I recently started playing on BCP again after a long hiatus. I've noticed on several occasions that when I was sitting down with someone heads-up to get a 6-max game going, specific players would join the table quickly - very, very quickly. This is despite the fact that I had already been playing all day with those players at many other tables and it was abundantly clear that I wasn't a recreational player. They would then sit out immediately afterwards and leave the table, which confirms the hypothesis that they knew I was a reg and actually had no interest in playing with me. I also joined a second table heads-up just to repeat the experiment and see if it happened again - it did.

The most parsimonious interpretation by far is that these players are using seating scripts and I was simply not yet labeled in their databases as being a reg. There is no other explanation which I can think of which reliably fits that data.

Yesterday I loaded up chat support to verify that seating scripts were, as I assumed, disallowed. After much gnashing of teeth, I was told that they were not allowed, and that this fact had been verified with the rep's supervisor. Before I was about to make this post I wanted to see if I could find written confirmation of that on the website, but here's all I could find:

This is incredibly byzantine language. First off, dropping the term artificial intelligence is useless. AI is not a clearly definable concept, legally or otherwise. There is no clear demarcation between artificial intelligence and complex automation. That is the kind of thing a court would have to sort out, but since we're discussing something that will never, ever be seen by a court, I don't see that using ambiguous terms like AI or robots has any value whatsoever. For there to be any semblance of trust between site and user, these things need to be stated explicitly. Otherwise the site can take any interpretation it wants, and even take interpretations inconsistently if it so pleases.

The next sentence attempts to state it explicitly, but it seems to me to muddle the matter further. Taken literally, I believe that sentence prohibits all software, even HUDs. Looking at a HUD, after all, is an "action in relation to the Game," but it is not something that is "accessible by use of the software." I could see taking a different interpretation, but we are left, again, to quibble over what qualifies as "an action in relation to the Game." Why not just tell us? It would be so much easier!

Then we have the issue of table management software (Stack And Tile, Table Tamer), which most certainly qualifies as banned software under this terminology. However, the poker community as a whole seems to be in fairly resounding agreement that both HUDs and table management software do not have a detrimental effect on the poker ecosystem and that allowing them is ethically sound. How are we to interpret all of this?

To clarify, I got on chat support to ask again about seating scripts in particular. This time I was told that if I could find nothing about them in the EULA then they actually were allowed. I asked him if he could verify what this actually entailed since I'm not a lawyer and maybe I was misinterpreting the EULA, but he just repeated the exact same thing. I told him that he didn't answer my question (grunch, cannot follow basic English, more on this in a moment), and he responded by telling me that his supervisor confirmed that seating scripts WERE allowed. This contradiction, in addition to the fact that he took 0 time whatsoever to "ask his supervisor," leads me to question whether a supervisor even exists at all.

I have one other point I wanted to make which is tangential to this. Live chat support is INCREDIBLY incompetent. I can't believe there hasn't been a serious discussion of this in this forum. I can only think of a few times out of ~40 in which something I said wasn't completely misinterpreted. Frequently they can't even put together coherent sentences themselves. I'm not trying to be elitist or something. I realize I'm incredibly lucky to have the benefit of years of education. I don't judge people for that; I'm judging the site for having such a brainless vetting process that the only skills required for a job like this - the ability to form and interpret sentences - are almost invariably absent. To boot, I have several times gotten contradictory statements from support reps, and I strongly suspect that reps will (sometimes? frequently?) bring up their "supervisor" in an attempt to end the conversation rather than to fix the problem.

Back to the issue of seating scripts - I think the site banning them is obviously the most ethical choice to make. Anyone who's followed what happened at Stars over the past 5-6 years will verify that. The resulting ecosystem is an absolute nightmare. It forces anyone who wants to seriously make a living at the game to invest in the software, as well as improve their computer and internet connection since milliseconds make all the difference. It takes what is already a hostile environment towards recreational players and accentuates it. None of this is interesting or fun. It simply imparts a cost to everyone who plays the game that need not exist.

So here are the pertinent unanswered questions:

1. What third party software is actually prohibited/allowed?
2. Can the EULA be re-written in a more explicit manner to give the players assurance that they are complying with site regulations?
3. If seating scripts are allowed, why? If HUDs and table management software are disallowed, why?
4. Can you PLEASE start hiring a competent support team?

Thank you for reading.

I've been saying this forever

So so tilting

I wish the Russians would all get banned.

I totally agree.

I really appreciate this confirmation...

As a poker enthusiast, I very much would like to see online poker thrive..

I don't mind losing my micro money playing poker.. It is a great down time entertainment value..

I play less becouse on acr it feels like I lose $ under the pretense! of playing poker. The industry as a hole is going in the right direction..

It is not interesting or fun to play under the conditions and environment all these scripts create. It's ridiculous.

First of all it is not a confirmation, it is just an opinion. Second how do you know who is using seat scripts and who is isn't? My guess is that at the level you are playing nobody is. Lastly, you don't have to be a losing micro player. You could learn the game and improve but unless you do so you are CHOSING to be a losing player. Poker is a game about playing against people, seat scripts and huds don't change that fact. so please go away.

Bushwacking recs isnt the way online poker should br played and joining that trash to just have winning sessions is sad and ugly. Tsk tsk, defensive as always Baghdad bob

could be the dumbest post ever on 2+2. if players aren't there to have winning sessions then why are they there? losing takes away any enjoyment from the game and if you say that there are players who don't care if they win or lose then there shouldn't be any complaints on how they lose unless there is cheating involved. and as long as huds and scripts are allowed then there is no problem. quit crying and get better at poker ok.

what a shameful statement... And then we wonder why Bov has so much more traffic than wpn does in US....

Continuing on this track, wpn will never have the necessary traffic for fast fold, nor many upgrades that they need the player base to implement.

So for the people complaining of wpn's software, please get used to the d/c issues, because we are on an endless loop here, having reached the pinacle of a poorly reg-based site.

You guys are not pokerstars. Pokerstars has 30k active at any one time.... The US has maybe 5k these days, all sites combined.. So to replicate PS theme is poorly thought out.

WPN's player pool has been growing for the last year or two; Bovada's has not.

Bovada was in the right place at the right time. Lock had the largest player pool but they self destructed at the same time that Merge started to self destruct. Nobody wanted to play on WPN at that time because of the ridiculous fees that The Beast was taking from the tables back then. There was really nowhere to go but Bovada. Also Bovada/Bodog made deals with Asian companies that additionally increased the player pool. Once a site has a large player pool it is easier to draw customers because players tend to go where the most players play.

I seriously doubt that not allowing multisession HUDs has had much of an affect on the size of Bovada's player pool.

^good post

Bovada's also an extremely popular sportsbetting site which gives them a HUGE advantage over WPN. For comparison, here are the global ranks for each site:

-bovada.lv: 7,804
-americascardroom.eu: 221,212
-blackchippoker.eu: 326,121

The rest of the skins range from close to the millions to well into the millions. You have to be an alexa member to see how large the difference in unique visitors is, but suffice it to say that's an astronomically large difference which is accounted for largely by sportsbetting. Crushing advantage.

Regardless, there is simply no way to assess the effect of Bovada's HUD/multitabling policy because there's no control group. WPN is far from a control group, sportsbetting or not. Furthermore, since that policy only has a sample size of 1 we can't even draw any correlative conclusions.

This sort of thing really makes you think that Stars might have the right idea in trying to shift so many of their games to the zoom format, though I definitely think a large part of the experience is lost with Zoom (with large pools, you don't get to learn about and battle other individual players nearly as much).

Perhaps for high stakes, the ideal would be normal tables to start with, then zoom-type functionality to allow more to join when it becomes 6 handed+. Seating scripts could still exist, but would not nearly as useful.

I've posted before about how completely awful live chat is. For the most part, many others agreed but then mentioned call-in support is much better. As you mentioned, chat is literally useless often making your problem worse by providing wrong information. I was hopeful when I saw a survey after a chat session with support, but I haven't seen any improvements after months. Considering how bad chat support is, they should either discontinue offering it or improve it to the level of dial-in support.

i always enjoy how they ask us our username to start the convo, like they have no idea whos on the other end

WPN has been growing for the last year and bovada has not? Bov still has 1.5x-2x regular player pool that WPN holds.. So I know there's some rumor articles about that, but it's actual validity, I would question.

WPN has grown in terms of total registered users, sure, because of their continuous overly generous overlays. But in active regular users? Doubt it's by nearly as much. The reason there's as many tables as there are is because of the atmosphere that their structure sets, in many players contributing to 6-12 tables simultaneously

The beast is still arguably one of the worst factors of WPN's community. Fast fold does remove some of the more personalized learning that you'd do in regular tables... But the 24-tabling that the Beast caters to makes things infinitely more unpersonal


Still,
What a shameful statement, which holds very much true in the system that WPN has in place for its players.

The pokerscout numbers are calculated using the cash games, so tournament overlays don't factor into it whatsoever. The Beast and rakeback have always encouraged multitabling on WPN, so nothing has changed in that regard. Yet the reported player pool for WPN has dramatically increased. Whereas the Bovada player pool has been declining.

A preponderance of multitablers certainly doesn't make the site any less personal than anonymous tables.

HUDs are part of the online game. Currently, everyone has an equal opportunity to learn how to use them. Banning them would just make them exclusively available to those who are tech savvy enough to use them anyway. Although, their effectiveness is way overblown by the players who fear them.

Just regurgitation the same information over

OK. U right, keyboard warrior, enjoy your network

Alexa is a terrible source to measure how big and how much traffic a site gets. I have a website that, according to Alexa, rivals Winning Poker Network... somehow I think that's incorrect.




vs



WPN +100 going into the slow season
Bovada - 500 going into the slow season

WPN +17%
Bovada -28%


--
Kahn

I second everything in OP.

Here we are, almost 3 weeks later. No response in this thread. I have PMed both Winning TD and WPN Rep asking for a comment and haven't even gotten the time of day. Awesome precedent guys.

They don't comment on anything but advertisements and minor, easily fixed issues.

u mean ROW