there is little to no support for no hud anymore, the case being pretty closed. the hud could become standard for all players, showing how many percentage of hands someone plays, how often he raises preflop and how often he bets the flop, and that looks like enough. when i dont use hud, i need to pay more attention to basic things like that.

if hud would be banned, i would need to consider not playing at stars, so i can focus on smaller player pools. personally, i am a one to two tabler, do observations, and its possible i might do better if there would be a ban on huds, meaning also no hand histories maybe, whatever might still make it possible for others to use a hud or whatever. i do already better currently than the multitabling players and the hud makes my play easier and less energy is used for those basic things and i get to focus more on deep and subtle factors.

so, i am not saying no hud would make me any happier, or even drop my tables from 1 or 2 to just 1, as i have played 2 tables often without a hud. but the hud is here to stay, counting out just some sites that have changed it back to hud or dont have action because of no hud.

If you don't want HUDs go to a casino!

It's cute when people post their wants and cares for the game when they're so unrealistic. Do some research about computers and the internet why if you remove one thing, people will just find away to bring it back.

If HUDs were actually made illegal they would still exist.
Unlike bots, HUDs can and would be developed very easily to not be detected by sites.

The biggest concern that should be in this thread is for eliminating sites that offer databases on players. Eliminating the ability to observe tables that you are not playing at and suggesting laws for pokersites to add to their terms of service that you must not share hand histories.

LOL

Yeah, exactly. There are a lot of people saying various things that they feel. Some people feel that poker is harder, some people feel that it isn't, some feel that HUDs are ruining the game, some feel that they aren't and so on.

A whole lot of the other forums on this site are entirely dedicated to solving mathematically questions. If you went in one of the other forums and said that you feel that folding AA when all-in preflop on the first hand of the WSOP ME was the right thing to do, people would laugh at you... and someone would link to the math proving the cost of folding AA in such a situation.

However, the Internet Poker forum (and some of the other places on here where this issue is discussed) don't seem to have had much progress on this issue over the ~8 issues that I've been a member here... and I think it's because there's little objective measurement of these issues. I think that this discussion goes around in circles because there's no good consensus on how to measure this stuff.

i "feel" that PokerScout is no good measure either ;-)

how could it be turned into one?

who decided not to do so?

withholding the numbers and then crying foul when people can not back up their claims with hard numbers is a bit weirdish, isn't it?

I don't see a lot of people claiming it's difficult to determine whether the number of players has increased or decreased, because it isn't. And that doesn't appear to be what Josem was talking about:

Josem is talking about measuring whether the games are harder, and PokerScout numbers are never going to tell you that.

I agree, HUDs are here to stay whether they are legal or not. PokerStars, though, has in fact gotten rid of some of their info being datamined on sites like Sharkscope, which I think is a good thing.

For me, allowing HUDs is a no brainer. We've seen recently at Bodog that a number of their executives conspired to embezzle money from the company. What exactly is keeping their tech guys from conspiring to superuse and cover that up? They don't even need to superuse to get an edge at that site. They just need to be able to identify players from session to session to get a big edge. Who's going to be the wiser? It was personal databases that exposed the cheating at UltimateBet and I'm certain that it will be personal databases that will ever allow players to know that cheating has taken place on any site.

mme, I really feel that you're trying to be unreasonably personal towards me and my posts in this thread. I haven't said anything that is even the least bit controversial here, and I don't understand why you are being repeatedly sarcastic towards my posts here.

I'm not withholding any numbers. You have now made two posts in this thread suggesting that I have some sort of connection to PokerScout or have access to some sort of "behind the scenes" of PokerScout. I don't have any inside information on PokerScout. Even if I did, I don't even understand why that would be the least bit relevant to this thread.

To be frank, this issue has been discussed over and over for many years in this forum because it (basically) involves people making various assertions about what they think and what they feel. I genuinely believe that this discussion has the best chance of progress (and getting what the OP wants!) if it becomes more objective and subjective.

2p2 basically revolutionised the whole game of poker, first with their published books and then with these forums, because people moved beyond talking about their feelings and started dealing in hard numbers. Prior to 2p2 coming along, the premiere poker strategy book (Super System) seriously discussed using ESP as a legitimate strategy to read the brain waves of opponents!!!

In every other forum on this site, similar progress was made on understanding the game of poker because of comprehensive objective data analysis.

I think the point you're getting at is that you don't see people watch some poker on TV, deposit and then decide to play 200NL because silly 5NL is not "real money." Even if seating scrips and bum hunting was somehow neutralized, such as going all Zoom like PS high stakes or by random seating, a new player at a table will always become a mark.

But even if you go full out with anonymity and no HUD (Bovada DOES have a HUD, although a crappy one), if you one or two table and watch the players, then new/bad players are pretty apparent in just a few hands.

I think the real issue is that, some years ago, players could buy in for 100NL and they could actually do alright because there would actually be many other new players who also bought in. Tom Dwan said that he made all sorts of money back then, but looking back he actually played pretty terrible, just less terrible than the other players. The players now are just much better and there are many fewer fish. As long as the game is being played on the Internet, in any form, this will remain an issue. Only thing that could change is that regs get tired or find something that's more profitable than reg vs. reg and the reg/fish ratio will go back in the other direction.

Wow is there really yet ANOTHER anti-HUD thread? Op i dont guess you know where the search function is, since there's at least 4 of these threads already with the exact same arguments.

well, read the subject. OP is shooting at a broader target.

@josem
don't you think that sarcasm is ok when it gets us some information? or think of it the other way around: sarcasm is an indicator of not enough signal coming through the lines.

merry x-mas btw.

what about ways to curb predatory behavior? i'm not bothered seeing players that beat me often but i won't play when sometimes even two players literally stalk me from table to table and even wait to get position on me and just aggro the **** out of me.

you should be able to just opt out of having your stats that readily available, maybe not completely off the books so people e.g. can't auto decide an approximate bet size i'm likely to fold on the turn to.

honestly i would probably play more often and take way more stabs at higher stakes if i didn't feel like half a table are complete strangers to me but they have me sort of figured out. it sounds like i'm complaining but i'm not, i decided i'd rather play Bovada and deal with the issues that come with anon tables than deciding if i need to put the same tools into action back at them.

fwiw, i tried the trial of iHoldem (macfag) and it just doesn't seem like it's worth the $99 at all, i do want to look into getting something to analyze my hands/history to plug up leaks but that's a question i'll take into the correct forum.

Fwiw, you are worrying too much.

He was probably betting that turn the same amount vs any opponent most of the time, and a HUD probably had nothing to do with the amount he bet the vast majority of the time.

i've been playing Bovada now avoiding HUD players but the fact is i should just suck up and buy pokertracker and join in, it can only benefit me in every way. i still keep the opinion of wishing we had some control over who sees what but in the end it all comes down to ability to adapt and exploiting the other guys weakness, so if i can figure out a way to use my stats as a strength

I am pro-choice on HUDs.

Traditionally, across all businesses, market share has a weak positive correlation to product quality, not a strong one.

Yeah, I agree totally in this instance, because we're only seeking to measure one aspect of this (and not all the other things that go into poker site quality such as service, security, reliability, etc). What metric do you think would be better?

OP,

Time to retool your game so you can feed off the guys that feed off the recs.

Im the type of player that all the "sharks" like to have at their table. I don't play often, but when I do I play for action. I use to play online when it was available, but quickly lost faith when I would lose consistently on the turn or river. I mean there were calls that would never have been made in a live setting, but because of all the huds and collusion going on, I was at a huge disadvantage sitting at any online table. I would play a handful of times a month, never cashed out. However, when I played live, I at least would have winning sessions , some big, but im a losing player overall. When online poker does come back, I will not play until there are advances in technology that protect the players from huds, bots and collusion. huds can be eliminated entirely, collusion on the other hand can never be fully abolished, but measures can be put in place to prevent and detect it. I speak for many action players, don't have a problem losing, its losing when the odds are against you to start.

there is already a well established measure: amount of friendly chatter.

hope you guys backed up the logs regularly ;-)

I don't accept that eliminating HUDs would eliminate 24-tabling regs. They would still play.

OP is correct. HUDs make a huge difference. I'm only a Rec player but I still log 60k hands a month just playing zoom on an iPhone. To say that you can't pick up enough data on recs is rubbish. There would be plenty of recs who log decent volume.

I have absolutely no doubt I get owned playing without a HUD and know for a fact I would have a greater win rate if I could use one ( I 24-tabled for 6 years with a HUD in the past but quit 2 years ago).

I support OP 100%

Heh, so playing Zoom without a hud against people playing with a hud would result in you'd getting owned? How enlightening...

The point is everyone has access to the same tools and those that work harder with those tools stay above. The internet game is different than the live game. Play live if you don't want your stats tracked and wish to play against cush opponents.

why can't Huds be optional?

if a player wants them, then others can see their data. if a player chooses not to make their data available, they can't see other's data.

ban all software