Also, I hope you do something for the guys opening the tables and playing HU or 3 handed until the table fills.
They are doing all the work and then other guys sit near the fish. At least lower the rake by a lot for 2 or 3 handed hands at 6 max or 9 max.
And I am not even a table starter myself btw.

It seems unlikely for the industry leader to voluntarily invoke radical changes on a highly-successful platform. In fact, their history has been one of very carefully evaluated, incremental changes only after extended evaluation.

Still, a locked-down, strong-encryption, bootable poker operating system that does not allow any programs that are not specifically on a list to run, in conjunction with (and this is a change) absolutely no observers, might still be a possibility for a wholly-owned subsidiary based out of IoM. Maybe with a HUD, maybe not. But highly enforceable. Open only to accounts with verified identities.

Or eventually an innovative startup company will develop the concept.

This is now, with 100% certainty, false at 100NL. Traffic has dropped significantly in recent times. Read posts as recently as today on the topic in the SSFR reg thread for verification if you like.

bots use stats to make desicions most of the time, allow SN change at least once per day, Release public ptr with original SN with 24 hr delay to catch coluders.

Why would this be a bad idea?

You could still use hud but not with thousands of hands on a single player
You could still study your game vs specific stats or situacions with filters

step one stars, take a stand and ban every known cartel member, because **** them.

I have a spreadsheet listing many of the original members if you would like me to share it...

edit: doing it anyway https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wy9...ew?usp=sharing

Thanks. Is that to say then that it's simply a repository of x charts, and a way of quickly opening whichever one the user needs in response to his command, or does it guide which can/should be opened at a particular moment?

It is a solely a repository. There is no guidance on which chart to open.

Haven't read more than 20% of the topic, but just wanted to drop in and give my $0.02. Less software is good. I don't like huds but feel forced to use them. And anything more advanced I've never used because it feels like boarderline cheating to me. There's just no significant upside to having these programs widely in circulation, and I don't think I need to explain the massive downsides. Being able to track your results is cool and harmless, and that's about it.

I didn't really know what notecaddy was until reading this topic and it seems really harmful. And apparently the software that started this is a lot more advanced. I'm a pretty good poker player, but I'm sure often times worse players play very well against me because they use their software better than me. I think drawing the line at allowing things that could reasonably be tracked by someone without assistance would be awesome. Ideally how much you'd have access to when you play live. So vpip% and not much more.

lol, i doubt that really achieves anything. And its pretty common knowledge already and easily obtainable if you read the husng forum and divisional threads.

The point is, the people within these cartels should really question themselves on what they are contributing to THEIR online poker ecosystem by sheepishly following the hoard that has been aligned via 3rd party software. ie sharkey+cartels. (To ultimately benefit a very few at the top of the food chain)

Yesh, sharkey reduces reg v reg rake and "shares the fun players" and helps regs hit games/fpps/volume etc with ease of use that stars could easily program themselves but dont - (wtf??.) But where do you draw the line?
And say enough is enough?

When someone like Skier+co say fu all, its god eat god, and doesnt share software with the rest of the cartel xommunity? And then cartels blowup against him? for using their own techniques but on roids against them?

behavior breeds behavior imo.

i applaud skiers efforts in that regard, to me cartels = collusion on a massive scale and horrible for the game, whatever people are do to attack them is fine by me.

But you are correct, the most practical way is to ban sharkystrator.

Or for stars to just program it in themselves and make it available for free.

Good point.

If Pokerstars forbid HUDs I would be happy playing without it.

Like many others I have been unable to get lots of different software to work on my computer(s). I feel like those who can get the tools to work are getting an unfair advantage. I also think it very unacceptable professional players need to install 3rd party tools, where you must lower your computers security level. I am fine if the original mentioned tools are banned as I don't use them.

For scripts, I would like Stars to make them less powerful meaning some sort of global wait list get the option to sit before the scripts.

A couple of years ago Stars and tools felt perfect and with out bugs. Today with all the evolution and (software) changes, Stars feels bugged and is no longer on my top 3 list of best software out there.

HUDs and all analytical software is fine as long as is accessible to anyone, I think it will be a massive mistake by stars if they suddenly change the rules, professional players have devoted lots of time to understand the math, theory and learn how to use the current allowed tools in order to reduce the variance of a game that is actually becoming tougher and tougher, recreational players dont even care about all of this, they will keep playing regardless, but regulars that will comeback every day, play 10+ hours every single day and learn how to use advanced tools, how to make difficult math calculations in order to gain a 0.01 edge and thus not to be murdered by variance and rake and have hopefully to get enough winnings to keep coming back and perhaps making a decent living out of the game they love, not all the regulars are evil millionaires that come to make "easy money on poker" I'm a profesional poker player and I'm friend with many of them and trust me is not that easy, professional players have to pay for coaching, sofware, training sites subscriptions, books, bills and sometimes go many months without making any money (maybe even have a backer in order to overcome variance but then having to split the winnings if any) and work really hard just to get by...

This is very similar to the Spin & Go thing, and the time they wanted to increase the rake, at the end this will mainly affect the grinders, the players who play small stakes and tons of volume, as a professional i'll use every posible legal tool and work as hard as I can to get every 0.01 "edge" if I was playing poker for fun and I was told if i dont put tousands of hours learning advanced software and caclulations I'll not be making money over 100k games I wouldnt care as I'll only be playing once in a while and having fun and if I wanted to dedicate more to the game then i'll just have to understand it in a deeper level and I will probably need to learn the math and the tools and get some poker books and care if my bb/100 is 6.5 or 7

How about allowing one screen name change per period of time that is

a) Long enough such that colluders, etc., cannot easily hide their tracks or exploit name changes, but
b) Short enough such that players who so choose can "start fresh," re: HUD stats, etc.

I think once every 4-6 months sounds about right.

Further, I think Stars needs to think outside the box; there must be other similar concepts that don't relate specifically to the wording and philosophy of the software TOS but that could very much mitigate the effects, real or perceived, of both allowed and illicit software.

Some aspect of changing screen names once during an intermediate period of time could be spot on. I think this could also boost rec players' participation; people love a fresh start.

No! No anonymous tables!! And yes, the ability to change your SN is the same thing.

Every 4-6 months seems ok though. Just not once a week.

100% correct im sorry to say...

as i write this (midnight eastern) stars has 11 tables of $100 nl running... how many other sites at peak hours even manage 8?

fewer fish and recs for sure... but i play tons at $100 (100k hands in the last 3 months)... but how do u expect newbs to last when every vulture descends on them using tools that many are clueless about ?

peak hours have well over 20 running tables- and if MORE players decide to play noHUD... then adapt or fight it out on your HUD table wars

remove every single bit of software, remove table camping, sitting out on only one table.

Yeah I think SN changes would work well. Every 3 months is a good time frame I reckon, worked for Party.

Unibet's 3 times a day SN change rule is ridiculous and unneeded.

here is a thought...

PS email the poker players and conduct a survey!


WOULD LOVE TO SEE THAT

or... buy the company who owns pt/hm and provide free PS HUDs to all... or develop PS huds/software that is free to all and then shat can the rest

stars will end up doing nothing, I hope im wrong.

It's a dangerous proposition to make rules that are not enforceable. If your goal is to eliminate HUDS, then you have to do something bold that would ACTUALLY eliminate them like go with anonymous players and tables. I personally think anonymous tables are awful for poker and allows cheaters a better platform to cheat. Ever hear about the latest Bovada cheating scandal? Me neither and I doubt we ever will because how could you ever prove anything with a bunch of anonymous players and no data?

So, if you don't have anonymous tables AND you have the ability to see hands unfold and save that data, then you can ALWAYS have HUDS. It would not be hard at all to save hand histories to a network drive where a second PC running independent HUD software reads those hand histories and populates a mirrored HUD of the 1st monitor. You'd have two monitors side by side where the one on the left is the poker client and the one on the right mirrors it with a populated HUD. There's no way Stars could detect it and the players who follow the rules and don't do it get punished. And absolutely the exact same players who use HUDS today and take poker seriously would use it to gain an edge.

Like it or not, HUDS are a part of the online poker landscape. If you want to give fish a better chance or better experience, cut down on the number of tables that regs can multitable. We are in an age of technology. You can't put that horse back in the barn. Trying to do so will be frustrating to everyone involved.

How can we have faith in Pokerstars' supposed desire to improve and update the T&Cs when this list demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the purpose and functionality of the software mentioned?
I'm generally in favour of a crackdown on software aids, but it pains me to see Notecaddy's functions being misrepresented in the text above.

It looks like the list was put together by someone that typed "poker software" into a search engine in 2011. If you want to make rules for policing online poker in 2015, it helps to know how poker is being played in 2015. Clue: It's not being played by people using Leakbuster, Stove or Poker Academy.
Besides, if PokerStove is to be banned as part of this ineffectual PR exercise, will Stars also be banning the Poker Odds Calculator that is freely available on Pokerstars' own training sites?

The contemporary threads about PLO bots give an additional indication that Stars HQ is somewhat out of touch with how the game has changed. It's interesting that one of the tools that Stars proposes limiting the use of (Notecaddy) has been a powerful instrument for comparing the esoteric stats of suspected bots on the network. When players apparently have better analysis technology (or better knowledge of how to use it) than the game integrity team, we have a serious problem. This is what poker is becoming: software vs software; bumhunter vs bumhunter; data analyst vs bot-maker; cartel vs staking stable... and a site that sits back and does nothing except collect the rake.

Cliffs: Stars is that dog that has no idea what it's doing. I am grumpy cat.

stars should focus on forbidding auto-seating scripts and skier_5 - like programs. there is no sense prohibiting hud and notecaddy. cause it is tools that don't give an enormous advantage over players, it's only a small assistance for multitabling. i believe stars should eliminate all that stereotypes about holy grail hud software and make it clear that it doesn't give advanatge over recreational players. u don't that software to identify recr player (open limp atction or a couple of showdowns is enough), they have so many common leaks that u don't need any soft to identify these leaks, u don't even get enough samples to get adequate info on a recr. players since they get broke for 50-100 hands on average. no software will make a big difference in winrates of regs vs fish. not mentioning the fact, that u need to have a lot of experience and skill to use huds effectively, otherwise any recr player would beat stakes easily. many regulars can't beat microlimits with all that software (and me too). also, i want to remind, that poker ecology is about regulars too. cause they are the main source of your income. u should focus on them, cause u can do nothing about recr players. u can't satisfy people who want to play for fun and win money at same time without investing time and effort in working on their game (like regs do). u can't make a superstar of a recr. football player just for nothing. poker is a competitive game, sports like football, chess and etc. that's the concept u should develop to make your business prosper. or u can follow the partypoker/cake example, who tried to get rid of regular players and now they are almost bankrupts. i don't think u want to end up with 5k pool of recr. players generating 1000x times less rake and still complaining about unfair random number generator on jokerstars. unfortunately, in fact when stars claim to improve poker ecology they try to raise rake and introduce spin'n'go games that turn poker in a semi-slot machine and dry out classic game types' pools with purpose to give away million dollar to a recr. guys who will cashout that money and forget about poker forever cause got a bingo. while poker community is struggling to convince the world that poker is a skill-based game. sometimes it feels that stars tend to force all players play only allin shootouts so that would be "fair" and generate max rake. i hope stars would make right desicions not to ruin online poker and not to turn it in a casino.