I'm up a fairly impressive sum from playing Mtt's for the last 5-6 years. I dont use any software and never will. Yes thats my choice, No I didnt know about software for the first 3 years of my playing.
It is extremely frustrating however knowing that I am at various different times being exploited in certain spots by players using aids. I try my best to reverse trap them using my perceived playing styles but that is getting tiresome and tedious.
FWIW I 8-10 table mtt's.
The revelations of some of this new additional software being dissected in the thread is disgusting and quite frankly cheating. What makes it worse is there are NO warnings for those players to just how powerful their opponents are that use this software aids. Quite frankly, the software players are AIDS.
I pay good honest money to play poker. Which is or at least should be a game verses other people. Not softwares.
Just because I am of the smaller minority against HUDS on this site does NOT mean I am in the minority outside of this site.
ONLINE poker is a joke nowadays.
Hell, I remember the good old days on Ipoker when I was fairly new in 2009. The 50euro rebuys boasted a first place finish of 12-13k. 10 euro rebuys would fetch 7.5k for first.
They used to run the ECOOP there. etc etc. Now its a ghost town. Same with Micrograming, Ongame etc, they are all ghost towns. Just left with bumhunters sitting out v eachother in cash and the mtts are filled with hud regs even at low stakes.
Pokerstars is slowly but surely getting that way. One thing is for sure. If this current climate in online poker doesnt change, It will dry up and die over the next decade.
They are already trying to import new and different variants of poker and other games like spin & go's, zooms, lots more progressive knockouts to loosen up the fields.
IMHO all of this software has created a complete steal mate in NLHE

I'm similar to you and use a semi complex HUD partially using some ProPokerHuDs popups along with some of my own customs. I get great enjoyment out of using the software as well. I really enjoy setting it up and starting my sessions, marking hands for study along the way, all while using my own innate ability to process the various elements of the game flow along with my HuD information while at the table. I think that software "can" make the game more enjoyable.

The thing I don't agree with you on and I'm in the opposite view on is the path where all the software seems to be leading us to in time. You fear the precedent that would be set if certain software is banned and I fear the effects of what will happen if the line in the sand is not drawn at some point and or properly enforced.

I'm not assuming that at all. I'm merely advocating as much diversity in the market as possible. The closer the market leader in online poker gets to live poker, the worse IMO. Then I have the personal interest in not ripping everything of value from online poker.

I'm absolutely not advocating real time advice (which responds to what's happening on the table without more than minimal input from the player), but Notecaddy badges are fine IMO and banning them would go too far. So long as the badge is present in a particular location of one's HUD (either on the main portion or a popup), it falls on the right side of 'real-time advice' as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a fan of voice-controlled software because it seems too efficient to me, and I think I'd rather just have charts banned altogether but it seems impracticable to ban paper charts, so I'd be perfectly happy with just software-based charts being banned. The argument that some players will find a way around it doesn't move me - the fewer players who use that type of software, the better.

There seems to be a pretty easy distinction to be drawn between software which provides answers from merely reading (charts, anything which automates any decision-making), and software which provides answers from reading and interpreting (e.g. HUDs and most NC notes). The former reduces the skill involved in the game, the latter increases it. Once you go past that threshold I don't think there's any non-arbitrary line you can draw, though I do think it would be fine for Stars to have a policy of everything not expressly permitted being possibly banned and used at the player's own risk (with the usual ban/funds confiscated for using something which was later confirmed to be banned).

Also, I'm pretty sure the post I quoted just referred to how you mostly play live poker.

Edit: actually, going back and looking at it it also referred to you being a rec, which is where the confusion arises. I don't think you being a rec affects anything in terms of the validity of your opinion, but playing mostly live poker might, because it may cause you to irrationally conflate the two as having equivalent ideal conditions.

Edit 2: this also acts pretty effectively as a reply to DarkMattersMan and cneuy3's posts in order to set out my position properly.

Why you constantly use the word "cheating" for something what's 100% compliant with current ToS? You struggle to realise the meaning of the word "cheating", else you wouldn't use it in this context.

Item 1
Disagree. The PS client should incorporate (or offer the option of) any game based data that is allowed so that all players should have equal access.

Item 2
Agreed to the extent this simply replicates looking at a book/printed chart (as long as there is nothing which facilitates lookup based on particular parameters).

Item 3
Strongly disagree. Such tools, notably HUDs, are different in nature to the others listed in that they provide:

(a) a major advantage to the player (anyone who disagrees doesn't understand poker)
(b) an advantage which can't be replicated by limited effort
(c) opponent-specific data
(d) large amounts of data (encapsulated)
(e) data which goes well beyond the memory capacity and data-collation skills of humans

Each of these are undesirable aspects imo. In addition, HUDs:

- act as a platform for even greater advantages to those willing and able to tailor them or use add-ons
- facilitate cheating, notably through use of hand histories acquired through sharing/trading and through cheating add-ons
- provide potential assistance/inputs to bots
- are seen as unfair by casual players
- are in fact unfair
- could generate very bad publicity for the game
- help kill the fish too quickly for a healthy eco-system
- generate a software war rather than skill battle
- fundamentally change the nature of the game (I prefer playing something approximating the game called poker rather than the game of gathering and interpreting large volumes of stats and chasing round for the latest add-ons etc)

Allowing this category also makes it impractical to draw a clear line on what exactly is allowed.

Item 4
Agreed to the extent those act solely as convenience devices. Would prefer they were offered as options on the client but meh.

My preference
Add all allowed features into the client and ban all external in-game software. Kill the problem at its root (through eg sn changes, anonymous tables, limiting provision of hh) as enforcement otherwise too problematic. Also ban anything which gives the player seating advantages over others. Announce the decisions now and implement from 1 Jan 2016.

You are choosing to be ignorant because you are pro software.
Cheating = Having an unfair advantage in a competitive game verses other people IS CHEATING.
Or, am I wrong? Let me guess, EVERYONE uses the same software right? Or at least they ALL know about it right? Is that what you are telling me?

Nah, that definition's just wrong. It's unfair because it's cheating. Cheating is doing something contrary to the rules of a game.

Yeah. Thought so. Not surprising to me at all your response. Carry on.

so people who make their own notes are the lazy ones whilst you use software to tell you what my range is in most spots. Tells you where im exploitable. Tells you betsizing tells, tells you timing tells. just by loading up hem2? and im the lazy one. Cretin

Your logic makes no sense what so ever

Hope this helps you

Isn't the software still allowed to review your game? So, if anything, the hard-working and dedicated regs would benefit even more from these changes. This is currently benefiting the lazy regs who all but get told what to do in a bunch of spots.

its the other way round. they (whoever they are) introduced software to lower the bar for bad players. two ways to profit was the goal:

- shaft them at the tables
- charge them for software

Ban all software while running pokerstars.exe, very easy. Lower winrates to lazy pros, bigger winrates to fishes = more rake, more play and longer lifespan for poker in general.

you, like the majority in this thread, have no clue what you're talking about

So if someone trains a lot at soccer and becomes way better than someone elese who didn't train as much or at all, then the one who went through the pain of training is a cheater ?

+ 1, nice post

Is this soccer player allowed to use robot parts to replace his human body while playing?

Notecaddy isn't training people, it's telling them critical information (that all but makes up their decision) in-game. It can still be accessed when you're not playing, so it's still 'training' you, it just wouldn't be assisting you while playing. Your analogy is completely wrong.

Couldn't be more spot on. I find it somewhat sad that pokerstars would go out to protect lazier players who are unwilling to put in as much work as others, considering how much has been spent by PS in advertising poker through top sportsmen as the competitive game most agree it should be...

If this is about protecting recreational players, i agree more could and should already have been done. At the end of the day sites and professionals eat from the same bowl, and we are all losing business by scaring customers off.

You must have received many lists of things that scare off your recreational customers, with seating scripts that make the lobby look like a sci-fi movie sitting very very far at the top.

It is that kind of activity you should be targeting and leave notecaddy and hand charts to the players who actually know what they're doing. Frankly, having spent hundreds of hours on poker software, I could think of several legal and illegal ways to circumvent the notecaddy wording in your OP just while reading them.

I appreciate your effort to provide a better playing environment, but please do not fall into the trap of overextending into a territory where your power of enforcement and possibly your knowledge are very limited.

Let pros do their job and focus on keeping those happy who bring the money in. Thanks for listening

The arrogance and ignorance is strong in this one. Well done.

I don't think too many people are saying you have to ban databases. I think databases are good but that live hook ups to info that people would never have collected with their own brain should be stopped.

I agree that huds help the middle ground players rather than those at the top. It artificially brings them closer.

Yeah, I'm just saying that the argument that restricting notecaddy from being used while playing hurts the hard-working regs and benefits the ones who are to lazy to learn it is ludicrous. A ban would help hard-working regs who are dedicated to studying off-the-tables and using notecaddy to make them better players. Currently it just assists in-game decisions for many.

If we are using soccer analogy, the correct one would be the coach shouting tactics to you during play or a teammate shouting watch your 6. While those are helpful, it's you who has to interpret that information and react accordingly while keeping control of the ball. They can tell you "this goalkeeper goes to the left 70% of the time" but when you are shooting the penalty kick, it's on you to actually apply that information and that is not cheating by any definition. Should they ban cameras so you can't get that information? Should they ban talking during the game so you can't get that info in real time? No. That is ridicilous.

Well the soccer analogy is just ******ed anyways as it's a physical game were mental intelligence doesn't play a significant role.

If I could use PokerSnowie in-game, it would say that I should bet 60% of the time and it's up to me to apply that information (the sheer difficulty of this is overwhelming).

Terrible analogy. Football is a TEAM game. Poker is a completely solo game.

The way the current affairs are atm with software online, surely you should be allowed to create some kind of program and hardware that scans your live table and inputs every detail about your opponents plays/ranges and logs all that info. You could build it small enough so that it sits nicely in front of your stacks just for you to see the vpips/cbets/auto notes of everyone live etc? I mean thats what its like online. Why cant we do that live? Why is there/should there be a difference?

I agree the soccer analogy is somewhat ******ed and way to simplified but still, it can be used.

Obviously, pokersnowie in the same analogy would be something like a 12th player who is not allowed in the game taking the penalty kick instead of you. So that would be cheating by current rules.