Quote:
Originally Posted by oracle3001
This surely has to be against TOS, given Skier's HUSnG system for preflop charts via voice search was banned by Stars.
This is a great question and something we thought long and hard about before even beginning development of the product. Ultimately, the conclusion we came to and stand by is the following:
From A Philosophical Standpoint
Solver Buddy is a tool which provides you with solver-produced information while you are playing. It does not provide you with any information which could not be accessed via a hand matrix or a collection of spreadsheets - tools which many (dare I say close to all) of the best players have and continue to use during live play. The innovation of Solver Buddy comes not in the information it provides you with, but rather the speed and ease with which you access that information. It does not in any way gather information without human input, in the same way that opening a hand chart does not utilize information automatically gathered from your tables. The distinction between Solver Buddy and any other tool should be defined as the distinction between how quickly your thoughts can produce results on the screen, and no information can ever be displayed without every single search term being inputted by a human being, with no exceptions.
From A Practical Standpoint
I would argue that the information above should be enough to solidify this tool's standing as an acceptable aid for players - a glorified hand matrix. Unfortunately, the answer is not necessarily that clear cut because every poker site defines its terms of service differently and has complete domain over which products they allow for use and which ones they don't. We did much research into the top 20 most popular poker sites around the world, and personally concluded that our product would very likely
not be considered a terms of service violation on those sites. That being said, we cannot and will not make any claims about whether or not this tool violates the terms of service of any specific poker site, because, well, quite frankly many poker sites do not have have a history of clear cut rules and predictable judgements.
This brings me to the final point, which is that even though we believe this tool clearly falls into the category of acceptability, we do not answer to any poker site. The tool will remain active regardless of which poker sites deny its use, because there will always be sites where its use is acceptable. It is not our responsibility to moderate where a tool (which simply displays information) is used, and we will never monitor our user's activities outside of the site (e.g. what poker site they are playing on). It is at the discretion of each individual user which site they use the tool on, but ultimately we do not believe there is much to worry about in this regard given the careful care we took to ensure the tool is based entirely on human input and displaying information that is otherwise already accessible. The tool can also be used on mobile devices to great effect for those who do not wish for their activities on the site to be monitored in the background, although under no circumstances do we condone using the mobile site on a separate device to evade the TOS of a poker site.
