And I literally just bought notecaddy two days ago

You shouldn't be making rules you have trouble enforcing. As an example according to these suggestions using the site whoth* aka russian ptr is not allowed. But how are you going to monitor players are not using it? It just puts rule abiding players at a disadvantage vs the ones that subscribe to this service.

The botting scandal clearly indicates that Stars is more than capable of enforcing it. 100% convinced about that

Clearly you only see YOUR point of view and not the bigger picture. Thats ok too.

Huds are available to everyone

I have no idea why you are bringing bots into the discussion.

I'd like to touch upon some points of this discussion:

1) Online-poker was created to bring live game experience to your home
No no and no. Other wise you'd play only 1 table at a time, and with a web-camera, and only with chatting in English. Yes, a lot of fan, but only 40 hands per hour! And no Zoom. And you cannot leave a table after a big win if you haven't spent 2 hours in the game already.

So please, stop comparing these 2 different worlds...

2) Rec players are afraid to deposit when they know about software used by evil pros
and
3) HUD are not available to everyone
Well, what's simply not a case, actually. When I started playing poker, I lost ofc. So after 2 weeks I started googling how can I play better and found a well known poker-school. And I found all the needed software and how to use it. So, all soft is available for those who are interested. 30 days of a free trial for PT and HEM. One may argue, that you'll still need to pay after that. Ok. Stars, probably, can kindly ask those developers to provide their software completely for free for the first 3k of hands per month. I guess, this covers the amount of hands a usual recreational guy plays. Probably, this model of "trial" will be even beneficial for PT and HEM.

4) If soft is banned I at last will win more
First of all, if you don't win now, you won't win without soft. People who win now will continue to win because of 2 reasons a) they simply have better common strategies and understanding of the game b) they still can use "self made" software (or elaborate a ton of other ways to workaround), which will just create a pain in the ass for GIT.

I can also imagine, that some of HUD haters will also play a bit better without huds, but again a) increased winrate doesn't mean that your $/h will get better b) why don't you play at anonymous tables in other poker rooms?

There's a very nice article by MPN mamagement - http://www.thempn.eu/blog/world-without-huds/ I highly recommend to read it. Very likely Stars know about it, that's why they in general allow HUDs and other soft and never introduced anonymous tables in their room.

So, as a conclusion:
• those who need soft will use it or find workarounds
• those who are loosing now will continue to do it and likely even faster
• haters gonna hate

Standard boringly predictable pro hud response.
Let me give you a real life example of huds and new players. 6 of my friends signed up online to play poker after seeing me win tournaments.
6 months later and I tell them why poker is harder and harder to beat. I explain HUDS. They were dumbfounded. All 6 of them self excluded there accounts permenently. They felt cheated. And they are right.
Please explain to me how new players or even exisiting players could come to know there are 3rd party softwares available to them????? And dont list 2+2 as your answer.
Most rec players play for the thrill and fun coupled with the fact they could win real money. They are not going to land on coaching sites

Availability at a low cost does mean a level playing field. It's not a level playing field if it is then banned and only available to people who have the skills or the finance to pay for a way to circumvent the ban. Also you'll have to define the term 'cheat data' if you want to use it in any discussion. And finally Notecaddy's capabilities etc are out there so there aren't any unknowns about it.

Objective: Keep a fair playing environment.

Problem: The maximum punishment when a player is caught (banning the account and taking the respective balance) is insignificant vs money won from unfair advantage, assuming that the rule breaking action is difficult to spot/enforce.

Proposed Solution:

Is it easy to enforce the non-utilization of "software" that gives an unfair advantage?

Ban it.

Is it difficult?

No point in banning it. Only creates a bigger gap between abiding vs non-abiding players and there will be a lot of (justified) complaints.
For this I think the best solution is to provide a free built-in pokerstars software feature that does exactly the same, available for all players.

This is my take on the problem. Obviously is not so black and white as I made it appear but I hope it contributes to the discussion. For example, an exception that I can think of is bots as their non-utilization is difficult to enforce but, obviously, they still have to be banned anyways. We have to hope pokerstars does a good job on this one.

I dont use any of the mentioned softwares when i play, so it is good for me if they go. The hud also could go as i dont use as much of it as the more nerdy players likely do, plus as there is no 2 table max tables, the hud going is the other option. I am considering 5 omaha, mixed games and tournaments instead. But it is easy for stars to offer us alternate tables for plo and nlh. Wrong thread i suppose but there are more important things to consider than making it more difficult to use pokerstove, that i have never bothered to do anyway while playing.

showers skier

Disappointing to see all these comments about banning every 3rd party programs coming from respected members. Legit players will stop using the commercially available tools while the cheaters will still use their custom programs. It will only makes things worse.

Pokerstars themselves could not spot these bots even after being noticed of them a year ago. Now they want us to stop using some of the tools that discovered these bots?

These are two separate issues. Bots should be banned and prosecuted naturally. Pokerstars needs to hire in a more specialised team to detect and ban them.
Just becuase a few high stakes players used their 3rd party cheatware to detect them does not automatically mean they and you should get to keep using them.
Plus, you are only thinking about yourself and your bottom line. Not the bigger picture.
Fish, rec, enthusiasts of poker do NOT want to be getting exploited left right and centre by the select few (which is a large percentage) using an advantage taking software. Its shady, and its immoral.
Ban all 3rd party software. Pokerstars, step up your detection game and hopefully then, poker online may become balanced and flourish once more.

+1

No, there are legit reasons for using VMs. You can take a snapshot of an OS that you know is secure. You can also play on sites that don't have software for mac/linux from within a windows vm.

I agree with banning HUDs but the story about 6 friends excluding sounds made up and taints your overall point.

I dont think anyone discovered bots in play while looking at a hud.

I do agree tho that bots is a more important subject then banning hud, hopefully Stars will have a fix for
everything.

Pokerstars Steve.

According to your rules, and I quote:

You should be banning software that auto clicks the timebank, and autoclicks sit back in.
software that does this definitely reduces the requirement of a human playing.

Can you confirm that such software will be on the banned list?

Who cares whats on the banned list. They can't even control bots how are they going to stop people from using a piece of software they don't want them using.

Pokerstars does have mac software, and does anyone who owns a linux machine really only own a linux machine? There can be legit uses, sure, but I submit that the cons outweigh the pros.

As an example of what they're doing, a botter will set up say 4 virtual machines on 1 computer, then run their bot on 4 different sites. For sites with multiple skins, after an 8 hour shift they'll switch from one skin to another, and for other sites they'll just VPN and and log in to a new account. I'd guess that if stars checked the log in, log off times of the accounts, they'd notice that they were on a schedule.

Either way, botters can turn 1 PC into multiple PCs using virtual machines, and once you have a winning bot, things like that can quite literally quadruple your income. Any serious botter is likely doing that, though there is a chance that the pokerstars bots are different, but it's unlikely. While there are legitimate reasons to use virtual machines, losing the .001% of the player base that only has linux, and no other PC or Mac would be worth it to prevent botters from using virtual machines.

Well. Its true. 6 friends who are all regulars in Galway casinos each signed up to mainly pokerstars and a few tried 888 also.
I know 4 of them for sure literally perma excluded there accounts. The other two said they would be doing it but haven't seen them in over 2 months. But, i suspect they did because they have zero games played since.

Cool story bro....but I'm afraid I don't believe it. 6 people playing poker for 6 months and not one of them has heard of a hud, and you also never mentioned it to them during this whole time?

When I started playing poker I didn't have a clue about anything so I had to search out information as basic as starting hands, when I should be betting the flop etc. All of this leads to forums or books where you will immediately see discussion of hud stats.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...-them-1537778/

While a ton of excellent work has been done off the tables in that thread it will initially have been noticed by hud stats

Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant. And tbh its not suprising to me as it goes against your pro hud stance.
Myself personally? I learned how to play poker in a home game in 2008 and began playing poker online straight away. I learned about huds in 2012. At a casino from a reg. So, theres that...

Next cool story......and also not very convincing.