Was this because they had decent knowledge of HUDs and how they were used by a large amount of winning online players and thought this was unfair?

If the answer isn't yes I'm not sure how banning HUDs will help, lots of recreational live players will never trust online poker.

I haven't read the tread much...will Nevada sites allow multi-tabling?

so its cool to put razor blades in boxing gloves or play hockey with a shotgun to perform better?

government should ensure that the games are fair and the money is safe

sites should regulate the small stuff. in my opinion games should be like old party days with only a few tables of each limit being able to be opened, a relatively low maximum on how many tables someone can sit at at a time, no hu tables ever (or anonymous hu tables), no PTR type of stuff ever, no huds/poker tracker type stuff. an ingame support button where you can just click it and highlight a certain hand or chat would be helpful. it would also be nice if rakeback was built in and didnt require using some potentially shady affiliate

I think we should just go back to the days where no computers are involved. There's just no way to make it exactly like live poker so why even try.

IMHO, I would not play on a site that did not offer me my hand histories. One for me to analyze my game and for me to review any suspect or team play to report back to the site. And if you can get the hand histories on your computer you can create a HUD by reading the hand histories. Besides, most fish that play online are too afraid to play live with other players or are looking to play in smaller games then they offer in casino rooms. If it is legalized here in the US then it will be properly regulated which will ensure the integrity of the game for the fish and they will come!!!

you don't need hand histories for a HUD

Also, on Bovada's anonymous tables, you get to download your hand histories 24 hrs after playing (no names). I kind of like that idea if you're a site trying to slow down HUDs

i think anonymous tables might be the may of the future. i think this might be better for the games.

The problem with anonymous tables is that the players can't detect collusion between other players as easily. They have to rely completely on the site to detect it.

Definitely a collusion and bot problem on Bovada right now.

It has always been a problem there.

If Internet poker gets government sanction and wide open access for American players, there will be a TON of potential players and revenue.

The "pro" online players are only a small percentage of that number of customers, maybe less than 1%.

The key for the new sites to make money will be reputation and fairness. In all likelihood, multi-tabling will probably be out. If that is the inclination, I doubt that it can be lobbied for.

There should also be strong countermeasures against multiple accounts and collusion, and those could eventually be serious crimes rather than rascally little nuisances. Statistical analysis, especially when you remove mulitabling, would be surprisingly effective, as well as IP tracking, etc, including the possibility for security or LE to cross reference poker accounts, facebook, cell phones, GPS, IPs, etc.

As for HUDs, they are less essential if you're not multitabling. There can be online player databases, although there's nothing to say that the sites have to give all the hand history data on a silver platter, making it simple to accumulate. They could easily encrypt it so that players can only get their own hand histories, or they could spew vast amounts of "decoy" hand history data, so that let's say on the client computer there is a key of some kind, that decodes and separates the relevant data, but otherwise it is swamped with nonsense data. The hand history data could be viewed on a viewer of some kind, but couldn't just be parsed into raw data and stored in database and accumulated etc. Those involved playing on a table could be put into a secure connection of some kind also, so that only those playing have access.

I'm not exactly sure how those shark sites get data, but it seems probable that you could prevent them from scraping or intercepting data to build their profiles, or from tracking specific player's across multiple sessions. There's no reason for the sites to cooperate with shark or tracking sites or software, there's no reason to make that data public, and it could be swamped with tons of decoy data possibly.

I mean, a hypothetical comparison would be, how easy would it be for a software company to build a software that, if you just type in the person's Facebook username, you could get a comprehensive listing of all their actions on Facebook, dating back to forever.

So, hey, I meet so and so on Facebook. Hmm. Ok, let's go to "Facebook Shark." I type in so and so's Facebook username, and I am presented with a comprehensive tracking database of all so and so's activity on Facebook.

I always felt that this was a rather absurd information leak on the poker sites... possibly they got pressured into this somehow, on the pretense that the information has to be out there for transparency and fairness. However, with the new "lotto" type government poker sites, or Vegas style, or however that plays out, I would expect the exact opposite trend.

Actually at first it might seem like an awesome idea, but its much easier to collude and have bots at anonymous tables.

Security protocals for many companies require users to switch their passwords every couple of weeks or every month. Why not do the same thing with online poker. Require users to change their usernames every month and you limit the effectivness of HUDs while still making detection of collusion possible for players.

This seems sensible enough to me. Regardless of how it's done, I feel that it is imperative that HUDs go the way of the dinosaur. Anyone who argues in favor of HUDs is doing so out of greed.