I like how you pretend to know what I am, and am not capable of understanding, without knowing a thing about me, that's a very enlightened approach to dealing with people. Admittedly, I misinterpreted your message, because I disagree with your stance it somewhat clouded my interpretation. That was not my intent, yet it is what happened.

To present a different argument from my prior one, and also address what _dave_ said, I think there's a vast difference between advantages that are available through the poker client, and advantages due to additional software. Admittedly, the 20bb short stacking thing was ridiculous, yet they fixed that. Pokerstars has continually pulled additional features into their client, and I think they should add in functionality for things that they support, and ban everything else.

Notecaddy is an advantage, and yes, currently it's deemed a fair advantage because Pokerstars allows it. Whatever is not expressly banned by the ToS is fair. With that said, if Pokerstars decides that notecaddy is an unfair advantage, and they choose to ban it, which it looks like they are going to do, then from the point that they do so it becomes and unfair advantage. But, just because something is fair in the eyes of Pokerstars, doesn't mean that the vast majority of players deem it fair. Fair is a subjective term, and we can bandy words about it as long as we like, in the end everyone has their own interpretation, and what Pokerstars decrees will ultimately be the accepted standard.

Therefore, currently, it's all fair. I've used notecaddy, built advanced huds, hell before notecaddy was out I had any stat that passed a certain threshold change color which would lead me to exploiting that leak. Having said that, I've also played on other sites, and been a pro since 2008, and over that time my experience has lead me to one simple conclusion on software. Less software = better games. It's not going to morph us back into 2008, or even 2011, but it will make the games somewhat better.

Well, you presented yourself poorly with the first reply, 99% of the time I would be right and this is the internet, if I get an impolite reply with no arguments, how else can I react. Let's bury the hatchet, I don't agree with your stance but I at least respect your opinion after this reply.

Why do you think the games would get so much better if there were no huds? And how would a person trying to make money in this game benefit from not being able to use it? Would it really make online poker more fun or would it just turn it into a robotic mathematics game?

And just to clarify, I wouldn't necessarily (if presented with good arguments which I have not yet seen) be against a potential ban of X software be it NCaddy or even a HUD if the ban was good for online poker and actually enforcable. Stars are not even capable of stopping scripts, datamining and bots, how on earth are they going to stop someone using a HUD or a chart?

I think skier's post is really spot on. Haven't had time to read the whole thread, but I think far and away most important thing with considering certain rules is to focus on them being enforceable. It is too easy to use a HUD if you ban HUDs (ie, on a separate computer or on a sheet of paper, potentially a sheet of paper generated with the help of a datamine).

Please don't create a situation where users who are willing to break the rules benefit the most.

In general, I think it's good Stars is considering rule changes, but I think it's kind of ridiculous that it's only happening because skier made something that is "too good". I actually feel bad because it really seems to me that skier is getting screwed over here (PS: I do not use the software, nor do I know skier in any way other than having played him on the tables years ago, so I am completely unbiased).

True

And the elephant in the room is that a poker site has incomplete information about what is running on the computers of the players logged into their site. They do a very good job, considering the access that they have, but if they owned the operating system it would no longer resemble the current cat and mouse situation.

Cheers

looks like a newbie 2+2er just schooled ypu gmiko

People like you gmiko is whats wrong with online poker. You are just looking after yourself [ to the point of polluting a whole mile cube of sea to get one fish that nets you 50 cents] with the dumb post you made initially and its very clear, your just too dumb to realize it.

The gist of it though is that if online poker is to survive its all about the recs. There are less and less recs with more and more pros as time passes. You can think of why is that yourself or what will happen if it continues or with all your software ypu love and cant play without.

While it would be super awesome, I don't have the ability to communicate efficiently with lower primates so please, djle2, stop ooh ooh ooh eee eee eee aah aah aah-ing at the screen and banging on the keyboard.

Can't even get mad at you poor thing. Talking about handicaps...

only one who dont have a proper response would reply with what you said but I digress.

How is it unfair something that is out there for everyone, follows the current rules and is not breaking the new anti-dynamic terms?

Should it be banned only because conservative players dont like it?

Fair enough, it's the internet. For what it's worth I honestly thought you were saying 1 table was an unfair advantage, which is ridiculous, and why my reply was so short. Ultimately my bad.

I don't think they'd magically turn into amazing games, but I think the poker economy of the site would improve and help poker grow, instead of declining year after year. As we get more and more software, we get closer and closer to an unfair advantage. Where each person draws the line personally, is up to them. However, do you really think any fish that learns about the software allowed in online poker, doesn't get turned off the game by it, when they watch some guy on twitch streaming with 40 different numbers floating over each players head?

Ultimately, fish see this stuff, fish learn of it, and it turns them off of the game. If we want the game to grow, we need to let it be known that this stuff is not allowed. I don't think that solves online pokers problems, but I think that starts to stem the negative tide of information like "online poker bots win $1.5m of your money", and things of that nature. The main reason I dislike huds though, is that they make it easier to multitable, which I think is really negative for the future of the game. Play on any site with a table cap under 12, and you'll find significantly softer games than Stars.

Stars is the hardest site online, Ipoker is up there, and ACR is the hardest american site. The main thing these sites all have in common is high rakeback for high volume, meaning they encourage people to play as many tables as possible. The more tables 1 player occupies, the harder the games are. This is technically good for the sites, in that they grind $ into rake quicker. That said, as the player bases shrink on these sites, and the games get harder, recs are less encouraged (win less often, have less fun), to keep playing, and the poker economy shrinks.

Stars is trying to fix their poker economy issues by growing their player base by gaining new licenses. As the largest site, they'll be able to continue with a terrible poker economy on the site longer than any other site could. But that doesn't mean that their approach will improve the poker economy.

Let me put it in another way. If Stars set the table limit to 9 tables right this minute, would winrates on the site go up? Worth noting is I've played 24 tables on Stars, I prefer multitabling, I've just found that online poker games are significantly better with lower table caps.

Another thing I was getting at in the last post, is that Stars has been adding functionality to their client pretty consistently. If their client offered all the add ons that were legal for the site, I think that would be the best way to handle it. Much like they changed the minimum buyin from 20bb to 40bb to solve that issue, if huds are to be legal, they should be in the Pokerstars store, for all people to see and buy, or they could be incorporated into the client.

The question of how Stars stops all this stuff is a rough one. There's no way to perfectly stop everything. The question really is, how does Stars prevent most of this stuff. I would say that since stars has all the data, and 1 guy on whotfru was able to find the bots, there's hope. For bots, I'd say they need to create something similar to whotfru, perhaps giving each player an alternative ID, and allowing everyone access to the site, that way customer winnings and losses weren't just out there. You shouldn't know your own number. Then they'd create some software, that used the euclidean distance approach, or something of that nature, in order to find out how similar certain players are.

That really only works for bots and stuff. I think for huds and things of that nature, it should be pretty easy to keep the majority of them banned. What players would then do is put notes on each player with the more important stats. This would be somewhat effective, yet ultimately they would have access to significantly less data. We can never wholly solve these issues, we can only shrink the problem.

Lastly, my thoughts on this issue are all completely related to what I've strongly believe to be in the best interest of the game. I'm at a point in my life where I've been playing this game for almost all of my adult life, and what I've outlined here is what I believe will allow online poker to grow, and last as long as possible.

I don't know what you're getting at by saying conservative players. Does notecaddy affect fish? No, not really. Yet if you asked any fish, do you think they'd say "Yes, notecaddy is fair." You can't dismiss rec players thoughts because they're not pros, I think it's quite obvious that the majority of rec players, informed about this software, would view it as unfair. Rec players are a very large % of the player base, and I'd guess that at least 25% if not 50% of regs believe notecaddy is, if not unfair, bad for poker. So ultimately it's more likely than not that most poker players believe notecaddy is unfair, or bad for poker.

With that said, if it doesn't break the rules Stars decides upon, it's not unfair. That doesn't mean that the majority of players view it as fair, it just means stars deigned it so, and thus on their site, it is.

if you cant play without software you dont play poker . so this is not good for this industry . if someone is not agree with those changes they have all the freedom to choose other poker rooms .

so who will change this? nobody! this is the best changes in years on pokerstars

irrelevant given skier's description of his voice controlled software which can simply sit on a separate machine

i'm gonna release a proof of concept

I didnt live that time but i guess there was a very similar debate when the first HUDs appeared showing VPIP, PFR and 3-bet stats and everyone thought it was an unfair advantage and it was going to take away the poker essence.

The poker rooms position for softwares is that as long as it is something we could do by playing 1 table and based on our data gathered by playing it is fair and allowed.

I wonder if knowing what is someone´s fold vs 3-bet is ok, why knowing what is the fold vs C-bet flop at 3-bet pots OOP when opened from MP is not. Only because it is more specific?

I've created 100's of notecaddy definitions and dozens of custom badges for myself. Most are based on notes I would take during player and session reviews on things I would look for on ways to beat my opponents. Before notecaddy I would do this manually. What notecaddy allowed me to do is spend less time taking notes on opponents and spend more time actually playing and generating rake.

I don't play on stars anymore but if I did and notecaddy went away
what I and probably most note caddy users would do would be to either find a way to generate these notes programmatically somehow to save time or go back to doing it manually which would cause me to spend more time reviewing games than actually playing them.

A bit part of poker has always been about understanding and adapting to opponent's tendencies. Computerized poker opens closes some avenues of information (physical tells) but makes it easier to compile other types of information.

These types of software are a natural evolution of the game going online. If people don't like that it's different than live poker, then play live poker. Don't cripple internet poker because it's different.

I don't see how this was seen as beneficial decision. As other mentioned the data can be accumulated in other ways that are undetectable which then limits the ability to do so to a smaller group of players and is not accessible to all.Or people are going to play less to spend more time reviewing hands manually.

Who does it satisfy? A bunch of losing players that just want something to blame why they keep losing? After this change goes into effect are we going to ban the next thing they whine about? Why not ban note taking in the software all together or even the ability to color code players.

I really don't understand why notecaddy appears in the list. can somebody explain it to me?
I use notecaddy for MTT mainly because I'm not able to take notes quickly, it just help me to take notes. it helps me as well for post game analysis. Notecaddy can't replace you for your decision, it just give an help from past hands played but anyway before Notecaddy can give you the right play, you would need a huge sample of hands on an opponents. Even after more than 1k hands played with a villain in MTT, you can't get any decison help when you see EP open QQ, 55 in the note or CB As high flop 75% on 4 samples !
maybe there are new development with notecaddy package that are targeted but I'm not aware. I think about Ajackson stuff, I tried the beta for MTT, and for sure it didn't help me at all, it's the opposite you can't get enough hand to figure out any exploitability in MTT.

I'm far more concern about bot an stuff like that, where Pokertars has to put effort on vs HUD, automatic notes...

why Notetracker from PT4 is not in the list?

Dear Stars there is the thing. You consitently proved unable to catch ban bots/users of software that isn't allowed which probably cost every reg several K $. You are clearly unable to police your own games.

Note caddy is a problem and custom huds e.g dynamic AJA HUD are just step too far imo. But the end goal with this will be more scummy russian bot programers/tools creators taking even bigger chunk of the poker money.

First find better ways to police games and ban users of bots/ software that shouldn't be used.colluders then start discusion like this.

I mean I don't know whether to laugh or to cry when I see more and more players creating groups and hunting bots on their own etc. on their end given you consitently proven unable to do so (e.g. the PLO ring that have taken milions of dollars from the economy for Years)

May I first point out that, in almost 700 posts in this thread, you are the first one to resort to petty collective insults? Well done, maybe you deserve a... badge for that.

Secondly, if you really read "carefully" all the "anti-NC" posts here, you would've noticed that a lot of those come from people using NC and its features. Myself included. I do NOT want HM/PT gone. I do NOT want NC gone. What I do want gone is the ability for a clicking buttons "ape", you included, to triple barrel me just because that particular dynamic badge appeared on it's super hud once he sat at my table. What I do want gone is the actual analysis and work being cut so much for you that you stop analyzing and interpreting the data, since NC filters through the enormous quantity of data and just presents with the relevant bits (ie badges).

And when you get off your high horse and actually listen to us apes, maybe you'll realize that in a few years, if nothing is done until then in that respect, you'll be wishing for huds to be gone completely, after realizing you're being exploited by all the buttons clicking apes that "learned poker" in one month, simply because the new 2020 superhud makes it so easy to 100-table and have a near perfect game plan for every hand and every combo of villains.

Im in awe how you take the time to eloquently explain things.

So, to resume this:

-Fishes will still lose everything, but slower, so there's more rake.

-There will still be people using softwares, they just make it harder so the ones willing to use them, have to pay more for it(either money or time, still the same), yet they will be way above the avg player in terms of information. They will be way above of what you call "unfair" right now, because of the % of users that have access to it will be fewer.

-Apparently, going deeper into the field(for some people their profession field) and craving for more advantage in a game of small advantages is unfair.

Let me tell you what I think, people shouldnt go around whining about something being "unfair" when it is something easily obtainable. I use HM and I've purchased NoteCaddy, but I dont use it at all, I find it pretty tedious to start using it properly, yet I dont go around crying because I dont use and someone else does.

Any rec or player who enjoys poker a bit more seriously as a hobby has the means to get this software. We aint talking about something shady, a big % of the community knows about it, most people who want to win(because that's what happens when you lose) will try to find some short of strategy or information about the game and that will include 3rd party softwares, ofc there're people who dont care about the money at all, but these guys dont care about the softwares either.

Imo most of your opinions are biased. I would start ranting about a few examples for you guys, but I dont see how could that make you rethink about it, instead I will tell you this: Almost everyone has the means to get it(we aint talking about a 10k software), ignorance shouldnt be protected and knowledge shouldnt be punished.

This thread got to be 100% evidence that notecaddy has to be banned. Why do people defend notecaddy that much ?
Because its a big advantage vs regs which are not using it and because they got an e- mail which told them to come and defend it.
The arguments of the notecaddy shills are a joke,. You say notecaddy only does things you could do yourself with a hud, but you do not do it and you would not have that information if there werent this unfair tool that tells you how your fellow reg opponent plays in certain spots.
Of course it is not a level playing field, most regs do not want to pay hundred of Dollars for tools to compete in the games.
And its just way less fun and challenging to use programms like that and stop thinking for yourself.
So please pokerstars try to stop people from getting an unfair advantage.

I actually think that if programs like that wouldn't be alowed, poker would become much less fun/chalenging/difficult.
If there would be no HUDs regs would just be autopiloting and playing their "GTO" game 24/7. Much less difficult and interesting....

Edges would also be smaller, so alot of regs that are making money right now, wouldn't be able to anymore.
Right now, only few % of the best players are actually making money. If we remove the HM/NC the number will be even lower.

Once the edges of regs become too small, nobody will be able to beat the rake anymore = nobody will have the motivation to play anymore.

Yes and no. The badge is created by NC and your NC package and most likely with datamined hands, and not you. The badge(s) shows for your opponents exploitable spots. You thereby have a chance at building that scenario, fx by floating and stabbing. It is similar to getting advice during the hand and more powerful. It is what I call cyborg poker.

Also remember in one of the first note caddy packages, one of the creators gave direct link with discount to purchase hand histories. Stars lost the datamining war. Datamining is very used by a lot of poker players - especially down at MSNL where cyborg poker IQ is stronger than winning reg poker IQ; and hand histories cost less to purchase.

Poker Stove has not been updated for years and no longer works. I use equilab once every couple of month. As for Steve Day mentioning poker stove in his original post, I am afraid it sadly shows how little Steve Day is updated with what add on software is for online poker.

Stars and iPoker are currently the toughest sites to play. I just checked my database. They are the only sites I am down in for 2015. With the combining of timing tells to pop up with badges in your HUD, I might need to rethink whether I want to still play in those games. And when they spread to the other sites, it might be wise to retire from online poker. And no, I am not whining about my losses, I am a big winner overall.

Can someone tell me player, who has a little understanding about poker, math, etc., but he makes a lot of money by using notecaddy?

I think you're missing the point. It's not that you should't have access to (or display) a stat that's more specific, not at all. Heck, if you can build yourself a 20 by 20 grid hud with 400 individual stats and still 9-table, kudos to you! Add whatever statistic you want, however specific and peculiar. The point is, though, that it's you, the player, the one who has to visually, mentally and logically sort through all those 400 numbers in your hud and decide how to act or react in a hand. And if you can do that, if you can gulp all that data efficiently and develop a game plan, you're obviously superior in this new "breed" of poker that is online poker (not so new actually, but w/e).

However, if instead of having a 20x20 grid hud you just "program" (lol) a couple of if-then statements in some software to show you the exact spots a certain villain is exploitable, then you're not doing any actual poker "work". It's just the software that's quietly showing you how to win the pot. What is your contribution, as a poker PLAYER, to that exploit being automatically highlighted to you? Zero.