You and Gmiko were the only ones I bashed for having a crook of an explanations. Could be one more but thats besides the point/

Seems fitting you would think of Gmikos responses as well explained/argumented. Not going to put in effort to respond to such horrendous explanations because you and him will just rely with the same atrocious blabber.


this thread is about additional software so that article about huds is moot. Huds are staying. I wish PS will get rid of huds too but that aint going to happen.

There's this thing in psychology that has a direct application to gambling, called random positive reinforcement. Most easily explained with a trivial example - say you have a roulette addict, playing a game you can't mathematically beat (yet people keep trying for hundreds of years). So why do people still play a game that's obviously unbeatable? The devil is in the details, as they say.

The house's edge in a game of roulette is deceptively small, about 3%. And that is exactly the point - since it's so small, all players (which are all losers) do win from time to time, simply because the house has such a "small" edge. Variance kicks in and "helps" the gambling addict and that is random positive reinforcement. So he will come again and again and again, for years, regardless of the fact that he knows he is down a lot. So what if he's down like crazy? He won enough times that he still thinks he can turn the tables at some point. At a game that is mathematically unbeatable. And all that because of that measly 3%. No, let me rephrase - all of that precisely because of that measly 3%.

Now apply this to poker, dear s/w freaks. Having live leak finders while playing is like you're increasing that 3% house edge the roulette has to a 10% or 20% or w/e. Do you think our dear gambler would still come to play if, instead of winning 1 out of 3 nights at that damn red&black wheel, he just wins 1 out of 10? Can you draw the lines now, can you make the parallels yourselves?

And to whoever has itchy fingers and just dies to hit back saying "you don't win faster vs a fish with a HUD or live leak finder etc".. can you please, for the love of God, stop talking out of your asses for 5 god damned seconds? Just stop, please..

Do you even get what gambling is? Do you get what variance is?

Again, roulette is totally unbeatable. You can't win at it long term, it is a mug's game. So why is it still played all around the world, by more people than play poker? Why do people come back to roulette again and again? Well the kicker is that even with a house edge that means 97.3% only gets returned to players in about 30% of sessions the player wins!

That is the magic trick that makes roulette players play roulette.

Now in contrast, in today's poker world the rec player who is bum hunted, seat grabbed, faces nothing but regs with software aids and maybe some cheat data does not get a winning session from a decent sized deposit. Not a one. He gets to play small pots, or rather gets to not play pots he has contributed to as the regs out agg him so he bleeds a few blinds at a time and rarely gets to play multi street poker or make any interesting calls or bluffs, he just gets relentlessly chipped at and targetted by the regs.

That's the problem. Lack of variance. Now I know it is counter intuitive to you but reducing the edge the regs have over the rec increases the regs income. The reason is that the rec gets his magic 20%+ of winning sessions due to the magic of varience, or maybe he just gets a bit better a run in a tournament with a few juicy hands and managing an hour or so with an above average stack. He gets som play - some variance, some hope of a win for his money, which means he will deposit again.

Again, please try to listen to what I have proposed, I have NOT proposed banning HUDs, nor annonymous tables. I have proposed restricting the power of HUDs and mandating that any aproved HUD allows the site to check it's display and the data in that display is compliant.

The proposal is evolutionary not revolutionary, it is enforceable and it is likely to have a significant positive impact on the rec player experience - which means more money for Stars and more money for Regs. The cherry being that the recs are happier too.

Figure it out with your friend above who is still claiming the opposite.

So you are basically claiming that if fish lost more money, because of higher variance (because of larger pots) they might more often lose or win more and because of that they would deposit more?

But on the other hand, you are also claiming fish would lose less if there were no HUDs and that variance would be smaller.

(When I say YOU I don't mean you personally but group you guys together because it's just pointless to reply to everyone individually, especially when some of you might be the same person)

Don't make assumptions on what I understand and what I know. Even if I had no clue about poker and gambling I could tell you both posts above have flawed logic, contradict themselves and are not based on evidence but on false or weak assumptions, are looking at things black and white and are full of blank statements.

Last time. Prove no HUD means better games. I am intentionally not saying prove no Notecaddy means better games because NC is so irrelevant and with little or no impact on the games that it's absurd to make it the central part of the discussion.

If you can't produce, just don't write anything. Your personal subjective opinion based on no real data but only on your basic knowledge of psychology (like that is the only factor) is not enough to even be a starter to the discussion.

And if controlling software (in this nicely imagined fictional world - because that's what it is until proof is presented) would make the games super soft again and make fish lose more but deposit more because they have more fun, don't you think a professional poker player like myself, if he believed that, wouldn't be louder about banning software than you? I am being accused of being selfish and thinking about my bottom line and being told I would get better games and my winrate would get higher at the same time. Contradictions and logic are not compatible.

There we have it. You are not a gambler, never have been, you have no real experience of being a recreational gambler of any sort at least certainly not poker.

Your experience and mine are completely different. Now can you accept that I might just have a better on what being a rec is, a better idea of the rec experience and the impact of your software tools have on the experience of rec players?

I get that you like your tools, that your perspective is narrowly focussed on what the HUD and add ons give you but just for a moment try to look beyond your HUD and your software and look at the bigger picture and the impact upon recs of adding ever more powerful software onto a game where the rec was losing already?

stems from the (wrong) mantra that you max your profits if you max EV in every spot ? what they did not tell him is that the most +EV move is to get a profitable game going in the first place. #oldschool

Wow this is so annoying. It is not about my perspective. It is not about yours. It's about consequences for the game, for the Pokerstars profits, for the winrates.

Rec will always lose. The only study that is referenced in this 1000 post thread says that they lose more in games without a HUD. How do you comment on that?

What the f is all that talk about hypotethical new super powerful software? With current TOS, without violating the rules, what could it do that you are so scared of? And if something so scary and powerful is made, it's going to be banned anyway.. WHEN IT IS MADE.

Everyone's experiences playing poker online or live are different. To bubble wrap the issue into gambler versus professional is very lazy imo.

Just because you can relate to a rec/gambler; this doesn't mean that a significant population of say 1,000 gamblers would not enjoy the experience of using 3rd party software functionality built within the poker stars client.

You guys are soo far off the topic of the first post its incredible.

And all this noise that your creating, murders any voice that the poker community does have.

I thought that is what we all want. For games to stay profitable / become even more profitable.

Some of the steps to make that happen are quite obvious:
lobby for regulation of poker and merging of the entire world in a one player pool, get poker back in USA, introduce China and Japan to online poker
remove Zoom
remove games with super small edges
remove Spin and goes and similar bs games
introduce a social environment to the game, make it fun for recreational players
better promos and advertising (dont promote zoom for gods sake)
steer casino and sports betting players to poker games (AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!!!)
deal with bots and give back not only what they won in the games, give back the rake that was paid because that is stolen money as well
.....500 other things
then maybe deal with scripts and data mining but carefuly without sacrificing the quality of software
.....500 other things
now that you have dealt with other bigger obvious problems, you had time to do some studies and experiment with some things, present the findings and let's talk about restricting HUDs (if there is something to talk about at all)

The MPN report
http://www.thempn.eu/blog/world-without-huds/
uses anon tables as a proxy not just for No HUDs (in reality they can have HUDs showing just that session's data) but it is also clearly a proxy for removing all additional software add ons (and data cheating). it is only a proxy for no hud or no software aids but it'll do

The report shows that the games have more action, that losing players have a higher proportion of winning sessions. That's what happens - that is what we want.

Now Stars will have a much better data source for proving the way that the evolution of the game - including software aids - has changed over time. Some of that will be non software, better coaching, new styles yada yada but however the change is made up software improvements is a significant part of it.

All they need to do is look at losing/depositing players and work out how often they have a winning session. My prediction is that over the past 5 years they will find that the proportion of winning sessions has declined significantly. That is a simple bit of number crunching - hey all you database crunchers may be able to do it just from PTR.

Stars can run that research quite easily.

Now step two of the research - check player retention against that key figure of winning session percentage. Here is what a basic understanding of gambling and gamblers (not professionals) tells me - the churn of players will rise significantly as the proportion of winning sessions falls. It shouldn't be linear, it should be that once a certain point is reached, call it the "no hope horizon", player retention should drop off a cliff (deposits made, number of sessions played, quitting alltogether, the whole lot of figures for participation by players should go south as the no hope horizon kicks in).

Now in contrast you will not see the same effect based upon amount lost/deposited - it is not the amount that the player is depositing that leads them to quit playing, it is the lack of varience, the lack of winning session(s) that kills the player, loses Stars money and so also loses you money.

Stars can crunch the numbers, strewth they probably have them anyway, it is not like player retention and acquisition isn't a pretty big deal at Amaya towers.

I don't expect them to come back and say owt about them I mean saying that depositing players win less often now than in the past is scarcely news and hardly good PR - nor do I expect them to confirm that players with low proportions of winning sessions quit, I mean it is scarcely new, scarcely shocking - for me the interesting bit is working out for poker just where the "no hope horizon" is and where the rate drops off a cliff for those players - that's the interesting figure in gambling research terms, it is also the interesting figure in terms of player retention actions by Stars, but hey I think they probably know that already.

Now assuming all this is true, none of it is earth shattering stuff, none of it surprising, it is all basic stuff ....then Stars need to look at how close many players are to the No Hope Horizon, the more that are close to it the more urgent restrictions on software or more measures to add a bit of varience to the games is.

Now this post makes more sense. If your assumptions are correct, and can be proven, and there would be no other disastrous effect on the games then maybe total HUD ban might be a way to go long term (after they have dealt with more important stuff that I mentioned). But there are thousands of other factors that you can't predict and it certainly is not as simple as high variance = better games and higher winrates. They should experiment with stuff like that on FT which is a failure anyway.

So just to be clear, you are for banning of ALL HUDs and HUD related software?

Do you think anonymous tables would be good?

Anonymous tables with basic HUD like Bovada?

Normal regular tables with no HUD at all > anonymous tables?

This is quite funny because you try to be smart but thats actually very easy to prove.
People pay ridiculous money to play on bovada/bodog where the games are anonymous which makes HUDs a lot less efficient.
Unibet with no table selection and where you can change your screen name all the time.
And lastly Microgaming which is even more interesting because they offer both anonymous tables and normal tables and the anonymous tables are a lot softer on average.
They now introduce random screen name changes to become more like Unibet.

So yes the games where there are no HUDs/HUDs are less efficient are softer BY FAR.

Jees, No I don't want to ban all HUDs, that would be far too destructive of the current business model for both site and regs. I want HUDs restricted as outlined before, plus I want the site able to check the data being used and that the HUD display complies (totally static, same stats for all players, HUD user able to choose any stat he likes).

I am happy for sites to offer no HUD choices or to offer annonymous tables but the PLO Bot ring scandal/collusion concerns would mean I would not opt for annonymous tables myself.

I have played on HUDless sites and sites restricted in terms of multitabling and they are fine but as we all know Stars is where it is at and as I now mostly play mixed game formats, Stars is pretty much the only option with liquidity.

It seems my literary allusion re the No Hope Horizon was either missed or ignored so here it is, with apologies to Douglas Adams.

http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Shoe_Event_Horizon

That is very narrow minded and simplistic way of looking at things. To continue in the black and white theme, why aren't Microgaming, Bovada, Bodog and Unibet taking over the market from Pokerstars? To give one more subjective, irrelevant view of the games - I tried microgaming at the end of last year and those were the worst, most reg infested games I have ever seen in my life. NL20 on MGN was like NL100 on Stars, there was like one fish per 4 tables, sometimes 1 per 8 (and considering the total number of tables is like 12, thats pretty amazing).

1. poker is not a casino game like a roulette, it's a skill-based game
2. all talks about 3% casino edge are inappropriate. "house" in poker is a room, not regulars. and room in poker has significant "edge". without rake there would be a lot of winning players. the perfect scheme for a room - everyone playing allin shootouts. no edge, everything is "fair", max rake EV.
3. sometimes it looks like it's what the 'gamblers' want. i had some experience playing offline with some amateurs and a night would always end up with a flip tournament, which seemed to bring more fun for them than a regular sng. that's the reason, why i don't want stars to listen to 'gamblers' because they tend to make roulette out of everything cuz more 'fun'. im 100% sure that if stars would implement a slot machine-like poker, where u play with ai, this kind of poker would be a bingo for recs. interesting thing - they would easily lose thousands in casino games knowing it's minus ev game, and at the same time they would make a soap opera of complains because they lost 50 dollars in several days.
4. room 1st priority is profit, that's why while claiming to improve poker ecology they introduce and promote stuff like zoom, spin'n'goes that dry out sng and cash pools, reducing edge, killing "the spirit thing" (table dynamics) and slightly turning poker into a semi-casino. seems like they want to take maximum money out poker as quickly as they can and leave a dead corpse.
5. i would sum up, that these adjustments recs wish for would only make regulars and pro poker lives tougher. since they want to ban nc, poker calculators but don't give a damn about bots, seating scripts, their real intentions become obvious

Well there is a reason why I asked you that question again. If you are not against HUDs completely but just about restricting them, then all your potentionally valid points and arguments that I actually respected are irrelevant.

Because just constricting HUDs while being impractical and super hard to control and impossible to figure out where the line should be - WOULD HAVE NO IMPACT ON THE GAMES. If you think restricting some features of the HUD would have a big impact on the games you are dreaming. The only thing it would do is piss people off.

I think you underestimate the impact of the restrictions but maybe you are right. Maybe my proposal is too cautious, maybe it has been developed to fit in with Stars current need, to redefine the restrictions on third party software in a way that caps it's capabilities but without upsetting the status quo too much.

My belief is that this proposal would significantly help the current situation with regard to recs on Stars and stall the software arms race. The end of heatmaps in HUD, sparkgraphs, player specific badges/stats etc etc must have an impact if people pay for em/use em but even if this is not true and people are paying for this stuff and it has no impact upon how the game is played the proposal has some other key benefits

1) It gets HUD providers to open up the data used to allow sites to review it - this effectively kills data mining for use in game, a feature that should appeal to all, especially recs.
2)This opening of the s/w up to the site allows the display to be policed
3) It places retrictions on the future development of HUD based/integrated s/w packages - the new design restrictions make the FUTURE s/w harder to develop/implement/use.

So, even if it has no impact on the games let's ban it/restrict it because hell, why not? While you are competent enough to use a HUD you can't be bothered to go more in depth and learn NC? Or you are a rec and you have no business discussing software that pros use that you don't úse and obviously don't understand - not how it works and not how it impacts the games.

Reason number 3 is the worst - let's restrict software to restrict software so we can restrict software in the futre. What? We get it. You hate software. Probably hate windows too. I don't even understand why you play online.

Even if you didnt write it, it wouldn't be hard to guess you are around or over 50. It's like in politics, old conservative people voting against every kind of progress because they are set in their ways and can't adapt to change. If you really had the best interest of the games at heart, with no personal feelings dictating your thoughts you would not have contradicting beliefs, you would only care and talk about the facts. Which you don't. And if you don't have them, you just make them up to support your ways. And don't be mad, I am not insulting you as a person, you might be a wonderful human being, but posts you wrote here are mostly selfish and ignorant.

I am done with this thread unless there is some new information - like a new study. This is just going in circles and it is pointless and time consuming. I hope the smart people in Pokerstars analyzed the presented arguments and will do the right thing. They certainly have more data and answers to some things we are guessing about and it's a shame they didn't make this an interactive discussion and policed the thread deleting posts with no fact based arguments (and that includes some of mine which were written in frustration as a reaction to people spreading lies - and I sincerely apologise for being forced to read them).

If it is in the best interest of the games, I will support whatever they decide. I just hope we can trust them to do the right thing.

Ban the Major thread in the major forum in nvg, move it to the internet forum. Seems rather pointless to have this thread still open with an active conversation happening in the other one:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...anges-1538981/


Was this really deleted in NVG? Where some players/customers might actually be made aware of this terrifying situation that will now be overlooked in internet forum? I guess the not so subtle hint was dropped by OP anyways opening the new thread here in the first place, not specifically addressing the bot as of yet.

I disagree mod. I think having this situation/topic open in every single forum your site has to offer is VERY productive to alert any and all customers of this. Especially since I was part of the 1.5 million dollars lost to a ****ing robot.

None of your post makes much sense. The link you've posted doesn't work, but I assume you're trying to link to the NVG thread about software assistance that led to this one? If so, I closed it because we have this one now - that thread hadn't been posted in for the last 2 days, until you decided to throw a couple of off-topic posts in it tonight. Actually, it hadn't had a substantive post since this thread was opened, which makes sense as this is the thread that we know Stars is reading, and where they asked for feedback.

Perhaps you got your threads confused. The thread about PLO bots is still open in NVG, and would be the place to post about botting issues:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...nners-1538509/

Husker said earlier something like (too lazy to search thread to find quote):

+1

I'd like to add that NC is of most use in identifying and eliminating my own leaks.

This is because I have the biggest hand sample on myself and because I have defined many GTO indicators that go far beyond out-of-the-box NC for all streets. Many of these extra indicators are of limited practical value vs opponents because I rarely get enough hands to get a big enough sample especially for later streets.

Secondly, as a player gets better/improves and as result gets closer to understanding GTOish play it becomes much easier/quicker to detect non-GTO-ish play in others and to rapidly exploit it. The player becomes much better at exploitative play.

NC has been a huge help for me in analysing my own game but only because I deliberately developed NC definitions and badges to do that in offline analysis.

But having done so, if you ban NC and ban HUDs during PS play I and many others already have the ability to critique our game offline and continue the journey toward more exact GTO play combined with more rapid exploitative play.

Once learned, the GTO-ish skills and rapid exploitation skills (and counter-exploitation skills and exploitation of the numerous reg players overinterpreting HUDs) can be readily applied at the table with or without NC/HUDs. I think lesser players significantly overestimate the utility of HUDs due to poor observation skill. HUDs are simply far less useful once you reach a certain understanding. As player strength increases direct hand observation reveals much more than HUDs with or without showdown.

What an amzing post. nailed it, nailed it as hard as a post could ever possibly nail it. POKERSTARS HERE IS THE ANSWER. now run with it please
Well done richas and well thought out.

Excellent decision if implemented to ban these programs. Hem2 and poker tracker can be used by us all. So no advantage disadvantage unless you have no idea how to interpret these two pieces of software as for the other list in Italics. Ban them all unless modified within non real time gain modifications.
I don't use any of these baring a trial of hem2 beta version and it clogs the tables up!

So fair play across all games.

anyone thought about those regs losing at 1-2bb/100 and get break even from rake and use all the s/w assistance in the world? what happens to them if all s/w is banned?

its still not profitable to play those guys on micros cause you waste money on rake .

I totally agree with this. With a catch - that bit that I bolded out above: once learned. Can we be honest for a second? Can we all admit less than 5% of poker players actually WORK on their game offline? And I mean WORK, not simply watching a CR/BF/RIO/we video and call it work. Yes, I totally agree HUD and NC-like live leak finders become less important as people get closer and closer to that real understanding of poker. However, the overwhelming majority of poker players, regs included, don't ever get there and they just linger in that limbo where they're so dependent on their HUD that if you take it away it's like you cut off their hands. And they just want more and more and more of this - badges to exploit instant leaks, graphs to tell them instantly where's the villain's leak in betting vs size or vs hand strength etc etc etc. So yes, for a real poker professional, HUDs and NC badges and alike become less and less important and they're more of a kevlar vest that you need to wear if you know everyone around you has guns - it's not a gun anymore, it's a kevlar vest. But that is the case for that really hard working 5%, even less. For the rest of them, it's the opposite.

I am really really amazed of the short sightedness of people here.. I don't know what are you doing playing poker if you can't understand the point about roulette and you refute it by saying "poker is not a casino game, it's a skill based game". Thank you, Sherlock, you really enlightened me.

YOU are the roulette, YOU are the house, do you get that, you s/w addict reg? Is it really that hard to get the analogy? You, the reg with all your knowledge and experience, are like a roulette the poor rec or total fish comes to, in order to play a few spins and have some fun. He has no way of long term winnings vs you, since you have the 3% skill advantage over him that's gonna net you that profit. However, if you add more and more "awesome s/w", more and more live leak finders, more and more tools to expose his every.single.leak, your edge has shot up to 10%. Or even more. Can you follow the logic path of the roulette argument by yourself now?

And really, it's a blatant lie saying a live leak finder doesn't help you that much to clean a rec or a fish. BLATANT LIE. I agree you can profile him after a few hands, get to understand more after a few tens of hands etc. But let's not forget the regs are playing 16-24 tables. So don't come telling you used your awesome observation skills and just that to clean him in 200 hands instead of 500. Cause really, that's total ***** bs and it really stinks up the place. You do not need any kind of s/w assistance (HUD, badges, graphs) to clean a player who never made a cash-out but only deposits, but he now surely loses his deposit way faster in this mutated environment that online poker turned into. All I'm saying is back it up a bit, how can you not understand this is good for everyone? Use whatever tools you want offline, badges, graphs, super GTORBs etc etc etc, just don't bring your bazooka to a "duel of honor".