Thanks Dave, I understand what you meant now

Yeah thanks dave that's a clear way of saying it.

Pokerstars isn't 'looking the other way' on Spinwiz. They are aware of it and they are fine with it. If they change their policy on third party software in the future that's fine, but they haven't.

I'm not sure that I agree every *should* be made aware of HUDs. I'm not advocating hiding them or anything but I don't really see how they're that different than any other poker knowledge. Should we make all players aware of push/fold charts? Fold equity? stack to pot ratio? G-Bucks? All if this information should be and is freely available but I don't feel like the poker sites need a disclaimer saying that some people have more knowledge and experience.

Translation from the viewpoint of a recreational player not using SpinWiz (bolded are translations):

..

The Australian racing authority had plausible deniability, too but they have been sacked because greyhound livebaiting by trainers happened under their oversight regime.

Cough. Cough. Seriously? IMO it's a marketeers way of explaining it but it's simply not the whole picture as translated above.

I don't know that they are fully aware of it's implications or only aware of Dave's marketing spiel which is not quite the whole picture. Hence I don't know that they are fine with it. I know I keep being given a form letter type response from support that all seating scripts are OK but that is really naïve of them.

Either way I think it would be good if there is an alternative Zoom-style registration pool that is programmed to prevent third party queuing tools and forces genuine 100% random seating as described by my earlier posts.

All players can then make a fair choice if they want truly 100% enforced-random seating in the Zoom pool or today's lobby. Let the whole market decide the lobby style it prefers.

The form letter response about any seating script from Pokerstars:
Plausible deniability but not quite the whole picture for SpinWiz:

1. There is in game advantage by segregating regs from recs so as to randomise the recs with spaced regs mass-bumhunting the recs with softer games for the regs.

2. Timing the clicking of register for large numbers could not be done manually so as to yield the advantage in point 1.

I am not marketing Spinwiz - I do not use it, I have no stake in it.

edit: Do not spam multiposts. There is an edit button and multiquote feature for a reason.

I'm sorry I didn't mean to imply you were formally marketing SpinWiz but I did mean that your words are eloquent marketing none the less.

You did do a good job of exposing the bumhunting nature of SpinWiz. SpinWiz' algorithm design is quite brilliant I think for strong regs. Strong regs get to bumhunt recs while preventing weak regs from doing the same.

Sorry if you think I have been spamming multiposts. I have had to do a lot of re-edits today as my fingers keep mistyping.

Yep spinwiz is designed to favour the strongest regs. Although depends on the setting, sometimes the strongest reg and the weakest reg spinwiz user are better off not using it.

Tim what if pokerstars introduced zoom 1k spins? If this were the case then I guarantee that the handful of regs that play those will set up a skype group and either make a spinwiz on their own or decide via skype chat who is going to sit in the lobby. Would this be allowed, and is pokerstars able to advertise registration in 1k spins as random?

Can pokerstars say this: when registering to a spin and go you will be matched up with the 2 players who registered closest to you at random?

Are you against KOTH hucash lobbies?

Also the decline of husng traffic has almost nothing to do with the cartel structure and sharky, and everything to do with the introduction of spin and goes.

As spin and goes grow, more and more people will hear about spinwiz, and unlike you I don't think the popularity will go down much.

That's simply no true. The reaction to the introduction of cartels in HUSNG was overwhelmingly negative (see NVG). it's lucky that stars introduced spins otherwise they might even be less rec than now

No, that's not true. Just have a look at the traffic stats. It's obvious what caused the traffic decline.
There were 2 step changes because of spins and there was a small decline after the reg wars started to die down in the early part of 2014.
Self serving posts from weak regs isn't a good representation of anything fundamental.

Yes sure, it's a self serving post but a cartel member's post never is.

Recreational players heard about Cartels and jump to the idea of going to play against them. Like anyone is going to believe that!

Lets not forget that the main aim of cartels is to get rid of some regs so the ones that are left can have all the fish. It's often has been disguised under the pretext of chasing bumhunters. Once in place, cartels member make up rules as they go along to protect themselves like the "we can require that you play more tables but you can't ask us to do so" rule. And on top that, their leader have been caught using automated decision software!! So please give me a break about the self serving argument...

Pretty irrelevant discussion these days anyway as there isn't many fish left playing these for cartel members to make money from (traffic in husng has died) and they have chased away the weak regs they could have made money from

You've already been laughed out of one discussion with your "their leader has been caught using automated decision software" comment. Now, it's not only stupid but given all the information out there re: skiers software, it's also slanderous.
Traffic has reduced - because of spins - but to say HUSNG traffic has died just isn't true but believe what you want. Just stop posting uninformed crap.

I don't think I'm qualified to answer other than to repeat:

* Alternative style lobbies please: Zoom-style that absolutely & deliberately prevents seating scripts + today's lobby.

* Let the market choose.

I mean your suggestion is not a bad idea, but given:

1) I don't think spinwiz is really cheating (and more importantly nor does stars).
2) recs won't run away when they learn of spinwiz's existence (effect is negligible imo and ppl streaming on twitch actively use it).
3) the new lobby structure won't bring in new depositors.

I highly doubt that pokerstars will spend resources to implement "zoom" lobbies for sngs, if you just look at how long stars is taking to implement an "add table" button which has been agreed to only have upsides for stars with no downside.

I don't remember being laughed out of a discussion on skiers software!? I vaguely remember you making a comment about me being pathetic because I don't like cartels and someone (Dave I think!?) answering your post defending allingirl777.

Are you denying that the people using the skier software were cartel members and in some cases cartel leaders?

if this is not true that the people using skiers software were cartel members then I apologize but as far I know they were!?

Traffic has reduced because of spins yes that's true, but if you think that rec hearing about cartels are flogging to the game to play against them, you, my friend are completely deluded

Genher idk what rock you have been living under but allingirl and freech were out of the cartel for a long while, and skier has never been in a cartel. in fact it was many members of the cartel that originally aired their complaints about skier's software.

pies01 isn't deluded- he was merely stating the fact that reduced husng traffic isn't mainly due to cartels. He never said anything about what recs feel about cartels.

^edit I think Im wrong about skier but his software has zilch to do with cartels.

The word cartel has certainly done damage to HUSNGs. I'm not sure how much, but you can see how negative the average clueless (to HUSNG) person responds to the word with such hatred and negativity without even knowing how they work.

That said, a big part of why there is such negativity (besides the creation of the egotistical word, thanks gr33n/300s guys that copied his word/whoever else had a part in that word) is because weaker regs have bitched and whined about them since their inception (and not just due to when they were actually unfair with politics and subjective entries).

A lot of players (especially some in other games) would love nothing more than to fire up Sharky and wait in a line of 30-40 people for a losing player, get in 2-5 games per hour with a bigger edge and a fairly stagnant strategy. They can't do it with cartels/divisions, they'd have to fight regs to earn their way in and they loathe that and bitch and whine about it on the forums and it helps shape the non HUSNG player opinions.

This happened for years in HU Cash. Both organically from players and from Stars asking publicly, many competitive changes were just insulted out of the forums, changes that would've made it impossible to bumhunt.

I agree that the word cartel is unfortunate and that cartels/divisions are necessary for hypers (smaller edge and high rake), but they are cartels by definition.

Cartel: an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition (for fish).

divisions dont restrict competition, they boost it.
the weak regs did not want to compete with other regs, they just waited for fish.
divisions force regs to compete against each other to stay on top.

I'm not sure I'm misunderstanding something, but is there a reason why you hold up 1 reg + 1 fish + 1 bumhunter as some sort of constant? Wouldn't banning spinwiz lead to a lot more 1 reg + 1 reg + 1 bumhunter games? Wouldn't having an outcome of many games with better players lead to the 'bumhunters' being pushed out of registering in the pool which would eventually settle at a natural equilibrium? I don't know what the spin and go composition looks like but let's say pokerstars decided to fire off spin and gos in sets of 4 - so we have 12 players and given it's been implied that spin and goes are usually 2 reg + 1 rec we have 12 players in the pool which includes 9 regulars and 3 recs. Would each rec player not have a (2/11)*(9/10) + (9/11)*(2/10) =~33% chance of having a game with 1 other rec and a (2/11)*(1/10) =~1.8% of having a game with 2 other rec? What do the current numbers look like? Surely even this simple change would bring a massive improvement to your average rec's opponent composition?

Yeah ur right it was pretty unscientific of me to make that post. I was trying to illustrate a point that without spinwiz the only ppl who would benefit are what i would label as bumhunters. The player pool would be more diluted with slightly worse regs who would crush fish for similar winrates.

His suggestion of a zoom lobby is interesting and could work (as you posted- have something like pool of 12 players then match them up randomly). I think it's fine should stars hold a trial for it. However, imo stars will never use resources to implement this idea given there is no clear benefit to it.

That case was made by a few people for HUSNGs too. One counter-argument has been the efficiency one. An example was the top player playing vs the 2nd best pro as often as the 10th best as often as the 50th best in a random lobby. Currently in most non zoom, non MTT forms of poker, the 50th best reg is going to be played by the best a lot more often than the 10th best reg.

But with Tim's pooling idea hopefully making up for any inefficiencies lost from game selection by pairing players up more quickly (the sort of hypers are lower edge but higher hourly vs higher edge but lower hourly regular speeds argument) I think it would be great to try it out and see what the results are, ultimately settling on the registration method that works better. Nobody in the community has a history of accurately predicting the future in these games. That calls for more experimentation and testing imo.

However, what is the definition of "working better?" Improving rec winrates? A higher amount of rake? Better winrates for top pros? What if winrates suffer for all players but rake to PS increases? Given the resources PS would have to use to develop registration changes, wouldn't players be stuck with a worse situation then?

If enough players dislike a division/cartel or spinwiz or sharky or too many charts or huds or facets of any of these things, ultimately they can and probably should be restricted/banned.