Hello all,
As most of you know, there has been a lot of discussion lately regarding our third party software policies. This post is made with intention of giving a detailed summary of the main changes that we have made to these policies. We are aware that these points have already been posted in this thread, but for clarity's sake, we are posting them again:
Summary of changes
- Reference material, such as starting hand charts, now have to be “basic in nature”. Anything considered to be sophisticated in nature can no longer be used whilst the client is open.
- HUDs are no longer permitted to display non-numerical data, categorize players or dynamically display statistics specific to a certain situation.
- Hand or Situation Analysers, such as programs that compute equities of various ranges of hands against one another, can no longer be used whilst the client is open.
- Game State Reporters can no longer automatically or semi-automatically retrieve information from an otherwise permitted reference material. For example, tools can no longer notify an end-user that their starting hand lies in Group 1 of a statically defined grouping of hands.
- Table Selection and Seating Scripts can no longer time a player’s registration into a global waiting list. They must register players into specific tables or tournaments.
If you would like to access to more details and clarification, you can
download the Third Party Tools and Services Policy Reference Guide that we provide for software developers.
Consequences of these changes
We would like to draw your attention to the last point above, and from page 31 of the reference guide:
Quote:
However, tools that are based on a prohibited data source or are targeted towards either playing against or avoiding specific players in game offerings whereby they are unable to select or register to a specific table are prohibited.
The game type where ‘players are unable to select or register to a specific table’ is, of course a reference to the Spin & Go tournaments. And as a result of this policy change, effective October 1st, SpinWiz and other related software that is aimed at game selection in these games, will be prohibited.
The main reason for this decision is that one of the most significant features of Spin & Gos is that there is no game selection and that it should be random who you play against. Software of the type we are now banning systematically bypasses this feature to the detriment of those who are not using the software. Some might also see this as disingenuous towards the thousands of players who go into these games thinking that it is entirely random who they are drawn to play against.
In accordance with our usual procedure, our first objective will be to educate people who do not realise that this form of software is now prohibited. Consequently, we will have sent a notification of these rule changes to players who we know have been using such software in the recent past. None of these players have broken any of our rules, but we want to make sure that everyone has first-hand information so that they do not inadvertently end up in a situation where they break the rules in the future.
Moving forward
While seat-selection programs will be prohibited in Spin & Gos, we are not changing our policy towards generic seating scripts at this time. However, we want to strongly emphasize ‘at this time’.
Whilst our historical stance has always been to permit these tools due to the fact that they do not include any gameplay logic directly, we have never been fans of their existence due to the impact it has had on the game selection process. As these tools have continued to evolve and their impact is felt more and more, we are going to be looking at prohibiting all seating scripts in the future once this round of revisions has settled down and we are able to discuss the most effective solutions to limit their ongoing usage.
In short, we feel our policy towards the use of third party tools and services must remain fluid and adapt to the increasing level of sophistication of external tools for the overall betterment of the online poker ecology. We believe this stance is evident with these impending changes.
How long it will take to find the best solution to these issues is an open question. The process is in motion, and if you have input and ideas on this topic, we would be very happy to hear from you.
Datamining
This is another issue that is very much a concern to us, and lately we have been able to make some progress in stopping the sites that are involved in this activity. On September 1st, we implemented a feature that was directed at stopping datamining in the Zoom games, and the time of writing this, it seems that the feature works the way it was intended.
As for our other games, we are currently working on finding solutions that will have the same effect. One of the challenges is that different games needs to be treated differently, but we are hopeful that we will be able to make further progress on this towards new year and beyond.
We will leave it at this for now, but will keep an eye on the thread, and try to come back to you on a regular basis to reply to your questions. We do not want to create expectations that we cannot keep, so I would think that something like a monthly Q & A post is what we will aim to do. However, if there are questions that are particularly urgent or easy to reply to, we might come back with an answer sooner.
In these Q & A posts, we will also give you information on decisions that have been made on specific points of programs and tools since the previous post. Hopefully, this will give you a good understanding of our process on these issues. We would like to emphasize, however, that the proper channel of communication regarding Third Party Tools, is still via email to
support@pokerstars.com. You will be helped much faster by writing to support, than posting a question in this thread.
Thanks,
Baard