I said everything BUT the starts client.

It's too bad the regs would be lost without their precious huds. It's not even poker anymore, imo

You don't play online, do you?

I live in NY so my options are limited. I played a bunch back in the day....

Recently tho, I made a deposit on to America's card room. I played for about a month before realizing how lame it has become. BUT that's just my opinion of acr. I would think starts would be much better.

That's what you get for "dynamic" vs "static" distinction which is an imaginary invention of people having 0 clue about math and computer science. I am waiting till they they propose a subset of SQL which could be used to avoid "dynamic" stats only to realize it can't be constructed.

As it stands now I really don't know what the plan to enforce it is. A simple script calling SQL queries on a running db (allowed!) and printing results to notepad is going to be in high demand.
I consider it a step back from the previous state where at least it was somehow level playing field. Now incentive to bend the rules is just too big as there is very little risk of being caught.

It's just a better form of poker with an extra element of skill involved in the form of statistical interpretation.

If that's the case, then the 3rd party software should be free to all. Making it a level playing field.

Let me rephrase that. All the stats that we are to interpret, should be made available. However that is to happen.

Stars security/integrity have really lost my trust over this debacle.

I no longer believe they are adequately equipped to catch cheaters/abusers. Either they are ignoring the elephant in the room, or they are genuinely ignorant.

I agree with that, even though I've spent hours making custom stats.

+1, as always very good posts

I can't knock you for doing it either. If it within the rules right now, everyone should make the most of it.

It's like when baseball players were using steroids before they were made illegal.

Online poker with software aids is not poker (in the traditional sense). Poker is a game of incomplete information. Online poker with software assistance lessens the incomplete information component of the game.

What happens when software gets so sophisticated that it can accurately predict an opponents hole cards given enough data?

Would that be a better form of poker?

This is so far from true. Actually it is the main problem of many people which are against stats. They don't realize that poker is a game of incomplete information and stats are so far from filling that gap. Regardless what kind of stats(or colored super graphs or super badges) you have you still can't say for sure in 99% of spots if your opponent is bluffing often enough to call.

I don't think you understand what people mean when they say 'game of incomplete information'.

So explain it to me then.

http://www.econport.org/econport/req...eory_infostruc

Chess is a game of complete information. Every player can see every informational component (the board and the location of the pieces). Note that the fact that each player may not know the other's strategy does not make chess a game of incomplete information.

Poker is a game of incomplete information because fundamental information regarding each "game" (hand) is not known to all the players - opponents' cards, and cards left in the deck. This is not because an opponent's strategy is not known, and accordingly HUDs have no bearing on whether the game is a game of complete or incomplete information.

Let's put it another way. Even if a player adopts a strategy which involves him playing each combo in a distinct way (e.g. by opening AsAc to 2.00, AsAh to 2.01, AsAd to 2.02 and so on), and his opponent knows this, this still has no bearing on whether the game is one of incomplete information - because the reason his opponent knows his cards isn't the game's structure but rather his (terrible) strategy.

But doesn't a HUD help you to narrow down what an opponents cards may be and therefore lessens the incomplete information component? The stats give you more information on which to deduce an opponents possible strategy.

Seems pretty obvious to me.

The transparency of an opponent's strategy is not relevant to the question of completeness of information, as it is not a structural part of the game. Taken to an extreme, if every player writes down their strategy beforehand and exchanges it, it is a game of incomplete information just as much as a live game between drunkards who can barely see their own cards, let alone those of others.

OK, if you want to get really pedantic about it, an opponents hole cards are a structural part of the game.

A HUD gives you information which helps you to narrow down what those cards are.

Of monkeys.
I'm depressed to say I agree. It reminds me of how I felt when Sepp Blatter said he was the right man to sort out the corruption within FIFA.
I really expected better from Stars.

It is disappointing that the one aspect of this that Stars can control but fails miserably at (datamining) is also central to the practical value of all the HUD data.

The HUD data problem they are having a panic attack over goes away simply by stopping datamining as then sample sizes would be small enough that only basic stats would be reliable and stats beyond pre-flop and flop would be too small to draw reliable conclusions (except for small player pools).

It would be so simple for Stars to stop dead all datamining. And then you can have the most powerful HUD you want without any unfair advantage as inferences would only be from your own hands played.

So Pokerstars has a choice between stopping dead datamining (easy and enforceable) and continuing to sloppily allow datmining but try to enforce an unenforceable, arbitrary set of clunky rules on HUDs.

And you wonder why I think PokerStars staff are village idiots.

Pure hyperbole. At 1k hands an hour, people collect data fast. What pokerstars are doing is stopping companies going too far. If left unchecked, HM would develop software that just stops short of being a bot. If you don't like PS rules, then play elsewhere, as whining about it for pages on end won't change anything.

As both a 6-max cashgame player (100NL winning reg) and a HUSNG player (if a rapidly improving beginner) I think I can safely say that people from each specialty who comment on the other specialty have no idea what they are talking about as the two disciplines are very different.

So this then means very different affects of third party software on these very different games. I think it is very unhelpful that the third party software issue is muddied up by people commenting on things they don't understand without declaring their background.

Correct me if I'm wrong as I'm a beginner but in HUSNG first decision point is who is my opponent. If rec or reg then strategy is completely different with GTOish strat vs reg and highly exploitative strat vs rec depending on tendencies. The highly exploitative strats vary a lot depending on what the recs weaknesses may be. For example, if a rec folds a lot to Cbets I'm going to minraise and cbet him to death even with ultrashort stacks but if he 3Bs a ton I'm going to limp a lot more and maybe still cbet him to death if he folds to Cbets in limped pots a lot.

In 6-max cash you don't see anywhere near the level of pre-flop variation as you never these days get 5 recs and you at a table. For example, a reg never limps except SB vs BB where it has only recently emerged but only with some regs. So pre-flop play is necessarily constrained by other regs at the table who keep you in line and stop you from otherwise maximally exploiting a rec every hand. So 6-max pre-flop play tends to be closer to our current understanding of GTOish ranges. That said, the majority of post-flop is HU and you get a dichotomy of playing GTOish vs a reg and exploitively versus a rec or weak reg with known weaknesses.

However, both pre-flop strat and post-flop strat are radically different between 6max cash and HUSNGs because the stack-to-pot ratio radically changes what GTO looks like and what exploitation looks like. For example, 6max does not involve limping where as HUSNG GTO involves lots of limping as a dominant strat especially at smaller satcksizes. And every hand in cash is at 100BB and growing where as in HUSNG tournament stacks are constantly changing and shrinking dramatically affecting both pre and post-flop strat.