"The Online games are not fair anymore"

[Young_gun]

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

[NEWY]

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.

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

[teddybloat]

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]

[collster]

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.

[teddybloat]

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

[GreekStein]

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

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

[Rexas]

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.

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

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.

[Rexas]

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.

[NEWY]

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?

[Rexas]

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"

[NEWY]

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

[NEWY]

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?

[Jamier-Host]

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.

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.

[muckthenuts]

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.

[Woodsey]

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.......

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?