Hi Baard,

Are you guys going to be sending out email notices to all players because I feel as though anyone who hasnt been following this thread won't be aware of the changes. And since I don't believe (or see how) PS will be looking at everyone's machine that has i.e Microsoft excel open to see whether their charts are too advanced, I feel as though I will be getting freerolled/"cheated" unless everyone knows about the rule update.

Of course people will just continue to have their charts up on side computers however that is a difference point.

lol they wont. I mean this all started because people freaked out about skier's software, the pitchforks came out, PS was kinda backed into a corner and now they **** on tons of players with these hilariously stupid new rules.

Hope you skier-pitchfork ******s are happy. This is why I was the only one defending him early on in the discussion because I new it would be hard for PS to draw a clear line in the sand between what skier's software did (my guess of anyways) and what my Microsoft excel charts do.

Soooooo much this

This. I would really appreciate it if PokerStars can clarify this issue. For most people this might not seem like a big problem, but this is a huge issue for me as a HUD dev and I'm sure many others will be just as concerned as I imagine this will effect all (if not most) commercial huds on the market.

As an aside, color condition expressions no longer work for me in the new PT4 update. I am not sure if this was intentional or if they plan to ban ALL color conditions.

I.e. If i have <5 samples of FLOP CBET, i want the color to be grey.

Would this be considered dynamic? If i have a color condition set to the above, and then 2 different colors when samples are >=5, then is that technically allowed?

As you can't be arsed to read it what makes you think you can dismiss their effort on the matter of defining/creating the rules?

There are a range of valid views on these issues but one thing is sure, if you can't be arsed to even read it then yes your cooments are those of an idiot, as you rightly suspected.

Hero renames his push-fold charts "tpt-reference-guide.pdf". Hero pretends he's checking the rules, when he's actually checking his pre-flop ranges. Hero wins the internet.

ban huds so these kids would learn how to play poker

Ok, lets say ur an amateur basketball player and you come to play in a basketball court with young guns and they all got these brand new jordans which lifts them in the air so high they can dunk 360's and all that stuff, other than that they look like a bunch of incapable out of shape nerds. Where are you gonna go play with them or with your old pals in your neighbours yard or old highschool court? (internet poker with huds vs live poker)

I think removing/banning ALL software (incl HUDs) that gives a reg/pro an advantage over a rec is a MUST if online poker is to remain. Make it a level playing field (as far as software is concerned)

This is so confusing..

So is it permitted to have HM2 HUD with 3 different colors (red, orange, green) in single stat like VPIP?
And is stat BB fold vs hero steal permitted..? VS hero stats overall..
Finally HM2 pop up, example "default flop".

i dont get it with the tracking software. why make it so complicated? just straight out ban all tracking/stat programs and everyone will understand it.

The biggest problem with this is that Pokerstars has to be able to PROPERLY enforce these new regulations otherwise the advantage gap between "cheaters" and "non cheaters" will be enormous.

I understand that commercial software like PT4 and HEM may be able to help with the enforcement of some of these new rules by enabling software limitations, but what if some non-commercial software developer makes his own database software with his own HUD and own custom scripts. How does Pokerstars handle that?

banning of auto-preconfigured bet sizings?

people have to cut down volume now and there is no upside to it. actually, paradoxicly i have to make stars hotkeys for my betsizings and this will slow down my game speed, it costs me money, it costs the recreational player fun, it costs the site rakeloss. i do not see people getting upset about auto-betsizes either

can anyone please tell me the advantages of this rule change?

Why does allowing 3 colors to code your stats and not 4 make any difference to anything?

If your are going to ban color-coding, ban all colors.

Bc regulars without hud will decrease tables which means less rake and less money for amaya shareholders

+1 TC, they should atleast make it understandable what the rule changes even are, esp when half if not more of the players dont understand english.

for those confused about the colorcoding limit, it appears to be 3 according to HM2 (they released a version yesterday adapting to the rule changes):

I case you weren't aware, Holdem Manager and PokerTracker are the same people. So yeah, if they read it as "must be 3 only" they both will have made the same decision. It's no evidence that the (frankly ridiculous) idea is correct.

I hope Pokerstars evaluates posts from players in this thread and decides they can be flexible with their announced rule changes based off player feedback. Baard's statement seems like this entire issue was a decision made by a group of people who don't play poker overreacting to a spreadsheet.

The biggest issue is that I don't see a single person who plays mid/high stakes reacting positively to the changes, and there is no reason to believe that these rule changes will be better for the long term health of either poker or Pokerstars. The people cheering on Pokerstars the most in this thread are obviously not professional players, and their decision to play on Pokerstars will not be affected by the rule changes anyways.

You can still have static pre-configured betsizings, such as 55% of pot on flop, or open 3x UTG, 2.5x BTN, etc.

You just can't have dynamic betsizings that accounts for extra info such as number of limpers, such as raise 4bb + 1bb/limper

Only the best of the best players are able to count limpers. Using a program that counts the number of limper and makes a predefined betsizing must be cheating of course! How can you defend such a stupid ruling ("just")? Does it make anything better?

SOme stats should be limited.

Are you going to be sending emails about this ? Most people don't update their soft (esp HEM2 since every update crashes your entire network) and now you can find yourself breaking the rules without even knowing about it (not every player in the world reads this thread).

I'm not defending anything, but Stars might do so by saying something such as:

The rule was put in place to distinguish between static and dynamic automated processes (i.e. Ones that don't take into account actions and card info, and ones that do.) Some of those now-prohibited actions may seem trivial, but a line has to be drawn somewhere.

If you have trouble counting to three or four then most PCs have a built in calculator.

Lots of recs enjoy using HUDs too. I imagine stars respects that.

I'd wager most HUD users are breakeven or losing players.

Tuff-fish used a HUD.

Tuff-fish.

There's a lot flanneling at the cosmetic edges here by stars.

Still no firm action on preventing data-mining. Sites offering near complete HH's and asking for $1000s to opt out. Nothing but a vague promise on that.

But clamping down hard on Huds with 4 colours.

Boss.

I'm all for stars revamping how and what 3rd party software interacts with their client. But let's tackle the stuff that genuinely undermines game integrity.

I dont think that you see the problem here really.

Stars is banning this in order to prevent ppl to play better or get some kind of automated process in case they dont know how of a certain amount you should isoR for example.
Problem is that software like TO is only aiming to give the capability to automatize the action and isnt giving any kind of suggestion regarding the amount of isoR as default. So in the end you are actually taking the decision anyway bc you need to configure that particular scenario in the first place.

So again, this only accomplishes to slowdown the game and isnt preventing any kind of abuse.

My honestly 2 cents about all this mess:

I feel like PS is screwing around big time with this. They should simply ban Notecaddy, and all kind of scripting abuse like auto-seat, or another kind of script that could give a big unfair advantage damaging the games and the fair competition.
Instead they are doing a mess with all kind of changes, regarding pokerstove, predefined sizing, huds colors, etc. I mean, no one is going to take care of all this stuff that feel unnatural just in order to play poker.

You could say "but banzay, HUDs could be considered unfair too". Yeah it could be considered, but you have software that is giving HUDs display for free if you want to and anyone can install. Then you would say, well, then auto-seat script should be allowed since everyone can install too.
Problem is, having HUDs and preset bets, doesnt damage the actual gameplay, you could say that it actually improves the speed of game and the overall feel about it. Auto-seat script damage the gameplay directly in a very specific way, blocking profitable seats to other players, even in some case blocking the creation of new tables at all. (I always remember some stupid video on youtube where ppl was rotating seats like crazy some years ago... I cant find the video right now).

It is very like the longstanding ban on autofolders that fold say the worst 10% of hnds. The ban is not because they expect a different action by the player it is because it crosses the line on automation rleated to stuff that has happened in that specific hand, the first step of a bot.

Similarly the expectation would be that the player wanting to raise by 1bb extra per limper will carry on doing so but automating that is the issue, it is botdom - applying code to affect the in game action.

Any line on automation is bound to have things where the automation is relatively trivial to gameplay but get banned - that;s the inevitable price of banning bots and automation of in game decisions.

The line has to be drawn somewhere so no autofolders and no bet size that is based upon others actions rather than the knowns before the cards are dealt (position). It really is not hard to grasp and the benefits of a clear line are pretty obvious given the propensity for some to want to automated more "standard" stuff.