either ban huds or don't do this amateur decision.

so obvious that this is impossible to reinforce

After a quick once over...

So it looks like "A colour printer and some decent paper" has become an important addition to the usual SNG grinder setup of 30" monitors and a comfy mouse.

One of the earliest features of PokerTracker 2 and PokerOffice is now banned (putting an icon of a rock on a nit)

Notecaddy looks rekt. (sparklines / scattergraphs gone, badges gone unless showing for all players at all times)

PT4's custom stats can easily become "too specific" for use while the client is open.

Im shocked that a software producer is against stars banning software!!

I'd surely be moving to a different site where at least I can feel like I have more of a level playing field.

lol what?

He's in the USA, so probably not quite aware of how dominant Stars is these days, and how bot-infested the former competitors have become.

But what he means, I think - it's like datamining. If you play for reasonable stakes, you can be certain several of your opponents have lots of datamined hands on you. Not a huge deal, but people don't like it - and it's annoying that neither are they prevented or you are not allowed to level the playing field.

Ideally Stars would ban datamining effectively. Instead they prefer to only remove mucked cards from datamined hand history files.

Now, Stars is "planning to proceed with" a raft of new bans of a similar nature, where it is inconceivable they could be accurately policed and enforced. So now the honest player will be playing with only simple charts and a simple hud, while the less scrupulous might print a complex chart that takes up several sheets of A4. Or use a tablet to refer to very complex charts.

The condition seems to be that the HUD has to contain only numbers so as long as the PT4 custom stats show a number they should be fine.

Good decision if they go through with it I stated before that the line should be drawn at badges as they show a yes/no answer on some situations and that is too much of a bot.
I really like how they put it "hud has to show numeric data only".

I don't think enforcing is too much of an issue, I don't see players risking getting banned just to be able to use badges and extra sparklines/scattergraphs.
If they removed notecaddy altogether I could see enforcing being an issue but the change here is not huge.

This is mostly a tournament issue so I don't have the proper experience.
However I imagine they would want to see a chart for 4.6bb play for example.
It seems significantly slower to have to look through pages of A4 for that or look through a tablet when playing multiple tables

Their example is:
The target was an hypothetical application with a million charts retrievable very efficiently, but the wording rules out things like "10-15bb in the big blind facing a minraise" - like, very standard tournament charts. They do give the qualifier of (generalising) "if it's printable on a single page of A4 it's fine". But still, I can print on a single page of A4 a lot more complex than they define in the text.

Can someone interpret this for me, from the PDF.....

HUDs may:

• Alter the colour of an individual statistic based on two different thresholds. For example, a HUD may show a VPIP statistic in red if it is less than 20%, white if it is between 20%-30% and green if it is greater than 30%. However, the thresholds must be raw values and cannot be dynamically calculated or population-percentile based.


What does "must be raw values" mean from this paragraph? When I color code statistics I'm usually doing them based off population tendencies from my in game experience or from my DB. Isn't that the whole point of color coding statistics in the first place? Certain colors = certain tendencies in one direction or the other.

PokerStars acknowledges that a HuD can show ex. VPIP in red is less than 20%, white between 20%-30%, and green if greater than 30% but then they make it confusing for me with that last part.

I *think* it means you can't have it dynamically recolor everything in-game if the pop tendency changes, which would make sense. It reads as "you just gotta make them up, don't look at the summary row!"

It also doesn't address "black (invisible) if sensible, green/red if in actionable range" tactic posted earlier

"For example, AGGRESSION FREQUENCY is fine, AGGRESSION FREQUENCY ON FLUSH DRAW BOARDS is not"

I see what you mean, I didn't notice that part.
I see this being implemented later on but not in the first phases.

I like the "numeric hud only" part and not letting you read the board or your hole cards. That's just too bot-like behavior.

But if they start to differentiate between numeric stats it makes it way more difficult to enforce and to explain why this numeric stat is ok but this one isn't and everytime you add a stat you wonder if it's basic or not even though it always shows a number.

Ty Dave for letting us know that.


"For example, AGGRESSION FREQUENCY is fine, AGGRESSION FREQUENCY ON FLUSH DRAW BOARDS is not"

No chance to enforce that


EDIT: actually, no way to enforce anything

From a developer's Skype status:

Will be enforced at the supply side - there's no way PT4, HEM2 etc won't comply with rules changes and not many have the ability to code their own tracking software.

I'm happy with this ruling because it seems to play strongly into my interests, probably using one of the more advanced HUDs which would be permitted under this, but I'm not certain it's correct.

Also, I haven't had chance to read the pdf - any news as to a ban on seating software?

Again it cannot be enforced.
I don't wanna dig too much in that, but any coder would agree with me

Aggression frequency on flush draw boards is perfectly fine on every other site though, and offline in reports.

"not many" isn't sufficient. you don't need to code a whole tracker, you need to write an SQL query.

Seating software is fine as-is, lol.

Depends on how PT/HEM choose to comply. They could stop permitting HUDs with certain custom stats for use with PS (I assume this is possible). AFAIK, being able to write an SQL query doesn't in itself - outside of usage of tracking software - create the ability to gain a real-time response at the table without replicating the query manually every time.

Distorts the poker market, takes it significantly away from a meritocracy and automates a skilled part of the game. I don't see how this is fine; HUSNGs I'm undecided about since the cartel system seems meritocratic at least, but certainly they should be banned under the existing bots bans for cash.

A hud that executes SQL queries is no big deal. There is free software available to anyone (posted by myself no less!) that does this. PokerTracker 3/4 are born of PA-HUD, a software that simply executed SQL queries against PT2 database, a software they had nothing to do with at the time.

It's also fairly trivial to make PT4 display the results of any arbitrary SQL query in it's HUD without it even knowing the statements.

Regardless, enforcement shouldn't be placed on "Max Value Software LLC" in any scenario.
That's my paraphrase of the section of Stars document when they discuss seating scripts

Letting seating software permitted is a complete joke!

This doesn't boost my confidence that pokerstars will be able to detect bots - let alone if some charlatan out there gets some blu tack and sticks two pieces of a4 paper on their wall.

Mods, please delete my post if I've given away too much information.

are there really almost millions of charts needed for preflop for HU sngs?
I assume it's smth like push charts for X bbs effective stacks and call shove for X bbs

Million is an exaggeration of course, but quantity can get quite large. imagine 0.5bb resolution, so 50 charts of depth for every scenario. open, facing 3bet 80, facing 3bet 85 facing 3bet 90... facing shove, facing open minraise, facing open 45, facing open 50, facing shove after 3bet 80, 85, 90, 95, facing minr after limp, 45 after limp, 50 after limp and so on. Go to 0.1bb resolution and easy in to the many thousands of charts. Take it 3-way with spins and possibilities explode.

Thanks _dave_, yes that's what I mean.

I think that Pokerstars document is comical in its ignorance. It may give PS head office the warm fuzzies but its practical implications are that it's useless on so many levels:

* PS has zero idea of the actual functionality of the third party tools, ignorant of the power of some while overinterpreting the power of others.

* PS has a ~ten-year-old idea of how winning poker is actually played.

* PS has zero idea of how ridiculously easy it is to bypass their arbitrary basic "line in the sand"

* PS is making a laughing stock of themselves by having such a silly document.

I for one will be emailing stars every single youtube video/poker screenshot/desktop screenshot of poker players that i find with any proof that they are using forbidden materials.

These notecaddy definition makers need to be sent out of business. Nothing annoys me than seeing guys who couldn't beat microstake, actually making a living and insulting people on the internet because they managed to earn a lot on definitions that are very easy to do.

Hopefully everyone does the same and we level this down to only a few pro-programmers with illegal stats.