you wanna talk about playing 100k hands then there will be a big difference, but that is for the people that want to make a living at the game to sort out, hence players having to work really hard so plough in the hours to play poker for a living.

But to play for entertainment and to have a 'punchers chance' as Matt put it? Nothing has really changed in that regard.

Was it not the case that 8 years ago a table would have been 7recs and 3 regs. Now it will be 2 recs, 2regs and 6 Russian/Brazilian pros.

Rex...that example is results orientated only if you take in to consideration the opponent folde/calld. I'm only interested in the fact that EvilPie shoved due to information given to him by software giving him an ,in my opinion, unfair advantage.

Maybe we have to agree to disagree. But I'm a rec...you'd want me at your tables and I'm turning away from online due to what I perceive to be an unfair disadvantage through not being tech savvy. Perhaps I'm a paranoid uneducated fool. If I'm an isolated case or there's no bigger problem here then you and the pros needn't worry.

As a side note...just got back from the casino...I didn't win but the game was played straight up and how I like it. People even talked and there was no berating! Imagine that!

This chatter prompted me to have a quick cash session last night as a completely unrepresentative experiment. Probably the first time i've played cash online in over a year.

I played on Sky at the giddy heights of 25p/50p and fairly quickly had a full 6-max game running. There was very little change in players over a couple of hours, and to my vaguely trustworthy non-HUD observations there was one other guy who was "playing", with the remaining 4 falling into the type that makes these games so dull nowadays.

• A bit slow to respond (presumably due to multi tabling)
• Pretty nitty so not playing many hands
• Any hands they do play are opened or 3-bet aggressively - very rare to see a call
• A distinct lack of "gamble"
• Zero table chat the whole session

Obviously these are more likely to be winning players (or at least not big leaky losers) but it's really not much fun to see hand after hand barely getting further than the flop. I tried my best to upset the rhythm but even bashing up AA with 99 when i knew I was at best flipping didn't get any comment or change in style.

The thing i keep coming back to is it's just not very fun.

They're actually not necessarily more likely to be winning players, as Goulder said in a recent blog the best players aren't the ones putting you in tough spots every hand, they're the ones just playing solid. Note that solid doesnt necessarily mean tight :p I mean, how do we make it more fun? I can't change what other people do. Did you type anything in the chat box? I tend to respond if someone types something in there that isn't derogatory. Also, if you find the game slow, play a couple more tables. It's a lot less dull if you're involved in the action more often :) But yh, what realistically can we do to make it more fun for you?

I've got money marbles and chalk sweetheart,
but I still feel like I am poor.
Cause my money won't spend, and my marbles wont roll,
and my chalk won't write any more.

The ONLY reason he needed that software to give him that information is because he wasn't paying attention to the table he was playing at. If you're paying attention then you have exactly the same information he does! HUDs only record what is seen, they don't tell you what to do and they don't give you any information that other players can't see. In this example, if I was playing that table and watching it WITHOUT A HUD, I would have EXACTLY the same information and be able to make EXACTLY the same decision in this spot. That information is open and available for everyone to see, there is literally no advantage to having a HUD in this example if you're watching the table.

Sorry to keep going on like this, but I find the whole thing pretty frustrating. This absolute myth that the "pros" are these big, bad, evil chatbox warriors who cheat their way to success just because they have a bit of software is completely wrong and frankly makes a mockery of all the work that I do to try and get ok at this game. HUDs aren't going anywhere (and contrary to what it sounds like, I would be very, very happy if every poker site banned HUDs tomorrow), and while they're here to stay I think we have to attack these misconceptions because if recs are genuinely stopping playing because they're worried about the power of HUDs then they have definitely been misinformed.

If they are not paying attention to the table, then why should they be allowed that information through a HUD? If you want to have the table information as someone playing 1-4 tables then play 1-4 tables and not 10. Take the information In and make a judgement on their fold to 3 bet %, PFR% and whatever other stat you want your HUD to collect, collate and display for you.

Think this just about sums up poker post bubble. Bottom line is poker online for a rec isn't much fun. Post bubble there is no buzz around poker being a new thing.

When I was a reg playing 15 tables and making extra money 2/3 outers kinda go over your head and onto the next game. As a rec, I load up 3 or 4 tables, get a couple of brutal beats and think fk this, lets do something more interesting/fun.

Why not?
A) As we've been through, it doesn't give an advantage over someone watching the table, if anything it hinders them.
B) If the regs didn't play as many tables then tournament guaruntees would end up being lower, there'd be less players in the comps themselves, and you'd actually find the regs play better because they're paying more attention. All this seems to be to the defecit of the rec.
C) As we've said, the information collected isn't anything new, it's already available to everyone. I've just got someone else looking at it for me. Online isn't the same as live because you have the option to play more than one table, so why should you effectively stop people from doing that?
D) I find playing 4 tournament tables pretty dull tbh, so I want to play more. However, I don't want to be at a distinct disadvantage against people playing less tables, so I use my HUD. Are you basically now saying that you should put people like me at a disadvantage for pretty much no discernible reason other than the recs think it gives me some sort of advantage (which as we've already said, it doesn't against them)?
E) Furthermore, HUDs aren't going to get banned. So, why should I pass up on the same information that all the other regular players have and put myself at a disadvantage against them? Because it's a morally better thing to do? Maybe, but it's literally throwing money away.
F) As has already been said, HUDs aren't expensive, they aren't a secret, and there are loads of videos online on how to use them. So why is it a problem if I want to play a few more tables and use this bit of software to help me watch them, because I get more enjoyment out of playing more tournaments?

Fwiw, I would consider myself a rec when it comes to tournament poker. I barely play them, and when I do I don't play very many.

Agree with this 100%

The fact is though you wouldn't just be playing 1 table in order to take in all that information. You'd be playing 9 other tables in order to maximise your overall win rate because that's how many you can cope with when your HUD is active.

Maybe if you play at 1 table you're 30% better than Mr Rec. because you're focussing on that table. If you play 10 tables with your HUD active you are only 15% better than him so you think that you're actually handing him an advantage by sacrificing some of your edge.

In isolation this may appear true but what it actually means is that there's now 9 other recs who've got to face someone 15% better than them instead of just being up against each other on a level playing field.

It's not the effect a HUD has on a single table that's the problem, it's the overall effect of many HUDs in many extremely capable and well trained hands against many recs.

Imagine a player pool of 100 people with no HUDs allowed. 90 are recs, 10 are pros. Everybody plays 1 table each and the pros expect 30% roi due to their hard work, training and superior skill. If everybody puts £100 in the pros win £30 each and the recs lose £300 between them or £3.33 each.

Now let's throw in a few HUDs for the pros. They now play 5 tables instead of one but because they aren't as focussed on the one table their roi has dropped to 10% therefore giving up a huge advantage back to the recs.

However the player pool has now grown to 140 with the recs putting in £100 each and the pros 5 x £100. The pros roi has reduced but they are investing 5 times as much so each one of them wins £50 and the recs now lose £500 between them or £5.55 each.

So the recs haven't actually gotten any worse at poker, the pros are actually playing worse than they used to because they aren't as focussed on an individual table but still the recs are worse off.

I'm going to use some capital letters the same as Rexas to hopefully help me out.....

The ONLY reason people buy HUDs is to increase their profit.

Professional poker players take money OUT of poker.

Recreational poker players put money IN to poker.

Unless MORE money comes IN than goes OUT it all grinds to a halt.

The FASTER pros take it OUT the SOONER it grinds to a HALT.

Way to win a debate bro

Rex....read A...then read D.....see any contradiction?

...

Online poker is really only designed for people with no life and predators. Just mindless shiz tbf

Truly spoken like someone who has never even had a punchers chance

Never stops me swinging though plus I totes crushed 1-2 limit back in the day

we all seem to be forgetting the sites aren't helping, not in the slightest. No ones interests are aligned so nothing meaningful is going to be done.

you are also all forgetting that in Matts rejam example he may have made the wrong decision because of stats which haven't converged given such a small sample. As with everything in poker you cant even just straight up judge if he was right.


either way arguments along the lines of you've put in lots of work I don't want to have to wouldn't hold water in any other industry, let alone given the fact that in this one you can still just bink a 20/80 or 45/55 or w/e and show a sudden profit.

Do like the way EvilPie has rolled itt, nailed a lot of points.

Anyways, it appears that serious players use software so they can play a lot of tables without paying full attention. The amateur however plays less tables so can concentrate on the action more closely. That's what I've learnt over the last few pages. So what exactly are dem mad poker skillz the serious players have?

Betting/calling/raising/folding

After not paying attention and seeing if the computer says so?

Maybe the answer is limiting the number of tables anyone can play. Can't help but think the reason live poker is looser and more fun is because people would get bored sitting playing nut spots all night. Hence having even a minority group of grinders who can load up HUDs and monitor a dozen tables at the same time playing a bit slow and nitty means the "quality" of the games for someone looking for a fun gamble goes down considerably.

Sure, there would still be people with the discipline to do this on one or two tables, but hopefully would have less impact and probably squeeze them up the stakes as would be less viable to make a living from what used to be "casual" levels (100NL or less)

They provide you with a platform in which to ply your trade.

They spend millions on advertising and sponsorship to try to tempt more "fish" in to the shark infested waters in which you ply your trade.

Just because they want to take their slice of the cake don't start claiming they aren't doing anything to help.



In the professional world where people have jobs and compete with each other to get those jobs and the rewards that go with them of course you're correct.

It's the recs we're talking about though, the people who bring money in to the game. They're the customers. Name me one other industry where the customers have to put in the same amount of work as the professionals selling them a service?  

The bink argument is obviously ridiculous. We're talking long term here where we know the binks are meaningless. Without those binks (Moneymaker being the obvious example) there wouldn't be any recs for you to play against.

Yep.

Anyone can get the info that a HUD provides is very easy, anyone can.

Knowing what it means, and how to use it is a really serious skill and one that a huge number of experienced and successful online players have never mastered.

 "Name me one other industry where the customers have to put in the same amount of work as the professionals selling them a service?..."  


you  dont have to put in that work though.

you can play for fun and accept that you are gambling without an edge.

plenty of people enjoy gambling where they have no edge: casino games, bingo, lotto, sports betting are all fulled by millions of people willing to pay money to play.

poker is the same. i enjoyed poker on play-money apps, i enjoyed it as a losing player and i enjoy it as a winning player now.

its a competitive game with a huge luck element.  most players are losing players, most enjoy the 'gamble' and competition and the swings that come with playing with little or no edge.

if you want to actually compete with the best in terms of results, and make consistent money, then you arent in the same mindset of most players who just like a punt every now and then

of course you have to work to achieve the results of those that work hard. there isnt an area of life where that isnt the case.

Hey mate, if this huge number of experienced and successful players haven't got to grips with how to use HUDs and they don't pay attention what accounts for their success?

The trouble is it's not the same though. People play BJ with a -1% edge or roulette with -3.5% but it's small, static and over short periods you can have a decent run of it. With poker that % has effectively been growing every year as the skill gap widens.

Most players would be FAR better off playing table games than playing poker.

thats always been true though

rake will make average players losers [and games are raked > blackjack], and below average players lose to rake and their peers. thats fundamementally built into poker - theres never been a time where below average players or even average players would be better off playing poker than table games

poker seems different though and you are playing people. there is a competitive edge that people will always enjoy. games are beatable, in theory and practice. unlike table games.

but to suggest that poker is a special place where you should expect to match the rewards of hard workers without matching their work seem incredibly naive which is the point i was challanging

using a HUD gives you access to relevant, additional information that a player not using a HUD does not have. The degree to which the HUD is used effectively is irrelevant really, the key point is the HUD has gained additional information over the non-HUD user which can be used to their advantage.


So use a HUD, put yourself on an even keel?! Sounds a simple solution, but the majority of recs either can't be arsed or are unaware of HUDs. Those who are unaware are at a disadvantage, indisputably. Those aware but not inclined to use a HUD I would suggest are the bulk of recs. this group are not stupid or ignorant, they just want to play poker in its simplest, most enjoyable form. Using a HUD involves data analysis... not so much fun. Now when you factor in that most recs are not stupid and appreciate they're at a disadvantage by not adding data analysis to their poker entertainment, the game has a problem.

its an image problem then as using a HUD would not put people on an even keel.

its not the lack or presence of a HUD that makes you a winning or losing player.

tufffish used a HUD

olivier busquets one tabled HUSNG's without one and have won a few million $$$ doing so.

Pretty sure nobody on here thinks that.

"Name me one other industry where the customers have to put in the same amount of work as the professionals selling them a service?..." 

sort of implies it if you are comparing recs to customers and regs to professionals.

you don't have to put the same work in, unless you are wanting to achieve similar results to them.

and if you want similar results... you will have to put in the same amount of work.

its true of most competitive areas of life.

else do as the vast majority of poker players do, and play for the sheer enjoyment of gambling on the turn of a card / pitting your wits against someone for a portion of your spare cash

Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I was busy playing live cash where the people who were losing were complaining about how the good players were cheating and they were just really unlucky. O wait, sorry, that's online.

Regarding recs playing more tables, maybe this is different with tournaments, but with cash at the moment there wouldn't be very many reg speed tables running at all without the pros multitabling. If you take away their ability to do that, then the games drop off to a point where it's pretty damn hard for anyone to find a table to play at. So I take your point EvilPie about spreading regs around not necessarily being a good thing because they've got a smaller edge at more tables, and although this won't affect the individual rec it will affect them as a whole, the trade off is that the games actually run.

Regarding the "distinct disadvantage" thing, have you guys actually read my posts? If I want to play multiple tables regularly vs the regular players, then not using a HUD is putting me at a disadvantage. I have never argued that point, and neither has anyone here. All the other regs have loads of hands on me because I play with them all the time. Now, as soon as I started playing with them all the time, I stopped being a "recreational" and became a "regular". As has now been explained multiple times, I don't think that having a HUD has anywhere hear as much of an impact on recreational players as they would like to believe, but it certainly does have an impact on other regular players. What is unfair about me using the same tools as the other regs? As has also be pointed out, most of them don't know how to actually use the stats that they get from their HUDs anyway. Also, again as has already been pointed out, if I played 20 tables and you played one, and I played without a HUD, you would have an advantage over me on that one table. If I play with a HUD, on that one table you would still have an advantage, but it would be lessened. Note I said DISTINCT disadvantage. So no, there is no contradiction there.

I would also say that in cash games the bink argument doesn't work, but in tournaments it very much does. If I win a ticket into the Sunday million today and win it, then I'll show up as a winning online tournament player basically forever, because I'm never going to play enough online tournaments to equate to the amount I would win there. This is infinitely more likely than me winning the lottery. If that happened to me, it certainly wouldn't be meaningless.

In answer to MANTIS's last comment about what makes them winning players if they can't use HUDs, there are a few things. I mean, a lot of the best players in the world now are focusing on game theory, and one of the main points of doing this is that it literally doesn't matter what your opponents do, or what they see you doing, they cannot win money against you long term. Think of poker as a very complicated game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Choose each option a third of the time over an infinite number of games and you are theoretically unbeatable, as soon as someone playing against you deviates from that strategy they are losing. We're a long way away from actually solving poker in the same way as rock poker scissors, but we can try and play in a way that is as close as currently possible, and it will be very difficult to win against them. This is what the people who really work hard on their game are trying to achieve.

"but to suggest that poker is a special place where you should expect to match the rewards of hard workers without matching their work seem incredibly naive which is the point i was challanging"

Think this actually sums up a lot of these arguments very well, that the general idea is people that can no longer beat the game long term are searching for something to blame it on, because they can't accept the fact that people who work harder than them can now beat them.

Fwiw, I don't think this discussion is ever going to go anywhere. I am completely, totally, 100% convinced of my side of this argument and having spent a lot of time discussing this recently I have yet to see a comment that has persuaded me that HUDs are the reason online poker is struggling at the moment, ASIDE from the fact that they are perceived to give regs this magical edge over everyone else. There are other, much bigger problems that are doing a lot of damage, like seating scripts for example.

To reiterate, I would love it if HUDs were suddenly banned on every site. But, while there is no chance of that happening, I still think that the best thing to do is try and combat these misconceptions.

Work ethic, natural poker ability, feel, strong mental game etc, times are a LOT different now to 4 or 5 yrs ago, all this super in depth analysis and strategy was around but in a much different form than today, area's of poker strategy have been closed to solved nowadays where a bit of time ago people used to come up with their own strategies and opinions on stuff, now though a great deal of that stuff is just universally accepted as X or Y...

I'm not pulling things out of thin air here, we have a great example of this here, Patrik Antonius, THE BIGGEST tracked winner in online poker history has said himself he never used a HUD, one of the most successful poker players in the UK (v gd friend of mine) who still plays regularly and wins online and has played and won at the highest stakes also self confessed to not really using his HUD ever...

You can't make a bad player a good one, or even a good player a great one by giving him a HUD.

MY points are not that HUDs are actually fine so should let all the pros have them, I'm saying that if we're tackling what is wrong with Online poker then we're talking about something which really makes no difference whatsoever - it makes a difference to Patrik Antonius because he plays in a VERY small player pool with the VERY best players, where even a tiny edge can be worth hundreds of K's.

just to back that point up, here is the SS graph of a 1 tabling reg who does not use a HUD nor any tracking software average buyin $1.5k

http://imgur.com/z4pkcUQ

Maybe the problem is ego because lots of rec players like to think they're better than they are right? Just like most blokes being deluded about the number of girls they slept with or the amount they can drink. So other players accessing the reality of your data and particularly ramming in down your throat mid game is quite a sobering process.

Think the answer to HUDs is multi-accounting right? I know when I play a big comp these days I use my mrs account. Aha-ha switcheroo!! what gud is ur hud now Mr Pro??

It is kind of a waste of time trying to correct any misconceptions on this. Whether it's the number 1 disadvantage, whether every user uses it well doesn't really matter, it's undeniably an advantage to a multi tabling reg and they're pretty much satan.

" The turkey does not feel safer, the more times the farmer with a big gun reassures him"
Karl Marx

There is so much Yawn here, its ridic. Seriously alot of arrogance from the PRO'S iTT its quite annoying havent normally looked at it this way but this thread has shown them in bad light

WP GG

Why wud u love to see huds banned if you don't think they are unfair or do any harm?

for me, it would be for the same reason that companies would rather not have to spend millions of £££ on adverts or price wars.

its an expense / drain on mental resources that is needed to stand-still with the other regs in games.

personally i enjoy using a HUD and having a database.

plenty of losing recreationals do to. i'd wager there are more losing players using HUDs / PT4 / Hold em Manager than winning ones. it does create an something of an arms race though that we'd maybe better off without [geekish stat obsessions excepted]

Would sites ever look in to installing a HUD as an update to their software? At least then all players have the stats available to them. If they aren't going anywhere (which seems to be the consensus) then embrace them for all and accept that HUDs are part and parcel of today's online poker game. From a pros view this would at least remove the misconception of the advantages HUDs give and the recs feel they are back on a level playing field in terms of information available.

one site has done this in the recent past.

i think it even went as far as to give basic starting hand advice in game

actually think there have been good and bad posts from recs and pros

Because they're a tool that bad regs, who don't work on their game, use so that they can still compete with the regs who do work hard. HUDs give regs an advantage over other regs (or at least, you'd be at a disadvantage if you didn't use one). I think they do harm to the poker economy as a whole, not because they mean that recs lose money faster but because they mean that regs can play vs each other and use the 40k hands or whatever that they have on each other to make exploitative decisions and either be breakeven or small winners, whereas otherwise they would lose.

Fwiw, I think the modern day "fish" is the reg who uses HUDs and seating scripts etc because they aren't good enough to play against the people who are actually good. They're the ones who blame bad luck for losing and keep on depositing and staring at their EV lines etc, and they're the ones who play in a certain way without thinking or adjusting properly because they don't know how to.

As was mentioned earlier in the thread, I think the answer is to have anonymous tables included with the regular ones to see what difference in traffic they get. On those tables, people can still use HUDs etc, but they'll never be able to gather a sample of more than a few hundred hands, and as soon as that player leaves the table they effectively lose all that information. This way people can still track their results and review hands using their HUD (which is the main reason I use mine), without having the whole massive data sample thing going on.

but if u wished huds were banned then as u said earlier you wudn be able to multi table and the games would dry up so seems a little bit non sensical to me to wish for something you feel does no harm or is not unfair but if uu don't have it ur personal profession wud actually suffer? Kind of contradiction?

The problem there is that if Party banned HUDs, the multi-tablers would move to a different site and party would lose all it's traffic. There's also the problem of, if I stopped using my HUD but everyone else still had theirs, then if I wanted to keep regularly playing a bunch of tables I would be putting myself at a disadvantage.

If HUDs were banned universally then people wouldn't have anywhere else to go, so would keep playing on the same site. They would end up having to drop tables, but not too many, as everyone wanting to play multiple tables would be in exactly the same boat.

I don't know if that's made any sense :p

Also, I don't consider myself to be a "pro", but I do consider myself to be a "reg" :)

If I play 50 60 tourneys a week wud I be a reg or a rec?

Prob better way of asking .. how many games you need to  play regularly to be considered a "reg". And surely lots of players who play "regular" are doing so recreationally without huds and other tech so surely these are the people who are most disadvantaged and why should they be if they are only playing for fun?

I don't agree with this but think it should be viable for a company the size of party to test the water without necessarily making a wholesale change and scaring the s*** out of investors. With a segmented batch of tables, or even a cloned client under a different brand they could try running a set of games using different rules to the main site.

• No HUDs
• Anonymous player names
• Random table/seat assignment
• Max 2 simultaneous tables
• Max 100NL or 200NL stakes

You say a move like this would make the multi tablers leave, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. True the grinders are contributing nicely in rake from their play, but the average CPA of a new poker customer these days is eaily £100+ so it's really important to keep them playing. That is far more likely to happen if they end up on tables with similar quality opposition, or at least not stuck with minimum 3 grinder clones sat on every table. The longterm profits from a poker acquisition comes from a decent lifespan playing the core games (so not getting fleeced early on helps massively) plus the greater chance of cross-selling them to casino/sports at some point down the line too. This is more valuable long term than a guy sat rinsing the players you've paid through the nose to sign up.

The interesting extra dynamic here would be the fact that games would become juicier looking for the regs, despite the new restrictions. So i could see an initial backlash followed by a return once the player pool changed shape.

They have this available though. Unibet has no hud, no table selection and the ability to change your screename at regular intervals - so that's pretty much everything you want. However as far as i'm aware traffic is still low on that site. In 2015 hardly anyone wins at online cash games lol, it's really not just the HUD's or the scripts, it's the dynamics of the games themselves. There's too many regs lol, and the average rec rocking up and depositing money will lose everything irrespective of whether people are using software or not because they're simply outnumbered. Nobody is going to enjoy that.

Yup, just opened this thread, sums it up for me. I even don't find the live game much fun these days either as many people are just way too serious and more interested in boring the arse off me by dissecting every hand in detai after the event. Where's the old games where we could just turn up, have a few beers, a. bIt of banter, gamble a bit and generally have an enjoyable evening?

Everyone's an expert and people get very arsey however u still can get tables where u can have a good time.

More wine, Woodsey, more wine!

I can't remember the last time I didn't enjoy a game of live poker, and that was irrespective of who was at the table.

Shots for all normally livens things up a bit ;)

True, although harder to find. It is refreshing to find a game you can happily punt about in though and not instantly be the superstar in the game.

Wasn't there a 4 pint+ rule on some tables at a Blonde Bash? Maybe they need to integrate with a breathalyser and have tables where you can only play if blood alcohol level is above a certain level? :)

In the quarter ending June 2015, poker revenue on Unibet increased 12% compared to the same period in 2014.

No, it's not a big site, but in a market where the going is tough right now, & sites like I-Poker, PKR, Ladbrokes & many others are seeing double digit falls, that is a very encouraging set of numbers, I'd say.

The y-o-y improvement was solely down to Unibet's decision to concentrate on giving the recreationals what they want.

This.

I found NLH cash & MTT's were getting a bit too tough, & not much fun, so I switched formats & went back to where I started Online in the late 90's - SNG's. I now play most nights, 6 tabling without any third party software, make a small profit, & have never enjoyed my poker as much.

It really is tough to win in NLH these days, but there are other games which are softer, &, some might say, more fun, & make a refreshing change from 2 card stuff. 

14 pages of the same argument put in much the same way by two groups of people with opposing views...

(http://blogs-images.forbes.com/mikemyatt/files/2012/12/Forbes-Image-21.jpg)

East is East, & West is West, & never the twain shall meet, as a poet of some repute famously wrote.

I have no idea what a twain is though.

A twain is what Jonathan Ross gets when he goes on holiday.


(Or it's an old-fashioned way of saying two)

Blonde posters pretty much all take poker seriously enough that it's natural the enjoyment of the game is lessened for everyone by it being less fruitful.

The Blonde crowd is a pretty savvy one when it comes to poker. There are no huge losers on here (at poker).

I think a part of the disillusionment here is that recs have gone from being able to make a few quid enjoying their hobby to most likely losing and that's always hard to take.

That said, I believe getting rid of HUDS will make that losing a little bit slower and make poker 'poker' again in a more natural sense. People don't have to fear this magic effect they think HUDS have. Therefore I'm all for it.

I have to say though, this debate has been conducted in an exemplary fashion and there have been some excellent points made by both sides. I've learned loads and enjoyed the whole thread.

Sakes. This is why we can't have nice things.

It was also partly down to revenues falling off a cliff the previous year.

I was not aware of that, so fair comment Alun. What did they do to try & change things round?

No I meant Q2 2014 was the first quarter with the new software. As you might expect with such a radical change revenues nosedived at first. They basically halved Y-o-Y. So it's still making up lost ground at the moment. That said, making more money from poker was never really what this was about.

Man this is a tilting thread....

As always you end up with a load of pros saying "this is how poker is now if you don't like it don't play" and a load of disillusioned recs going "ok, we won't play". Problem solved.

How about pros a) stop telling recs what you think they should think and b) realise that the ENTIRE GAMBLING INDUSTRY is built on making losers happy. That's it. That's the entire game.

Anything else is bullshit and a waste of everyone's time.

This. Just a million times this.

This should be on the home page of 2+2 forever

I actually wrote an article (http://www.pokerplayer365.com/news/features-news/do-you-feel-like-you-are-being-watched-well-you-might-be-so-we-decided-to-see-if-poker-trackers-are-killing-the-online-game/) on this for Alun back in 2009. I wasn't the first to raise concerns, but it certainly contributed to the decision to diversify my work expertise away from the poker world. Despite being very close to the iPoker management at the time working for one of their key partners, I wasn't able to get any real traction on this topic which worried me.

Soon after leaving i wrote a similar piece (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8ID3zz16vqyMmMzc1ptR2I5TGs) which, despite lauding a couple of companies who have since gone downhill, still makes sense to me. As Alan says, it's all about aiding people to enjoy the experience of spending their money.

There is a third option, and that's the one Mr Dreyfus and his GPI is trying to push us towards. A world where poker is no longer a gambling game, but one more akin to a sport where the hard work, effort and skill is the entire point of the game. People will watch and play for the thrill of competition and improving and respect and admire both the skill needed to be good at the game and those who excel at it.

It's not a vision of poker most of us who play today will have much or a role in, but they are hoping to replace us with millions of esports players and video gamers. Rec poker players who love the gamble supporting the GPI are like turkeys voting for Xmas IMO.

Again, I really am sorry about that caricature.

Handicap rating system needed to create a level playing field similar to horse racing.  Best players 'carry the most weight' or start with the fewest chips in mtts.  Huge fish start with massive stacks.  Impossible in reality obviously.

I was just thinking about that earlier, but from a comparison to golf and stableford points. It seems doable to me, but everyone would just cheat to get a worse score.

In a parallel universe, where no-one cheated, how would this work?

Not sure, but let's say in MTTs you would get an average score based on 50-100 entries on a rolling basis?

That would be the handicap you submitted and would have to be earned in qualifying MTTs.

This is very much like the surprisingly competitive nature of many play money poker players. You'd be amazed how serious some play money players are about the game, all for zero financial reward - it's all about status and the challenge of being better than other players.

I tried explaining how little of an effect a hud will have 15+ times. One guy even asked me to turn mine off, so I clearly wasn't getting my point across. I felt like this is a better way, it certainly was better than writing an essay again. Anonymous tables won't work, no bots or colluders would ever be find. I guess it would be more under the table than huds though, so people would flock back.

Jivaro.com free huds for all. With the it you should be able to buy premium in a day then get a new house inside a couple of months.

If I gave my mum loads of drugs she'd still never be able to beat Usain Bolt, so I don't see what all the fuss is about Justin Gatlin using them.

My point --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You

I didn't even know Usain Bolt played poker.

'My mum played Usain Bolt at poker'

'Jamaica?'

'Yes, that's where he's from'

I think we may have damaged this thread beyond repair.

haha, go on Mantis! Got em!!!

On a serious point though, that actually is the answer.

post more Brian  ;whistle;

i think nirvana should post more in this thread, reevios suggestions for changing the ecosystem are really interesting.

Aaah, pretty boy, if only I had more time

Poker apparently the number one game on Twitch last night. Maybe this is the future of poker. Will mean a lot less money for pros (aside from top tier) and sites in the future if it is mind.

Presumably, most of that was WCOOP-based.

Jason Somerville had a terrific audience last night - see.....


http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=65415.30

Good move microgaming...

http://pokerfuse.com/news/live-and-online/27329-screen-names-changes-coming-mpn/

Cliffs: They're allowing a screen name change every 30 days or after 1000 hands of cash.

Was told about a program called "spin wiz" which i believe ensures regs playing spin and go's will only ever be seated with non-regulars. Not 100% sure of the details though

I use spin wiz, but I also manually register alongside sitting 70% of spin wiz users using the program.

You cannot avoid regulars playing it. Indeed at lower to mid stakes, bad regs and non heads up regs would have more of a chance of avoiding regs by not having the software. But they will face fewer two reg games than without it. 90% of my games have one fellow spin wiz user in them, generally the other user is a recreational. 2 pure recreationas in the same game is rare 30s onward

Many of the best regs simply do not use the program. So you do get a lot of 3 reg games also.

If people would.find it interesting I could knock up a boss post on Husng  and spin and go seating software,  how.it works, the politics and ego. And winners and losers.

Doesn't affect me, but I'm always interested to read about things like this, so if you don't mind doing it, I'd like to see what the coup is.

Cheers, Teddy.

Morning Teddy - well I'd certainly be interested. This whole idea of seating scripts & the like appals me, no matter how much people try & say "well it makes no difference", if it makes no difference, why do players use it?

Opinions generally - as this thread shows - are very polarised, & entrenched, but it helps me to understand what's what by reading & thinking about it.

You would also have seen above that Microgaming are going "anon" in an attempt to beat the HUD's & help recreationals. (Their words, not mine).

I'm really not sure about anon tables. To me, poker is about reads, tendencies, knowing what your opponent might or might not do. OK, in 3,000 runner fields on Stars we won't know many, but experience is part of the learning curve, & we start to get to know some of them.  I'm really surprised that Stars have let these third party software gizmos flourish.

What did 'Stars eventually do about Mr Hastings, & his co-conspirators, some of whom were 'Stars Pros? I lost track of the tale, & don't frequent 2+2 much. 

Makes me sad that every attempt to give Recs a better chance / fairer game is undermined in a short time period.

HUSNG  HYPER TURBO's

Regs all use a program called Sharkystator. You log into Sharky and it places you in a queue with all other users. when you get to the top of the queue it registers you into a lobby.

the queue is blind [so you cant see who is ahead of you, just your place in the line]. you can set sharky to sit players by using pokerstars colour codes. so you can ask it to sit all players marked 'yellow' and if any 'yellows' sit a lobby then you will jump ahead of anyone who doesnt also have a player marked.

what this meant is regs could hide in the queue and wait their turn to play a recreational without ever having to play a reg. this caused huge waiting times at some stakes. lines 80+ waittimes of 45 minutes between games.
 this lead to the formation of divisions or cartels at each stake. a division is basically the best regs at each stake all agreeing to protect their lobby and sit anyone who is not a member. this was incredibly bad for bumhunters and bad regulars. some people formally playing $200+ now cant play higher than $15's as they simply do not want to play regs / cannot beat the regs at that level. entry into all divisions up to 200's is very clear and simple: you play a set number of games against the division. if you achieve a certain ev roi [can be as low as -1.05%, so you lose only to rake] then you are in and they kick someone out. this means that being the worst reg in the division is an awful place to be. you have to give action to triers and you are constantly targetted by upmoving regs. eventually one of those triers will replace you.

It gets interesting above $200. its worth giving some background to the format here.

HUSNG's remain amongst the most profitable format of the game. once a recrational is at your table there is no option to sit out: you play till one player busts. they are extremely low variance. it is very unusual for a winning player to have a losing month. the variance is around 10x lower than for an MTT player. we can model this using software. the following is a model of 10000 husng regs playing 2k games a month with a 52.5% itm:

(http://imgur.com/CANuKSS)

note that 90%+ have a winning month.

this means that being able to open sit a lobby at higher stakes is incredibly valuable. indeed as a standard the biggest winners at the game have locked their sharskscopes to hide their mirrion $$ giraffes from regs from other formats. one exception is skaiwalkutr. here is his hyper turbo sharkscope:  

(http://imgur.com/W6xytSQ)

the recent tail off is interesting and we'll get to that shortly. but note that that graph was produced by a 51.7% winrate. so he loses a huge amount of his games, but because of that ability to repeat that edge over and over, and the fact that regwarring has lowered his overall ITM but allowed him to play recreationals for huge sums,  he has managed to print $2.2m before rakeback. these games are valuable. and the higher stakes groups arent so easy to bust into. there are no automatic entry requirements, so you simply have to force them into allowing you in by making it unprofibale for them not to - but they have big bankrolls. that means regwarring most of your volume for month after month

hypers, despite the drop off in traffic, remain probably the most competetive format of the game outside of nosebleed cash. because you have to play regs the level of study is ridiculous. GTO simulators are poured over hours on end, the ev of lines discected from every possible angle. a lot of excting theory is coming from these studies. its incredibly competitive.

here is an interview with a british $500 reg, richard chadwick. he failed in his original attempt to get into the $1k group. his nemisis was dan 'mrg33n13' colman of onedrop and highroller fame. he ended up being $145k down to colman alone. such is the value of getting in people will risk insane amounts.

http://www.husng.com/content/interview-richard-chadders0-chadwick-i-stopped-my-1k-shots

recently a very intersting thing happened. 3 $1k regs quit the game - colman being one of them. kiluifiplay, jossel and mrg33n13: three of the biggest bankrolls, most experienced reg-warrers, and 3 of the absolute best at defednign their stakes simply left. this caused something of a bloodbath at the $1ks. people restarted their shot-taking. people from $300s up have been putting pressure on. and even highstakes cash players [tcfromUB being the most noatble example] have been putting volume in.

most interestingly a counter group has been formed, the so called bali-nine. a group of regs decided to band together / live together and study together and try to take the $1k lobbies by force. here are two interviews with a britsh member of group. the politics will astound:

http://www.husng.com/content/interview-1rake1-part-1

http://www.husng.com/content/interview-1rake1-part-2

look again at that skaiwalkurr graph. See the recent tailoff? The slope is one of a player losing to rake. Indeed he has played 7k games this year and won 50.1%. so losing $60k to the rake. His top ten most regular opponents form 4k of those games and are all established regs at $300+. So he has sacrificed 8 months income to keep these players out of his lobbies. [actually he is a boss in other formats, so will still be making money overall + rakeback].
Games in HUSNG’s are very competitive. Bumhunters need not apply

spinwiz follows: if anyone can tell me how to post images i'd be very grateful

How & why do 'Stars allow all this?

To me, poker should be person to person, no software aids, no folks on the rail watching a stream & telling their mates what's what, no skype naughtiness. (Can you imagine what goes off on Skype mid game?).

Imagine 9 players locked in a room. No electronic devices, nothing to reference. Just 9 players using their wits, intelligence, observation, & courage. That's poker. 

Those 2 links are bizarre.

It's a different world.

How exactly do they ban players from playing at a certain level? Do 'Stars gave anything to say on the matter?

I'll stick to my HUD-less tenner SNG's I think. Me & 5 others, may the best man win.

Spinwiz is used by most spin and go regs.

As lobbies are blind you cannot avoid players not using the program like you can with sharkystrator. the queue itself is not blind either. you can see everyone who is currently queueing. more importantly you can sit them, and they can sit you.

some background. Spin and gos are 3 handed games, registration is blind so you click register and you are placed into a lobby and when it has 3 people in it it launches. the ideal situation is for a reg to get two recs on his table. the worst is 2 regs. 1 reg games are profitable.

spin wiz lines the regs in a queue and regs us in seperate lobbies: unless we sit each other.

why would we sit each other? well to move to the front of the queue/ so if you mark a fellow user when they reach the front of the queue you join their tables with one non-user. the same can happen to you if you are marked. wait times at 30's+ without sitting people are unbearable. to grind spin and gos you have to be prepared to play regs. i sit anyone who isnt a HUSNG hyper reg. to a HUSNG player a non HU specialist may as well be treated as a competent recreational, no matter their success in other formats. so 6max, MTT, cash crushers will be targetted if they use the program. non-division members will be targetted by division members and lower divsion members by higher division members. it is again and incredibly competitive enviroment.

there are a number of players huntig me [you can see who is hunting you]. most regs understand that sitting other regs is the only way to get volume. some however get very pissy about it. some are delusional. here is a recent 2+2 post asking about spinwiz:



what he doesnt understand is that he will be marked by just about every HUSNG reg ad many other spinwiz regs that dont like waiting and as soon as he finishes waiting 40 mins for a table he will be joined by a user 99% of the time. again bumhunters need not apply. many would stand a better chance of 2 rec games by manual regging. indeed i manually regged $15s and man reg a lot of my $30 volume. i sit most of the queue at 30s to get volume. most regs are the same.

a lot of the better regs manually reg all stakes which can mean that 3 reg games can be very common.

without spinwiz, a lot of regs would simply use skype to reg at different times it. it would mean more reg v reg game, and very likely fewer regs playing. whether that benefits stars enough to make them ban 3rd party registration i dont know.

it certainly wouldnt impact on me too much atm as i dont always use the program on my grind.

it would likely mean the formation of HUSNG style divisions with the best HUSNG players only allowing HUSNG regs into skype registration chats to avoid each other, and people having to play their way in or else take their chances with random registration. it would still be very profitable to do so given the softness of the games.








  

Sorry to be a pain, & all this is fascinating, but I don't much understand any of it.

Waiting lists? Why are there waiting lists? Why don't more tables spawn?

they dont ban anybody.

but if you open sit they will snap sit you. they simply dont sit fellow memebers.

people are welcome to sit, but they have to then play the best players at that stake.

its like if you saw a dym with jac35, nutter, patwalshh and geradirl already regged, you might not want a seat at that DYM. they arent banning you from playing that table, but their presence means non-recreational players wont be eager.

the same apllies to HUSNGs. knowing dan colman was ready to play you hour after hour was enough to keep most players away.

note this doesnt affect recreationals. they still play regs in HUSNG's as before. its regs that suffer, bad regs especially. and there is zero bumhunting in the lobbies now. you either play regs or dont play. stars have repeatedly said that they dont care for the woes of bumhunters and as long as recreationals can get a game when they want it then they dont have anything to say on the matter.

the age old rule applies: if you dont like being sat, dont open sit.

the waiting list exists only within the 3rd party program. when you get to the top of the list you get registered into a lobby. when they lobby fills and a game is launched then the everybody moves up a place and the #2 gets registered in a lobby.

if you have #1 marked you are placed into his lobby, effectively jumping the queue. hence incentive to sit people

with regard to stars, look at skaiwlkurrr's graph again:

for many years he was earning $500k+.

this year he has lost $60k to rake. and his opponents have done worse as he has won 50.1% of games. stars are making more money than ever through this system. money isnt leaving bankrolls to other bankrolls it is being recycled into rake.

reg warring has expoentially increasesd. i doubt there is another variant of the game where regs put in as much volume against each other than HUSNGs and Spin and Gos. bu especially HU.

games are so much tougher for regs because of it.

competitive enviroments cant be bad for the game imo. and much better than the system that preceeded them, where regs avoided each other and only played recreationals.

Having re-read this thread I just can't remove this image from my mind.

(https://safe2speakhamilton.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/shooting-fish.jpg?w=700)

Don't you play in the DTD 'no pros allowed' game?

You make it sound like recreational players will be eagerly queuing up to get involved but non rec's won't.  This thread really is comical to read.

Fascinating stuff teddy, really interesting read. Are the people that make the software programs like spinwiz poker players? Or just employed by poker players to make these programs as quickly as possible?

recs will be more likely to join a DYM with 4 regs already registered than a reg.

recs will be less likely to even check who is alread registered and more likely to join the lobby 'blind'

i stand by that comment.

its why open sitting is so profitable.

Competitive environments are perfect for the poker sites PROVIDING people are happy to keep playing against each other when they know they can't win long term.  If not volumes just fall through the floor long term and everyone loses.

Not really a thing anymore, if there ever was.

the point is they are sacrificing short term profitability for long-term gain.

HUSNG's are ridiculously low variance for the hourly they provide.

the ability to open sit a lobby is worth risking losing months as the reward for getting in is so massive.

the HUSNG registration software was made by a man called Marko. he is a famously prickly individual who has public fallings out with many players. he is probably one of the most powerful men in HUNSG poker. he withheld a licence from a professional going under the name ph33roX. this meant the player had to give-up playing hypers on stars. as you cannot be in a divsion without it, nor get a lobby without it. this effectively ended his career as a husng professional and he had to learn other formats.

the spat is documented here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/185/heads-up-sng-spin-gos/how-i-got-banned-sharky-1350618/#post39281197

he also fell out with dan colman who was in such a position of power at the top of the 1k tree that he could simply skype his fellow 1k regs and ask them to turn off sharky when he was grinding.

the spat is documented here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/185/heads-up-sng-spin-gos/hu-sng-regs-thread-505302/index7927.html

spinwiz was created by commission by a number of HUSNG regs i believe. they are much more open than marko and have not banned anyone, and have publically stated they will run the program fairly and without bias. an interview with the creator can be found here:

http://www.husng.com/content/interview-spinwiz-owner-and-creator-sander-meister

That's so kind of them. Might write a letter to them as a way of saying thank you.

ridiculous situation where people are grateful for fairness, innit.

If it was genuinely fair, then it would be reason to be grateful.
It may be fair on a Reg v Reg basis, but the whole situation is increasingly unhealthy for recreational players. Just feels rancid.

When did he take over from Camel?  ;)

I find it amazing someone who owns a piece of software can dictate to players who does and doesn't play on a site as big as poker stars.   If these lists were for the good of the game why don't Pokerstars develop them themselves and outlaw anyone else's software?

Good Posts Teddy.

This really confirms what most people have known for sometime , combined with the nonsense and bum hunting that occurs in cash games it effectively leaves tournament poker as the only form of on line poker which is remotely  fair , even then we know there is multi accounting plus MTT positions can be sold and taken over by pros on final tables ( Sorrel Mizzi and Justin Bonomo etc)

If recs etc really knew the extent of " the on line goings on " then I'm sure there would be a massive upsurge in the live scene

the HUSNG registration software has near zero impact on recreationals.

there simply was never a time where you could log onto stars and register an empty $30 hyper-turbo and play anyone other than a reg / professional. the losers have been bumhunting regs many of whom have dropped down to low stakes from high-stakes.

the spin and go situation is slightly different, as it does provide a work-around for the blind lobbies. as 3 reg games are rarer 3 recreational games will be rarer, and the average ability of opponents in games will be greater - at lower stakes anyway. it's likely that they would always play regs higher up due to the smaller rec player pool. if players dropped spinwiz and all manually registered its likely groupd of regs would still avoid each other by using chat groups to reg at different times.

atm as most spinwiz games are launching with two users its likely the effect of the program is proabably mitigated somewhat. but yes the average ability of opponents will have gotten better from the veiw-point of non-users.

again stars can simply ban the software and have fewer regs playing. that is a business decision that they can take.

yah pretty amazing. although technically he can still play on stars, but he just wouldnt be able to play recreationals. thats a choice he has to make. but he is not banned from stars.

the divisions formed as a reaction to sharkystrator. if there was no registration software then the best regs would simply sit the lobbies and everyone else would either have to play them or move down. this would resemble sky where you will see the same 1-3 names sitting an entire stake and until they fill their table limits you have a choice of playing them or waiting for them to leave a lobby open [because they have games running already].

atm 5/6 £105 games on sky are regged by two players. if you want a game you play them. simple. they arent playing each other. likely if i sat there they would sit me as they would want to protect that lobby from a low stakes 'reg'.

http://pasteboard.co/Aost7Qs.png

on stars the presence of sharky allowed people to hide in a queue. the divisions were organised to stop bad regs from doing so.

to stars it makes no difference. games fire off just as quickly for recreationals. its good for the better regs as they get a better hourly. its bad for bad regs as they stop making money.

HUSNG's are brutally fair on all sites and up to $200 limits on stars [where the politics becomes ever increasingly shady].

all the division lists and entry requirements are open.

if you are good enough you climb the stakes. you cannot refuse action. you cannot sit-out once you are in a game.

for a good player there is great incentive to play. and recreationals get a bang for their buck.

most regs have a 51.5-53% itm over large samples.

recs are near flipping for their money in an extremely action heavy intense format

sat 100bb deep in a 6max game that isnt the case.

Why should he have to make that choice?  It is incredible that any poker stars player does not have the absolute right to play any player/game they choose without someone who has no say in pokerstars deciding whether they can or they can't.

I was referring to Spin n Go's.
Spin n Go's appeared to be an attempt to make seating for games more random, so that recreational players could not be targeted, and Rec's could, sometimes, be playing games against other recs.
That is why SpinWiz is rancid, and extremely bad for recreational players.

i agree. i can actually see who is using the software and at what stakes:

looking now there are zero spinwiz users at $1 or $3.

there are two hardy souls using it to avoid each other in the vast $7 playing pool and about 20 @ $15s [completely useless at this level unless you are in a stable imo]

at $30's there are about 60 regs using it

and about 45 regs at 60s and 100s.

to give an idea of action, games take about 40 seconds to fire off from the first person regging at the higher limts . the higher limit regs would simply use skype to register apart.

recs at $30s and 60s are the ones affected by spinwiz atm.

he can though. he can chose to manually regisister a lobby or join a reg at the tables. he has that right.

if stars banned sharkystrator tomorrow he'd be in a better position, but stars dont concern themselves with the needs of regs who want to only play recreational players. as long as recs can find instant action they aint assed. thats their public position on the matter.

personally i find it extremely un-nerving that marko has so much power. its certainly perverse.

So if I was to fire up a $60 spin n go right now it would almost instantly fill with 5 regs who had a piece of software running in the background waiting for someone just like me?

Is it possible they can somehow use this software for dating websites? So a young inexperienced guy can register and instantly be bombarded with hot experienced girls? I think that's where the money's at.

you would be more likely to face 2 regs [if we define spinwiz users as 'regs'] than you would be if the software didnt exist, yes.

that isnt the case below $30's or above $60's

[they are 3max btw]

yeh but huds and workrate are the real problem....


can we also not pretend that live games are all good and healthy with well intentioned people.

c'est la vie.

Hot experienced girls want to date good looking studs with fast cars and lots of money.  Not spotty young inexperienced boys.  In my 25 years of experience in the field!

The young spotty guy here is just another reg who no one is demanding to play.

arrboy, you should start your own dating cartel.

Too old for the game nowadays.  Had my time.  I will leave it to the HUD users. 

Just fired up a $1 spin and go to test this out.

Got smashed up by two HUD using cheats!!!

Never playing again!!!   ;grr;

Fool you once,  shame on us.... fool you twice,  shame on you :-D

Played a $30 spin and go the other day.  Must have been 2 regs that joined me.  Won $180.  Rubbing it on my titties right now.

Unlikely to play another.  Thank goodness the hyper O8s aren't like this.

:D

As of now spin wiz is banned.

https://www.pokerstars.com/assets/common/downloads/tpt-reference-guide.pdf

New rules on 3rd party software...

Blimey.

There is considerable discussion in there as to changes in rules as to HUD's. Are these, in your opinion, meaningful changes?

More widely, will they be able to enforce all these new third party software restrictions?

They shouldn't be meaningful to 99% of hud users as most use non dynamic Huds. Most Hud users are losing players I'd wager, stars probably don't want to affect recreational players who enjoy using them. They certainly won't affect my hud. Might be different for cash regs, I'm not familiar with their Huds. Notecaddy is widely used and a lot of its functionality is now affected I believe. Not sure though

The rules on charts are going to affect many regs, especially sng regs and people in coaching stables (I fall into both camps).

They are easily circumvented by using a tablet or 2nd laptop, but I'd imagine stars can and will monitor people who have consistently precise frequencies or share frequencies with other players. It'd be incredibly risky to attempt to dodge those rules, but high stakes 6max and husng regs especially will have great incentive to do so. They also have the most to lose.

Interesting times.

Why do you think they have made these changes?

Some such as spinwiz to reduce the efficiency of regs.

Much of the software stuff was needed. Datamining, screenscaping scripts that automate decision making, Huds labelling players and  interpreting data for the user go too far.

Protecting the image of the game is important too.

I'm fully behind these changes. Some regs are bitterly unhappy though.

just out

"partypoker plan to level the playing field for ALL players

During the next few weeks partypoker will go another step further with its Poker for the People campaign making improvements to our poker offering to level the playing field for all our poker players.

The ongoing development of sophisticated third party online poker tracking software such as HUDs, seating scripts and the sharing of hand history databases can impact new players and the recreational community who do not have this access.

We are committed to providing fair and ethical poker products to all our players and therefore during the coming weeks the following improvements to the software will be introduced:
1. Players will be able to view the last 12 months of their own hand histories within the Missions icon in the partypoker software however hand histories will no longer be able to be downloaded and saved to local devices
2. Players wishing to wait for a cash game will join the room-wide waiting list and be randomly seated when a seat that matches their preference becomes available
3. Players joining a cash game will see the names of their opponents only once their first hand is dealt

We will continue working with our poker community to develop a mutually beneficial, trusting relationship between partypoker and our players and we believe the changes will preserve the quality of our games. "

GG party. Huds were never the problem, they won't get any more players from this and they'll lose most of their regs. Such a shame.

I think their traffic & results will - in the longer term - improve. There are an awful lot of recreational players out there, &, rightly or wrongly, they'll love this. Party clearly recognize this, & they can see the stats that we can't.

Every site, to a greater or lesser degree, is now embracing this concept.

except stars. Cash game volume on party is already heavily reg based, and this ban will move them to different sites, and the games will die very quickly. The answer was anonymous tables, why that wasn't listened to is beyond me, it keeps everyone happy. Sky already has this ban, and while it does ok, I imagine doesnt have the volume stars do. I mean, as far as I'm aware, sky basically has a monopoly over the crowd who don't like HUDs, and it's player base isn't big enough (as far as I know) to start sharing with other sites.

Lol just logged on to party, and there are 2 games of 50nl running. How is this not gg party? See you on a different site.

I think your sample size might need to be a tad larger, as I wrote earlier

".....I think their traffic & results will - in the longer term - improve......"

The traffic on party had been falling off a cliff anyway.  Surely it is better to try something than just wait to fail like many other big sites of the past did?  

But why, why, why not try anonymous tables instead? What possible disadvantage to that idea is there over this one?

However there are 14 100nl tables, 16 200nl tables and 9 400nl tables running and its only midday. Hardly gg imo

Have party stopped the bots yet? This would be a pretty big disadvantage to anon tables

Loving this!!!

its quite interesting

the pp community thing on facebook is overwelmingly positive

the dtd community thing on facebook is overwhelmingly negative

two slightly different groups of players, with some overlap obviously

9 tables of 200nl running. PP count tables with 1 player sat on them as active in the lobby thing. 15 man wait lists seem pretty good for the game lol. Points 2 and 3 could be interesting but players always manage a work around.

Weird how much NLHE is running compared to PLO.

Also GG tournaments :(

1. Players will be able to view the last 12 months of their own hand histories within the Missions icon in the partypoker software however hand histories will no longer be able to be downloaded and saved to local devices allowing our recreational players to not be able to learn about and analyse their own games. Don't worry though those who consider themselves regs will easily be able to access their hand histories and draw them down into their database..... solid.



Fixed point 1

Does Party software already have an in-client hand history viewer?

This doesn't greatly affect me personally, but I do think it is a poor business decision from party.

The extra traffic that they will gain from the few recreational and live players out there playing an extra two times a week will be minimal and most likely temporary. The loss from the regs who were playing every day and decide to leave will be far greater and permanent.

The sad thing is that party didn't really need to do anything about HUDs. It is already an incredibly soft site and if numbers are falling, it won't be because games are tough and it won't be because of HUDs - the games are more than easily beatable without them.

It's a shame, but I think their volume will take a drastic hit, both tournaments and cash games.

woke up to somebody writing to me on Facebook saying

"Apparently you are going to be publically endorsing PP's HUD decision?"


this is not true. i don't really care either way. i personally will be playing 0 tournaments there moving forward I guess though.

People will find a work-around. They always do...

Lowering rake significantly would have been a more genuine shot at improving the ecosystem.

How would lowering the rake disproportionately benefit recreational players? (which is presumably Party's goal here).

They play less, and do their money anyway. They're also least aware of rake and its effects.

How would removing Huds benefit disproportionately recreational players? They will continue to play and lose their money anyway. They're also least aware of huds and their benefits.

Their money would last longer on the whole, particularly at micros.

I had this idea about rakeback/player rewards. I am sure there is a reason why it would not work, but I just cannot think of a problem with it.

Imagine if rakeback/rewards worked like this:

1. Rake is reduced a bit. So everyone pays a bit less up front.

2. The total amount of rakeback/rewards the site pays out is also reduced (so the site still makes about the same amount overall).

3. Instead of allocating this rakeback based on volume, it is allocated based on how much a player has lost at the tables over that week.

High volume winning regs would lose out a little bit under this system - they would pay less upfront rake but would not get any rakeback if they have a winning week. But weaker players would benefit - they would also pay less upfront rake, but would get a much higher amount of the rakeback since they would have more losing weeks than the winning regs.

So every player who has a losing week will get at least some money back (from the 'rakeback kitty') at the end of the week, and this amount will be in direct proportion to the amount they have lost. The way RB is distributed is changed to reward the losing players rather than the winning high volume players.

Since every player who has a losing week would get a chunk of money put into their account at the start of the next week, this would keep players in the games (e.g. every player who busts their roll gets a small reload the following week for free) and keep the liquidity high.

I cannot think of a reason why this system could not work, and also cannot think why this would not be good for the long-term health of the games. Am I missing something?

Because the HUDs provide a benefit to the players that use them, so removing them means those players win less money, which is of benefit to the non-HUD users, fewer seats in games filled by better players.

Everyone's money would last longer, the effect wouldn't benefit recreational players more than others.

This is the way things are going - the days when a player's value to a site is measured purely by the rake they generate are over. Instead, the amount of money a player puts into the ecosystem (lose) is given greater weighting.

Don't Ipoker already do this?

I don't know about Ipoker, but ongame started this a couple of years ago.  As I saw it, the problem with the ongame redistribution was that they didn't tell anyone the formula.  I think a lot assumed they were just getting less rakeback for no benefit.  Speaking for myself, I just want to know how much rakeback I am supposed to get.  Back in the day, Betfair used to mess it up fairly frequently when it was simple, I just had no trust left when they made the whole system invisible. 

I think flattening the rewards is going to be better than having a secret rakeback system.  So instead of a bunch of multitabling slow coaches getting 70% rakeback, everybody gets the same or the rake just falls for all.  I am not even sure supernova is great for many of those that have it.  You end up playing too many tables, for too long, to keep supernova and your net profits don't really change or get worse.  All the time you are ruining games for others as your decisions seem to take too long to them. 

while there is interest on this thread, can anyone tell me why it is that party poker keeps on going down? I honestly think this is a much bigger problem than any third party software is for attracting new players, if people keep having the site crash mid session and then have to wait a while for the "technical team" to tell them if they're going to get a refund then they aren't going to stick around for long. This isn't a moan, it doesn't affect me as much as others since i predominantly play cash (although it can be pretty annoying), but doing something to lessen the breakdowns seems like a more sensible thing to focus on rather than the evil regs with their cheating huds.

Party dont want to go for anonymous tables because they want a community feel.

Sky has a community feel, no HUD's but it is not a large site because it is only based in the UK.

With party rolling a similar model out to the global market it may have a chance.

I never play online anymore and I am exactly the type of player you want to be attractive, I worry that I will lose to quickly to make it worthwhile and that the gap between pro's to rec's is now to big.

I am not that bothered about HUD's but a lot of rec's are so by banning them you will appeal more to the rec's the games should be targeting towards to the rec's and not the reg's and for to long the reg's have got what they want because they pay a lot of money in rake to the sites when actually that has just been killing the sites slowly from inside.

I think lowering rake and or more rewards for recs and not reg's is a great idea.

Yo

The changes that party are making are not about trying to attract new recreational players, I remember an article written years ago that first mentioned the words recreational and since then, everyone has jumped on this recreational bandwagon.

These changes are about getting poker back to basics  for all players and levelling the playing field for everyone before the cards are dealt and skill & luck take over - NOT trying to stop player X winning etc - in particular those players playing on tablet and mobile (the fastest growth platform) who cannot download hand histories/use HUDs need to play in the same conditions as those players using the download client.

I don't really understand why some players think its a big deal not to use a HUD, the general consensus from HUD users that I have spoken to is that its just data and doesn't give players a massive advantage, so why the big deal for some players I am not sure.

party's stance is not a war on third party software users, they are just making a few tweaks, waiting lists, hand histories become web based and also making sure players buy in/get dealt in at the cash game tables to stop all this stop start / sit out that's been going on.

No third party software is being banned or regulated by party. I don't think these changes really effect anyone except the bum hunter/seating script types who sit in/sit out/waste time/try and avoid posting a blind/watch tables for hours mining hands before they play against you - I don't think most players like playing against these players anyway and these types of players only play a few hands and sit out and are scouring all the sites for fish so they are hardly loyal customers.

I don't see how these changes effect regular, loyal players to be honest. Might also bring a few businessmen fish like me back into the game aswell. I will be opening up 4 tables while betting on the footie. I keep meaning to play on Sky for these reasons as I don't like all this stop start messing about. Sometimes you can be playing heads-up but there are actually always 6 players at the tables but they never play a hand, just keep moving around!

Cheers Rob

You make a great point there Rob - Mobile & Tablet are the saviour of Onliine Poker, the numbers who now use it exclusively are mind-blowing, players would never believe the growth in Mobile during the last 3 years. Without a doubt, it is a game-changer.

You can see why mobile/tablet means recs though right?

Holistic picture means Party have done this for recs. No avoiding that, and it's a good thing.

All sounds pretty positive. Been getting hammered with DTD emails trying to get me to use some $5 ticket for a while, but this news is of more interest so might dabble in a bit of cash again on the iPad.

If I walked into the Bellagio Poker Room in Las Vegas, I could not ask the Card Room Manager, “Who are your worst players? Can you lock me a seat up to the left of one of them? Where do I get the printout of all the hands everyone here has played over the last 6 months? When my juicy seat comes free can you give me a shout, I’m just nipping into Bobby’s Room to take some notes on the hands being played in there!


http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/partypoker-to-implement-software-changes-to-curb-third-party-software-use-27589/

Yet another person who doesn't know how HUDs work, how delightful.

I could not ask the Card Room Manager, “Who are your worst players? Can you lock me a seat up to the left of one of them?

I'm fairly sure if you juiced him enough, he would do just that

You know what? Online games aren't fair anymore.

The full time professionals who log on every day, are lazy, sloppy, don't study, don't check their stats, don't use their hand histories to learn. They don't stand a chance, we will swallow them up, using our HUD greatly benefits us playing against these guys.

The fish? They will be beaten by whomever they play. It doesn't matter. They usually have tremendous leaks that are almost instantly identifiable. If I gk to dusk till dawn and play every night, I will work out what the fish is doing within an orbit, but the young guy in the hoody who looks like he may be a sicko bit is in reality a very bad reg it may take me months to work out.

I'll reiterate, Good players will win and they will cash out. Bad-good players (bad regs) will not be able to win anymore with huds in place and they will churn a lot of rake and not cash out. Fish will continue to lose.

this is more like an onion paragraph. clearly he has never been to a live casino in his life.

U.K. Gambling Commission Announces Review to Look Into Third-Party Software


http://www.pokernews.com/news/2015/10/ukgc-third-party-software-review-23014.htm

"We want to ensure online poker is crime free and children are protected "

What does it have to do with children?

Get the impression from reading much like their dealing with sports books they have similar knowledge of poker.

"Online Poker: The Rise of the Machines" by Rob Yong ahead of the partypoker changes

http://www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/blog.php?profile=4&id=527

party poker

 Following our announcement on 1st October we have today introduced the first phase of changes which are set to level the level the playing field and create a fairer environment for our poker players.

As promised, from today two major changes come into effect:

1. Players wishing to wait for a cash game will join the room-wide waiting list and be randomly seated when a seat that matches their preference becomes available
2. Players joining a cash game will see the names of their opponents only once their first hand is dealt

These changes will help to limit the use of third-party online poker tracking software including HUDs and seating scripts whilst improving the poker ecology for all poker players.

The second phase of changes is to be introduced in the coming weeks - this will mean that hand histories will no longer be available for download but will be viewable only from within the partypoker software.

http://www.onlinepokerreport.com/18491/pokerstars-party-poker-third-party-software-policy/

To be fair to the UKGC their press release is simply announcing review of their regulation of online poker and underage gambling would obviously have be part of that review as much as collusion and bots.

As an aside I can definitely see UK ring-fencing as a possibility if onerous regulations, ie labour intensive, are put in place.

  

Yes there you go Party, this is the biggest thing by a country mile, HUDs is pretty meh really but this is huggggge and this will make the games much nicer to play.

I could write 15 paragraphs on why seat scripts and bumhunting is cancer if online poker compared to HUDs being a graze on your elbow, but everyone just things I'm a disgruntled hud user being bitter!

Seriously this will make a big difference.

Bravo.

A little off imo, the argument that HUDs main benefits come from regular vs regular spots and the irregular recreational player is largely unaffected is...Well sort of true but also sort of not.

In your example you're in DTD playing one table and focusing 100%, as a high calibre cardsman you are correct that weaker players are at a fairly large disadvantage to you in such a spot, without the use of any software and allowing you a hud here (Google glasses maybe!) would actually affect your advantage vs them very minimally I defo agree...

However, let's now assume that you were allowed a magical live poker hud and now you could sit three of the tables and split your focus over 3x the amount of weak players, your advantage over the "recreational players of DTD" has just increased greatly, you are right in saying that they would likely still lose, but they'd be playing the guy in headphones and hoody who is not very good and stand a much better chance vs him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwDoY3lM9So

Dani "Ansky" Stern on tracking software/PA's comments from 1hr25mins.

he makes very good points, which I myself had never thought off, that the PLO bot-ring scandal, which has taken over $4m out of the games was discovered purely by players, using collected data. If the level of data available now was available in the UB days the super-users likely would have been discovered very quickly...

Again I'm not banging the drum for HUD's, just trying to add more elements to the arguments :D