I agree that it has a downside. It's the price for not allowing huds/trackers/datamining though - hand histories are a big part of how they work.

One of the good things about going stand-alone is that we get to have our own game security department and we can put the right resources into it. I've not been involved in that side of things yet, but hopefully I will do later on (I was the first guy to join the collusion investigation team at PokerStars in ~2005: before that there was just one guy doing it by himself, and little in the way of automation to catch cheats).

A big way that PS catch colluders is from players mailing in complaints. Most of them turn out to be mistaken, but quite a lot of people are caught that way. I strongly suspect that a lot of sites don't do anything about player complaints, whether on 2 + 2 or by email. They say "we looked into it and found nothing" without doing anything. We won't be doing that.

Incidentally, I remember when a guy joined PS support back in maybe 2005 again. He used to work at Paradise, and said that the admin tools only allowed their security department to look at the last 100 hands of a player (which would be useless anyway, you need several thousand to catch colluders almost always). If someone colluded then played another 100 hands, there'd be no evidence. So they'd just mail back saying "we looked at their play and didn't find anything". I strongly suspect that's how most sites operate.

u said, hem/tracker rnt supported.

is it generally ? does no gamehistory.dat-file exists?

I dont care if I am not able to use hem online, but if an offline-using isnt supported too, unibet dies for me.

Nope, it won't work offline either I'm afraid.

wow, so its worse than microgaming-network.

so.. u focuss only hobbyplayer/casinoplayer without a winning-orientation. only donks and fishes.
but the fishes wants the competition and so you only get the donks from the casino. good night.

an... everyone who plays poker... wants to win.. and the most of them wants to improve their skills too. (hobbyplayers too)

soo, i wish u LUCK for the future and goodbye. withdrawal approved.

We have nothing against winners. But we want everyone to be on a level playing field, which means no huds or trackers.

By having softer games, we make life better for the winning players too.

With screenname changes hallowed and no hand history to track colluders, it's gonna be gangsta's paradise! Tell me why are you so blind to see, that the ones you hurt, are youuuu and me.

I agree with your opinion : same lvl for all. (I always play without hud).

But i dont like the fact, that nobody has the option to review hands offline !!

And i always review hands offline.

PS. By having "softer" games, u will increase your profit !! other facts r pretenses.

and thats the point : you want jam on it, thats all.

As Info.

8034 players are online, right now. (microgaming-network)

4985 players are attending to a freeroll mtt - pricepool 200€.

What do you think will be the effect of your "stand-alone"-network

So easier cheating by collusion and botting is merely "a downside"...
I think rec players worry the most about "cheating and collution" and not about huds/trackers/datamining.
At least thats what I heard from rec players live when we talked about internet poker.

So how is the "level playing field" working if cheating is easier?
Is it okay that the rec players are ripped off by cheaters and not by playing with players who play by the rules?

But here comes the game security department to the rescue:

Thanks for the excursion into internet poker history and telling us how "most sites operate".
That might be even true btw...

So Unibet game security department will work as good as the PS one WITHOUT the help of the players?

The players will still email in(as you said) but this time it will be complaints that dont have any evidence as the players dont have hand histories to prove their point.
There will be even more complaints because at least the professional players will know that your hand history free room is the perfect enviroment for cheaters.
So you`ll get many complaints without any evidence that your security department has to handle while being as good as PS but without the player community.
Seems to be very expensive to me...
But Unibet has to pay that price if your level playing field doesnt consist of rec players and cheaters.

Why dont you have that fantastic security department AND the help of the poker community for the best possible security of all players rec or not?
Well thats maybe merely "a downside".
Which means that you deliberately dont have the best security possible.

I can see arguments about bumhunting but having no hand histories is very dangerous imo.
At least I wont play at such a place.

Hand histories will be in the client but they won't go back very far. You can do immediate reviews of hands, but not of hands from last week (etc).

I'm quite surprised to see a complaint that the games will be softer. Obviously we don't deny that we want to make more money from poker. We can do that by keeping weaker players alive for longer. Everyone wins except bum-hunters.

As for liquidity, of course we'll have less than we currently do, at least when we launch. But that's not the be all and end all. Once you have a few games at each stake running around the clock, liquidity is sorely over-rated (except as a measure of how much the site is making).

The only exception is in tournaments, and nobody can compete with PS' liquidity there. We can compete on other things instead though. For example, a higher percentage of our players will win tournaments on our site than they would on PS, and in a lot less time. We can offer promos that they can actually win at too.

Finally - collusion. I would guess that 99% of colluders that PS catch are done with their internal investigations (and let's keep in mind I worked in the collusion investigation team at PS). The number's a lot lower for many other sites because they don't try to catch colluders. I don't doubt that on many sites, player reviews of hand histories account for a larger proportion of the colluders caught. That doesn't apply to us because we will be trying to catch colluders - those sites don't.

Very few colluders have been caught by players using extensive hand history analysis on sites that actually do their own investigations. In 99% of collusion cases you need to see several hundred hands with all the holecards revealed - no player hand histories doesn't make a difference there. Incase there's any confusion - we'll be able to review hand histories. The histories are available to the site, but not to players.

When a player mails in to report collusion, the site doesn't rely on them pasting hand histories to prove it. That's very weak evidence. Instead, the site will go and look at the hands played between those two players (and any others that look related to them). That is how they prove a case. Players not being able to paste hand histories won't change the investigation process.

Finally, let's also keep in mind that players can't table select. To collude you need to be at the same table as the colluder. If you can't table select, that becomes a lot harder.

Sciolist bots become way more sophisticated than they used to be in 2009 or whenever you used to work for the security department. So your claims are nothing more than just spin off. I mean I understand why you do what you do and lets be honest that it will be bot heaven so stop prettending that it won't be.

simple example of bots rings at midstakes :
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/56...ngame-1112918/


http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/56...games-1122426/

and we are talking here about midstakes + bot ring that probably took several milions $ out of the ecosystem. (wouldn't be suprised if they were heavily involved on Microgaming and bodog given the anonymous tables).

BTW there was another simmilar bot ring on stars that wouldn't get caught if not midstakes regs cooperation to catch them.

So your involvement several years ago in Stars security department isn't really an argument. We were talking here about 2011 when already bots were crushing midstakes they have gotten better for sure till then.

I do understand your arguments and reasons for changes but at least stop pretending that you will/can do anything about bots because it isn't true.
Some sort of honesty won't hurt and it is clear downside that without players support you won't be able to do anything about it.

First, bots are obviously a big threat. It's one that we take seriously. I remember a few years ago at PS when a regional head asked where we thought the industry would be in five years. I spent my time talking about bots getting better and getting harder to catch.

I disagree that you can't do anything about bots though. I also disagree that there's anything players can do that the sites couldn't do themselves. No site is going to catch every bot, but they can catch a lot of them. Being smaller is actually an advantage here - the bot authors will spend less time trying to write for your site as there are fewer games.

Plus when I say I suspect a lot of sites don't do anything about bots, I'm pretty much thinking of those kinds of threads you linked.

oh, every pokersite is able to take bots out of the game, easily.

temper random popup with a countdown/a button on a random place - and u have to click on it.
if the button wont be clicked within 3 chances by the player, the account would be logouted, and closed instantly.

PS did that (or still do?) where you get a catchpa when the automated software suspects someone of being a bot. Bots can probably get around it - I believe most common catchpas can be machine read quite often now, or by using mechanical turk or similar. So it wouldn't be a cure-all, but it could help.

Having just a button wouldn't work very well because once the author knows what it looks like they just have to add it to the screenscraping routine. But I guess we're digressing now.

Sorry man, but you are wrong.

I understand what Unibet is trying to do.

But wouldn't it be enough to ban players that continue using a hud even though you tell them not to?

How are we supposed to know that everything is run legit if there are no downloadable hand histories. Like the UB/AP-scandal for example. (Not that I'm implying that anything strange is going on at Unibet. I only have positive experiences from Unibet)

There's no easy way for a site to tell if someone's using a hud or tracker. I should also point out that the UB/AP scandal broke essentially because someone at UB support mailed the hand histories out with holecards revealed. That's what made the case.

When you are looking at sites traded on the stockmarket like Unibet, particularly those where poker makes up ~5% of its business, you are going to be much safer from that kind of scandal. The company has huge incentive to make sure it isn't happening due to legal and economical constraints.

Thanks for clarifying! The way you put it at first, I was afraid that they won't be available even in the client. Storing them for some time (up to 3 months) but making them hardly readable by tracking soft (e.g. making the player to click several links to access the HH, representing cards graphically and so on) is a compromise variant already adopted by some recreational-oriented poker sites. It does look more satisfactory than total absence of HHs - at least one can review their recent play in order to improve (that's what I was missing on Instadeal fwiw).

pokerstars is able to see very easy which person uses permitted software and which doesnt.

they have access to the "task manager".

every software has a different operating-file.

so u definitely could find out , which player uses permitted tools.

but I think... ure not able to do it. the it-knowhow and the software r the problems.

That isn't hard to get around - rename your hud to explorer.exe or whatever.

I have no idea if PS still do this by the way. I strongly suspect they don't, at least in a lot of the regulated markets.

The other option would be to take a screenshot of their desktop, but that has the same kind of regulation implications (it's not exactly privacy is it). Not to mention that's not too hard to get around either by overlaying the hud on a virtual machine or similar instead.

so from today.. ladebrokes.. left microgaming..
next one is unibet......

which is the next page ? :/

I think Party losing half it's playerbase in a few months kinda shows what happens when there are no recreational players...

Juk

Yes. Unibet is a company that's trying to make money. That's pretty normal. Actually that's the sole purpose why the company exists. They get paid better if their games are fun to play and people deposit money there. Using the argument "You are just trying to maximize your profit!" has zero value. Noone wins money in an atmosphere where regs are just passing blinds to each other, occasionally stacking the lonely fish who is never going to return. Yeah, maybe the regs make an odd dollar now and then, but they are hardly earning anything significant. Look at iPoker. If you can find two or three 6-max tables at .25$/0.50$ at the peak hours with flop% higher than 15%, you can consider yourself extremely lucky. The tables are full of -3bb/100 nits/bots who make marginal profit through their 60% rakeback. Noone wants to deposit to a dead site, especially the recreational players who get no action in return for their money. So who's going to pay your winnings?

The life of a heavily multitabling rakeback whores will be much harder. Is there actually anyone who is going to miss the anti-skill guy who is 3-betting 3½-4x to avoid post-flop poker because he has never had any initiative to learn to play just because he can make marginal profit through a backdoor(=rakeback) that was never intended to be the primary way of winning money?

Although I've used my fair share of tools and own quite a few of them myself, I like the idea of not having hand histories, HUDs or table selection. This should make poker more enjoyable when you can't make most of your decisions based on stats and you actually have to win your money through playing poker. The part that people like Ivanhoe fail to realize is that every cent that the winning players win, comes from somewhere. It doesn't come from regs passing blinds to each other and paying rake. It comes from the deposits of the weak players. If the site has almost none of those, the regs will have their supply line cut as well. Besides, if you really are there to make money, aren't you happy that the weak anti-skill HUD whores lose 90% of their ability while you retain most of yours if you know how to play, ending with you stacking them? And in case they leave, the recreational players will remain. You should be able to beat them without a HUD right?

Why is everyone whining that the people who are the cancer of poker, are going to have to ****ing learn to play finally? Anyone who has ever played a hand of live poker knows that poker once used to be more than looking at a stat from your HUD. Geez, there was a time when you actually had to see flops. There was even a time when you considered whether to bet on the flop, check-raise or check-fold it. Nowadays, you look at the HUD, see how often the opponent plays the different scenarios, do the one that looks the most profitable and do it without any reads. These players are not good poker players. They just know how to use the HUD and how to minimize the skill gap by forcing preflop poker.

I think it's a fine idea to try to revive online poker. And unlike Ongame Network, I hope this isn't done through making an unplayable software. Everyone(especially the fish) wants a software they can enjoy playing if they are to play in the site more than once or twice. I do not know what the software will be like, maybe someone wants to post a video or a few screenies?

The same is true about the VIP system. A system like Ongame's "essence" does not benefit anyone. Everyone(especially the bad players) overestimates their skill level and nobody want to be treated like an idiot. People just don't buy the "Hey, you're a losing player. We'll compensate that a little bit if you come to lose your money on our site!" business model. Unfairness doesn't appeal to anyone. I have no clue what Unibet's new VIP system will be like, but hopefully it won't be like that, because it's not going to do any good. The fish rather make their first ever deposit to a site of other winning players like themselves. Noone really deposits money with the intention of losing it. Things just turn out that way. Most of the time, of course, the player going broke with his 2 buy-in bankroll just got unlucky and might be convinced to re-deposit to win it back.

Another point I have to make: Make a minimum buy-in of 40-50 big blinds. Short stack poker is never fun for anyone. The short stack system is incredibly easy to learn, and just like the above things, it does no good to the games.

Yet another thing: The only valid place for playing Sit'n'Gos has been PokerStars for a while now, because their rake is so low. It simply makes no sense to play in a site that charges 10% rake for a hyper turbo tournament. The SNG action is going to die very quickly if that's the case. Do not make this mistake thinking that "the recreational player isn't going to notice."

Also, can you, Sciolist, sum up how the things will be? Primarily the following things:

1. How will the VIP system be? Anything special like Ongame Essence that we should know about? How high are the maximum returns, and how much playing it takes to get there?

2. Is there a reason to make an account now with the old system? Will the old deals be nullified? If I find a rakeback deal now, is that going to be a losing bet? Will I get double deposit bonus if I deposit now, and deposit again after the network change?

3. I assume the rake is going to be weighed contributed. Correct me if I'm wrong.

4. Will there be an iPad application?

5. What's the exact date of Unibet moving?

+1

At the moment, SNG rake is under 10% (and a lot under for headsup)

Good idea and I'm sure we'll do it, but it may have to wait til next month. I'll go organise something.

I prefer to not go into the details until we're closer to launch. I submitted the finished VIP scheme near the end of last week so it's close to finalised but not done yet. If you remind me in the new year I'll see what I can get permission to post.

It doesn't have anything a la Essence. We do have a redistributionary promo, but much more is spent on the VIP scheme.

The top end is higher than the top end currently at MGS. The amount of play is pretty comparable but I can't directly compare without going into lots of details because the current Unibet scheme works on a weird combination of weeks, months, USD and EUR.

Yup

Yes but I'm not 100% sure when it's out. I think it'll be a bit after launch. We had tablet in mind throughout the design, so it won't just feel tacked-on.

That's not public yet I'm afraid. I'll post it in this thread when it is. It will be in Q1 2014 though.

I'd guess MGS will lose 10-15% their playerbase with Ladbrokes leaving, so that won't be terminal.

and whats about unibet ? they will leave in january 2014

We're bigger than Ladbrokes but I probably shouldn't go into any more detail than that. MGS will still be alive though.