Datamining is fraud. Especially on HU tables, you might win several stacks from villain in spots where you would have acted differently when you didn't have the info and where he might have acted differently when he had the same info about you. This is nothing but a fraudulent act.
I am not going to play any HU tables on Stars or only a few hands every year as long as they are datamined.

Uhh, maybe he use one of the other five hundred threads to post in instead of hijacking this one?

Your false implications poorly disguised as questions are both ignorant and out of line.

I think that some people make the leap from "HUDs give people an advantage" to "HUDs give people an unfair advantage", without giving a good explanation/justification.

Hey guys, so I can see that this stance on datamining is really strong. You all have very good points and I appreciate everyone who shared their thoughts. I won't take the argument any further.

And btw, I neither like/dislike datamining/HUDs. I could go with/without either. The reason I brought this up was because I met an old friend the other day who made 6 figures in the early 2000s. He recently got back into the game because he needed more money. The casino is over an hour drive from his house so he was telling me how wanted to move closer to the casino. I asked him why he wasn't playing online because that was much more profitable and he was complaining about how much the game has changed and how analyzing game flow/reading player tendencies skills aren't really as useful since everybody just uses their HUD stats instead and use their calculators to decided whether to push or fold (he was especially mad about that last part).

Back in 2000 the online players were pretty bad. Players have learned the game much better since then. Calculators can only take a player from being an absolute fish to being a slowly losing fish. If your friend thinks that calculators are what is preventing him from winning online, he might not be as good a player as he thinks he is.

Yeah, I know that in your world there is nothing in between derailing threads anytime the word HUD is mentioned and going completely mute on the topic, but for others, there is actually a way to compare HUDs and datamining without making the thread into the 6,485th one about how terrible HUDs are. If that makes me a funny guy, so be it.

I think Josem gave a fair assessment of the difference between HUDS and data mining.

For the people that want to have HUDS banned the best approach is to ask sites to inform all their players about HUDS. It may seem counterintuitive but if all players used a HUD the advantages of using them would be marginalized and I believe that many who are currently pro HUD want them allowed is because not everyone uses or is aware of them.

Kind of off topic but what is the structure of these leaderboards? Are they only for cash? Are there ones for tournaments? Whats the minimum requirement? Payout ect.

Why not than just allow HUDS to be implemented by staff as a form of security protection if thats what you meant by this. It just puzzles me when people argue by downplaying the benefits of something, than why use it at all? It sounds like it offers no or minimal advantage to the player other than allowing them to play more tables and make the site more money. If this is correct than the amount of money made by a player playing less tables would essentially be less than the amount of rakeback made by the extra tables using a hud.

I don't buy that argument as it has a plethora of little stats that you can knowingly exploit someone unknowing of a specific pattern, patterns you'd never exploit with 10 tables going or even 3. Someone may not even realize they fold to 4 bets in a certain position but the mere fact this is a stat thats provided creates an advantage before the hand is even played. Every street of the hand is advantaged because of a HUD as well as every bet of that street from the lead or C bet to the 5th raise. If poker is defined as a "game of skill" because of a skilled players advantage over time than the advantage of a HUD gives a distinct advantage over time due to the information it precisely provides.

The leaderboard itself isn't important to the point I was making. The only point that I was making is that when good players play a large amount of tables their win rate goes way down. The extreme is the Beast where some of the top players were actually losing money at the tables. QTip for example is one of the best US online players but admittedly actually loses money at the tables while making a profit via the Beast.

But even without a leaderboard the good players are making very small profits per table but making good money overall by playing in bulk. The lower winrate has the effect of leveling the playing field and allowing mediocre non-multitabling players to actually beat otherwise better players and losing players to lose at a slower rate; all of which is good for the poker ecology.

Databases have been used to help players catch colluders and were used to uncover the superusers at UltimateBet. Staff implemented HUDs wouldn't be useful in exposing colluders nor superusers.

I doubt that most players use all the stats that are available in HUDs. There is just no time to do that kind of live analyses. And if a player did rely too much on those stats rather than his other observations at the table, it would be a very grave mistake. HUD stats are only an average of information and are in themselves deceptive and can make a player play badly if followed religiously. If a player plays only according to his stats he is just going to play like a very bad bot.

Forgive me but I am not super familiar with some of the things you are referring too, thats why I asked. Is there an actual leaderboard for cash?

So it sounds like its conceivable that Poker-sites may recognize HUD'S provide an advantage behind closed doors, since win rates are so low they need the volume of players playing 24 tables everyday and thus open door may denounce the significant advantage they give. That's what I take from it. I don't play cash too much because I am aware of this software and it's just throwing my money away to a computer program in my opinion. I would consider myself a tweener. Not a pro but better than average. I'm not quite sure though what the ideal target would be for a site now, try and convert me to a full time pro or get 5 or 10 newbies to deposit that play casually once or twice a night on the weekends.

I don't feel like putting in the time to learn HUD's as i work full time and am scared to play cash because I feel my edge is gone because of HUD'S. At the very least if I was made aware who was using them I personally would feel a bit better.

I missed your point on lower winrates and somehow twisting it to the use of HUD'S. Your saying essentially because players are playing more tables and using hud's the winrate is lower and better for the economy? That is silly. It's because a 6 max table is full of 6 full timers with hUD's essentially neutralizing the advantages, the only disparity being variance. If you take away HUD'S players like myself would play a lot more and the economy would increase. I don't feel comfortable playing against essentially a computer program with a human controlling the auto pilot. Sorry if it's been beat to death.

The various leaderboards are competitions that gives players who play the most hands a cash reward. It requires the players, who decide to compete, to play a lot of tables.

I was responding to your assertion that HUDs cause players to play more tables which is actually true. It's a pretty basic tenet of poker that as a player's number of tables goes up his per table winrate will go down which is fine for the player since the number of tables compensates for his degradation in play at each table. If someone is playing 20 tables, he is probably barely making a profit at each table but collectively, he can buy himself a new bicycle.

Whenever a really good player doesn't play so well it helps the other less advanced players either turn a profit or lose money less quickly. Bad players who lose more slowly tend to stay on the site and redeposit. Players who lose quickly often figure the site is either rigged against them and go elsewhere or decide poker isn't for them.

So in the long run anything that curbs a good players' advantage per table like multitabling is going to help keep together a healthy player pool.

I get the feeling that you are a little intimidated by HUDs but actually if you used a HUD with just the very basic stats like VPIP, PFR, AGGresion and Steal percentage that would probably be about 90% of anything you would ever need. Anybody can quickly become familiar with those stats and then can add a few more later on that they feel is important. Most of the time for me the stats are really just a security blanket that I don't really pay attention to.

And what about tournament shark? Or services like Sharkscope? They do just that.

Some of these services are or have been forbidden to use on some sites.

I believe Sharkscope was banned on PS but eventually gave in and allowed players to opt out of tracking so it is now permitted.

Im not up to date entirely so forgive me if I misspoke.

Not sure about Sharkscope but I know that tournament shark works with PS. Pretty ridiculous for them to allow it and ban datamining, I don't see much difference between the two.

If players are allowed to opt out of being tracked, you cant see that as a difference?

They also tracks results not play I believe fwiw.

For the record though, Sharkscope and programs like it have been frowned upon in the past just as much as Datamining.

I think the opt out was a pretty big concession though that justifiably alleviated some of the concerns with those type of programs being permitted. You can opt out of being tracked on both Sharkscope and Tournament Shark I think.

Results or play itself, it is still relevant info you can use to aid your game. Think of it this way, if I play DONs, I could use sharkscope to see who is a winning DON regular, and open my shoving range against that player because I know that good DON players call tight.

You can opt out but where does that leave players who are uninvolved in the community and unaware of such services? Like datamining, it gives you information that isn't yours.

I think that it's a little bit of a stretch to consider Tournament Shark datamining. All it really does is show which players are winning players and which are losing players. The folks who sell Tournament Shark have a great sales spiel but, truth be known, my belief is that the only ones who are making a profit from TS are the ones selling it. I think that the product is really targeted at beginning players.

As far as the other sites go, PokerStars is by no means allowing those sites to datamine. PS took one of those sites to court and fought the case on the basis that the site was infringing on copyright protected material by publishing players stats. PokerStars prevailed and some of the other sites took down the stats out of fear of getting sued.

My guess is that the reason a site like Sharkscope allows PS players to opt-in is because the copyright is probably considered a shared copyright where either PokerStars or the player can give permission for the site to publish it. That some sites still publish the info regardless doesn't mean that PokerStars is allowing it. It might just mean that PS doesn't want to go through the costly process of a court battle with each site.

I have always liked sharkscope and mostly just for the leaderboard aspect. I would also use it to see how bad or good a player was if I played heads up. I never knew why it was banned in the first place as you can usually tell after a few orbits or a few minutes of heads up who is good or not.

I said that the opt out alleviated some of the concerns imo.

I agree with the point you make above though.

I also agree with Santa that this is a separate issue from datamining.

This seems funny to me coming from someone that has been bashing HUD use the entire thread for its negative effects on the game.

The reason being that with out a doubt the behavior you are engaging in, bumhunting HU with Sharkscope, is far more damaging to the poker ecosystem and well being than HUD use could ever be IMHO.

#Hypocritical

So fundamentally the same thing as datamining, isn't it? I've already explained how it can be used against you, so really datamining sells all stats while tracking services only sell a few.

You know what would solve this problem? If every player got a popup asking them if they do or do not want to be tracked when they open a poker account. Of course I imagine most people would pick no and the service wouldn't really exist anymore, but oh well.

I have a feeling a large chunk of us just follow the herd. If Pokerstars never banned datamining, what would we think of it? If they were to ban HUDs in a few years, would we protest or "realize" how unfair HUDs are. Who really knows.

@5thStreetHog
It is good that we can opt out, but kinda pisses me off we have to go through the hassle of sending an email and all that crap.

It seems that greenwallet didn't feel my polite request was worthy of his attention, but seeing as OP has also moved on from his original question to more general HUD discussion, I guess we might as well let it go that way and bring the discussion here with the most recent one.

Think OP just wanted to know why there was a line between HUDs and DM because (according to him) they were fundamentally the same thing. I'd like the same answer for tracking services.

In before someone accuses Bobo of being a HUD shill trying to silence him by sending the thread to the land of misfit threads.

Right, and it seems he got enough of an answer to satisfy him. Now that the thread has derailed/evolved, it made more sense to bring it here so we don't duplicate the same HUD/software debates we've had before. Tracking sites aren't quite the same thing, but there are definitely a lot of parallels with tracking site, software aid, and datamining conversations.

Dammit 5th, what's wrong with you? Were PT and HEM late with the payments again??