These changes are connected with specific software tools and not the bot issues. AFAIK all such bots are already banned by the Ts&Cs, no?

A ban of NoteCaddy will not result in recreationals surviving any longer than now and you know that. The skill-gap between RECs and REGs has dramatically increased in the last years. Additional the boom is over and there are not enough new players entering the tank, which causes a highly predatory environment. In former days there were sharks in the wide sea, today it's piranhas in a small tank waiting for one ignorant to drop into it.

Like already said, you know that and i'm pretty sure that your wish for NC being banned has another self-serving reason

No software afects rec. players. they dont last 200 hands before busting and while playing those few hands you dont get any advantage from software on them. Playing an ABC poker will be always enough.

They would have to admit their security team is incompetent. A few people here emailed Stars about the bots back in october 2014, these bots have been playing for close to a year.

Yet we receive 15$ refunds. Where the **** is the rest of the confiscated money going?

I think that this is a step in the right direction.

As a regular of the game I fear for two things for the future of online poker.

1) that bots / semi bots will create unbeatable opponents that will kill of the incentive to be a regular poker player.

2) That the already growing concerns of 3rd party poker software (and bots) discourage recreationals from playing the game. Other sites where you cannot use a HUD are already promoting their software due to such concerns, and concerns seem only to be growing.

I think that the rules help toward both my concerns. To avoid them more efficiently, and because I believe it is good sportmanship, I think that you should take it one step further and create a list of approved programs that you may run while playing poker (not stuff like word of course), and that all such programs should be able to be purchased at a reasonble price - like PT4 and HEM. This would provide an extra meausre clarity to what it means to be good at poker, as your proposed rules are still open to interpretation. Such a list could efficiently stop rumours like that skier or TCfromUB use unbeatable GTO software that no human can compete against.

Just found about the skier´s software scandal which perhaps showes specific charts depending on the current hand information (effective stack, range and other stats) and it looks like this is what pokerstars wishes to restrict.

Note caddy does nothing like that and im sure that every single of you pro-ban note caddy people here are aware of this, and you are just seizing the moment to get rid of it because you just dont like it.

After all these years and countless of times people dumbing it down as much as possible that note caddy doesn't give you advice you still repeat the same uninformed statement.

When ignorant but opinionated people with nothing better to do go around mouthing off, spreading their ignorance to others it always screws things up.

For what must be the 100th time:

ad·vice
ədˈvīs/
noun
noun: advice

guidance or recommendations concerning prudent future action, typically given by someone regarded as knowledgeable or authoritative.


A missile guidance system tells the missile exactly where to go. It doesn't say "hey missile did you know that sometimes terrorists hide out in caves?"

Yep, specific badges created on specific players, displayed on those specific players that with the notes you get with those badges specific guidance on what actions they show exploit that player.

It is advice, it is clearly advice, it is mostly sold as an add on but as soon as you introduce the capability of s/w to scan hundreds of different stats for your opponents and then present the handful of key exploit tactics that should be used against that player you stop playing poker based upon your ability and your skills and instead follow the programmer's advice, the programmer that created that badge and the software package that delivered it up to your screen for that specific player, neatly colour coded to make sure you know the street it applies to.

It is advice, it is a stat derived bit of advice, delivered up by notecaddy thanks to the efforts of the programmers of the core package and the additional badge package you piad for. It is essentially software driven player specific in game advice.

You can cling pedantically to the nonsense that it is a stat - but it aint, the colour coding, the presentation of it and the crib sheet that details what it means in terms of advice make it ADVICE.

If you can't play without your little colour coded advice software - TOUGH. It is essentially a Cybot, it is information - ADVICE delivered up to you by software.

If it isn't a powerful advantage - a paid for software advantage - then what are you bitching about? If it tells you nothing about what to do in a hand, from a selection of hundreds of different bits of player specific exploit advice why would you care if Stars agreed with me that you can have any stat you like in your HUD, but you get the exact same stats for all the players you are up against, not cherry picked advice badges from hundreds of options programmed by others and flagged up to exploit that player not based on your skills but based upon that of the programmer you paid to provide in game advice for you.

I would prefer it if you couldn't buy/sell HUD profiles and things which integrate into them, but that's largely because it removes the skill and effort of creating a good HUD.

When Messi scores a wonder-goal, is he using his 100% human abilities, or does he have bionic legs and a computer rammed up his arse?

It's only "level" in the sense that regs with standard HUDs have no edge against each other. Players with "super-HUDs" have a significant edge on you, because you're just a run of the mill HUDbot that doesn't know what's good for him.
Why do you think winrates are so low on Stars? It's because HUDs don't give you an advantage over other regs. They just enable you to identify and crush the recreationals. Without HUDs, you can get an edge on other players, because your opponents won't be playing like robots or immediately know that you're a nit.
Indeed. Technology has been used to improve the entertainment value, safety and fairness of many sports, and it has been controlled and regulated in order to guarantee the longevity of those sports. Technology allowed the birth of online poker, and that's a great thing. Uncontrolled, it will be the death of it.
Playing like or against a bot is not entertaining, safe or fair. If Pokerstars is interested in "sportifying" poker, it should make it more fun. I want to play a game for money ffs. If I wanted a low-paid data-entry job, I'd get one.

+1 but will never happen because too many nits rely on their huds, and those nits pay the rake

but of course, don't ban StackAndTile

Its relieving to see some of the veteran posters here telling it straight. They would have been around alot longer then me and many others and would have witnessed a fast and steady decline of online poker due to the greed of a select few programmers and players.

It's pretty amazing how players can be so adamant that NoteCaddy only presents info which players could build up themselves but then the same players go mad when there is a suggestion the software might be removed.

If it is so easy to profile all the hundreds (000's) of players you meet online and build up notes for how they play in multiple situations then what's the problem?

The simple fact is these players probably watch 10% of all the hands from which NC builds up a huge database.The amount of hours you would have to put in to build up vastly inferior notes on your opponents would be incredible.

The reason you want NC to stay is simple - 99.99% of the players using the software would not be able to build up notes and tags on players to anywhere near the extent to which NC does.

so im a 6 tabling reg at $100... and ill tell u what I am not here (im sure the recs/fish would agree) for some hud lovin 16 table'r...

so who cares if they have to adjust and play fewer games - if it means rec/fish last longer then i am all for it... and if the 16 table'rs dont like it? where r they going? what other site would even offer 8 tables for them to play at during peak hours?

and your data babble makes no sense...

but again - LET THE MARKET DECIDE

online is getting a bad rap - whether you like it or not some people wont play online poker because they think using software is cheating... so bring those people into the fold by offering games they will play

one of two things will happen - we will have demand or none

but screaming that the Apocalypse is coming by offering something that clearly a good number of players want is silly... especially since i am advocating a hybrid that allows both - SO THE MARKET DECIDES

i guess you haven't followed the reason why all of this came up to begin with, which is because of skier's software.

should we ban physical printed charts in a 3 ring notebook binder since they provide 'advice' on what should happen?

Hey bhoy

Think maybe PT users just weren't sure if HM was working, and HM users just weren't sure if PT was working - like I think everybody was concerned that playing without a HUD while others still had theirs would be a disadvantage?

hilarious how the HEM/NC guys have emailed their users to chime in, the email gets posted in the thread, and then you see the flock of sheep NC users posting in opposition

Those banned accounts are not pure bots. They are most likely human beings playing with a software on the side which tells in real time what to do.

I am not the typical poker player who cares about his bottom line only.

You are probably right that you don't really need to use Notecaddy against a random fish, who just joined your game and you have no hands against anyway. However, against fish who play on regular basis such tools will help you exploit them even more.

See statement above.

Into the greedy pocket of Scheinberg and David Baazov.

.
notecaddy needs to go

I feel like every person defending note caddy that says fish are busted in 5 hands should not be allowed to comment. It's bs. If you look up most fish at 100nl+ on PTR and similar, they will all have 4k+ hands. 4k hands is a lot 1 tabling.

nice work you're doing lining your pockets at the expense of online poker. I hope your program is banned on all sites. lol @ you sending out emails asking people to defend your garbage program....

I agree with Arty and sixfour...

I have played online poker since 2002. I currently use PT4. You used to have to buy your hud separately for your database and it was a lot more work to get everything going. There were no prepackedged custom built huds, datamining sites, scripting soft etc.

To say the playing field is level is a huge joke! I don't want to have to go buy all this crap just to keep up. Hell, I can't even keep up with the all the stuff there is on the market. I don't even know what half the **** does. I do know that it destroys the games; to assist mass tabling grinders in annihilating the ecosystem is idiotic and Stars should consider this.

All software should be banned. That is a level playing field.

If some Borg from Star Trek played at the Commerce and won a bunch of money scanning the table with a goddamn laser eye his ass would be turned into 4 auto shufflers and steaming pile of bulgogi before he could reach the cage.

Online poker is drastically different now then pre-hud days. The game now is more about who has the newest and greatest software than who is a better poker player

It used to be you read books, studied, watched videos, talked hands away from table. Now the biggest crushers have the best in-game computer assistance, period. That is not poker played by humans ON a computer, it is poker played by humans WITH a computer. It is halfway to pure botting, it is becoming botpoker.

Stop the arms race, ban it all. We are moving in the wrong direction. Wake the **** up!

-No software
-4 tables max
-Rec friendly rewards system
-An no effing teams either. F cartels and stop facilitating stables via xfers

LOL, excessive use of datamining-services?!

The arguement came btw from someone who is for the ban of NoteCaddy because it kills fish faster in his opinion.

PLS should start to incentive people who create the action at the tables.(incentive people starting the tables it would be great for everyone) and ban seat scripting instead of NC

I agree with some of what you're saying but at least a very significant portion of cash games have little to nothing to do with a software arms race (I personally only use a HUD which I made myself). Simpler games mathematically might be different. You're right that a rec-friendly rewards system would be better. but you're completely wrong to conflate cartels and stables, the latter just being a group of people who talk poker who happen to be staked most of the time.