So you are blamming NC for the datamining. It's pretty much the same as saying :
Drug dealers use speedboats to carry their drugs, so let's ban the speedboats and do nothing against the drug dealers.

Brillant logic.

I laughed my ass off

but ..but ..the very purpose of NC is to data mine.

How can you lie so much without feeling any shame ?

The purpose of NC is to help you to make decisions in unusual spots versus players on who you have a big sample.

The fact that some users are using it with datamining, doesn't mean NC was designed for that, and doesn't mean that NC has to be blammed for that. This only means that something has to be done against datamining, not against notecaddy. And skier already made a post about that and about modidying the way hand histories are presented to the players.

This speaks volume about your ability to read thoroughly well articulated posts that don't support your opinion. Let me guess - you either skip them completely if you realize they're against your stand or you read them diagonally and hit the quick reply button, right?

Hopefully the PS staff that's gonna gather all opinions expressed in this tread (pro, anti and in-between) are more astute and less biased then you are. Shouldn't be too hard, to be honest, if that's the only stand from "anti-HUD", "anti-NC" (or specifically "anti-NC badges") posters that you picked up from 900 posts so far.

can we get sreti back in this? i like it so much when he goes on thread tilt and starts spilling the beans.

Lol yeah, this.

If you ban stuff like notecaddy you are just putting all the power back into the hands of the elite coders/hackers. As if people won't find away around this. At least if everyone has access to this stuff the playing field is level.

I like poker the way it is.

I mean....pokerstove? It's a joke right? Ban pokerstove to make the games fair again? Did I read that?

And I'm sure it won't occur to any of these high stakes pros to use pokerstove on a separate machine to secretly crush high stakes online games.

That's enough posting now, I need to sit here and facepalm for a bit.

Thanks - first I've seen this but will read.

Not sure I entirely agree that your breakdown of the situation does in fact mean they were in cahoots but regardless its irrelevant to thread so I'll shut-up.

I also do not think its ethical correct to blanket refer to the usage of a HUD as "cheating".

You actually make them much more powerful, whilst putting law abiding grinders at a further handicap.
I liked most of what you posted to be honest, very rationale approach.

Although the bold part could also be seen as self preserving. Just my opinion, not a personal attack.

I think you're being disingenuous here. We know that data-mining refers to hand histories from games you haven't played. The purpose of NC and HEM and PT etc is to use data from hands you've played.

I'd be very much in favour of something being put in place to stop any software package using data mined hand histories. I'd assume this is something the programmers of the packages concerned could do.

Answering or reading a post of mme is a pure waste of time. He has a long history of making libelous suppositions without having ever been able to back them up.

Preventing the use of datamined hands should - i'm a complete layman - be quite easy as hands which you have played contain at the beginning of the handhistory your hole-cards. Datamined hands can't contain that information. Preventing the import of hands without that information shouldn't be hard to achieve.

FYP

apply the new rules
reading the list of s/w you can see where poker is going, in 2015 to play poker you need to add a 300 to 500$ start up buying s/w and you still behind many others.

More the game gets automated and more new players will choose slots or sport betting as sometimes they may be able to win with luck while on poker after 2 orbits a reg and his group "work" friends will know how to beat you thanks to info that an average player don't have.

All this started because a cartel complained for losing their advantage on their game, and many, who are against the changes today, will cry when new tools will come out to push them out or will start crying because PS don't invest any money in poker but prefers to invest them in sport or casino games, where better profits can be done.

S/ws are not the only reason, but part of the problem. There will be not a new boom but it is a about keeping the game fair and alive as long as possible.

Lots of ways to make importing illegal data harder. Now, here is a question, why do all the packages make so damn sure that it is easy?

Ask HM and PT, not me

Are you seriously suggesting people wouldn't buy HEM/PT and would play without a hud purely because they couldn't data-mine?

Hopefully they are swayed by the many quality points and reasoning from many posters in this thread; skier, raidalot, artymcfly, richas, greg nice, and many others.

It's especially refreshing to see someone such as skier who was chastised for his own superior 3rd party software standing up to the plate on these issues and presenting fair and reasonable data to go along with possible solutions to lessen the problem that this software is causing to the poker ecosystem.

It seems to me what is needed now is a public voice for these changes. A lot of the posters arguing in this thread for serious change are decorated and well known to the online "twoplustwo" poker world but don't have as much of a voice to the general public or masses. PokerStars has historically made small changes and has always been rather hesitant to make any significant changes; especially ones that might negatively effect their atleast short term bottom line.

In my opinion to have any shot at any real significant change to the current terms and conditions on 3rd party software on PokerStars it's going to take a lot more than "quality reasoning" from people in this thread but a significant voice behind it. One that reaches the masses and pressures PokerStars into making change.

The dataminers choose the package that makes their life easier.

As for some of the NoteCaddy add ons and NoteCaddy my working assumption is that at the micro stakes where there are so many more players they only really become effective combined with data mining/sharing. Hence why NoteCaddy works fine on imported illegal data.

Of all the things regarding potentially illegal actions & software, checking if the DB you use while playing has datamined hands has got to be the easiest one to do, technically. By a long shot. Either on HM/PT end or on PS's end.

NoteCaddy uses data imported into Hm2. If HM would prevent the import of datamined hands the problem would be solved.

Also interesting how you manage to not mention HM a single time while NoteCaddy 3 times despite HM being the cause of the problem.

You want to help recreational players facing all the software used to play poker?

Simple: just allow all the players to change their nick name at least once a day!

Than we would have a fair game to all!

What you were told is a blatant lie

You never answered my question, are you seriously suggesting people wouldn't buy HEM/PT and would play without a hud purely because they couldn't data-mine?

And as someone who plays micro-stakes I can tell you that your assumption is, yet again, wrong.

Clearly not, I am told that when NoteCaddy was first marketed it came with links to data mining sites and discounts, indeed it is earlier in this thread. It is also obvious that tracking software and various HUD add ons are essential tools for data cheats.

You want to know something funnier? Datamining sites - banned sites like PTR have a long history of acting as affiliates for sites that they datamine illegally.

They sell the cheater the data for their new site, give em a sign up bonus or whatever for signing up via themand then they get paid for the cheating by the cheater and via the site that outlaws their services!

Now Stars et al have messed about some of their affiliates recently but if they were serious about data mining cheats rather than sending the odd one they think is doing it a nice note saying plaese stop they could try checking out the players signed up via cheat site affiliates and stop paying the cheat sites affiliate fees.

Who is telling you this? It's clearly not right to say something which is not true, whether you're making it up, or someone is telling you it. NoteCaddy has never been pro datamining or affiliated for it.