In some posts its stated that BOTS had the highest winrate? How is this even possible? Shouldn't a human always outperform a bot in a game like poker? Or do these BOTS also cheat? Like card sharing ... or I don't even know.

I was asked specifically about Z200 cash game:

1. Z200/Z500/NL1000+ have small player pools. HUD offers limited advantage in small, already well-researched reg player pool.

2. HUDs/NC/analysis tools are used extensively away from the table to study a new reg entering the pool but once reads are well established, name recognition and concise notes are sufficient and arguably better as a HUD is distracting clutter in a small player pool.

Generalising:

1. Lower stakes cash games have larger, more random playing pools that benefit substantially from a basic HUD (say VPIP/PFR/AG/3B/Fold to 3B/Flop Cbet/Fold to flop Cbet) where stats converge reasonably quickly (although some of these stats though frequently used converge too slowly to be reliable in large pools).

2. In lower cash game stakes, advanced HUDs are of limited value because the large pool means stats converge more slowly and one rarely achieves sufficient sample size for reliable reads.

3. I have no knowledge of MTTs/SNGs so I make no HUD comments for these game types.

I think this is only a factor at nano stakes and school kids playing illegally. The tools are so cheap that anyone can easily afford them (except maybe in third world countries). Anyone playing $50 buyin poker and above the software purchase amounts are trivial.

HUDs are an equal opportunity tool and hence fair. Buy one and all its technical power is available. The buyer is limited solely by their own poker knowledge. Group-based seating tools are NOT equal opportunity and are unfair.

For seating, I favour Zoom-style lobbies that mean that every player in the pool has an equal opportunity of being sat with every other player in the pool.

Group-based seating scripts are NOT an equal opportunity tool. Take Spinwiz. Don't buy it and be bumhunted by the group who do. But you can't level the playing field by buying it because if you do buy it you get bumhunted specifically by being added by other Spinwiz users to their sitlist. There is nothing a non-Spinwiz user can do to level the playing field and get an equal opportunity to be sat with every player in the Spin&Go pool. If SpinWiz was banned every player does have in practice an equal chance of being sat with every other player in the pool. (Players could collude via Skype or phone or whatever but only in small numbers not in the 1000 reported Spinwiz users!)

In cash games, individual seating scripts allow buyers to sit wherever they want based on reads from their own play. Datamined hands are a problem and provide an unfair advantage but IMO it is fair to give an advantage to Player A if player A has played millions of hands and as a result has better reads than player B who may have only played say 2000 hands. It is a problem when seating scripts cause the infamous "R" annoyingly blocking seating at tables but that is another story. I'd prefer random choice of table and random seating at table ala Zoom-style lobby. Fixed seating cash game you stay at the table when you fold. Zoom you fold and go to a new table but seating process should be same IMO.

Let me get this straight
- it's ok to use a hud to target a recreational players tendencies (and spend hours doing so) for a cash game because the recreational player can buy a hud
- it's also ok to use a seating script to sit someone if it's not based on data mining

BUT
- it's not ok to use a seating script to sit a weak player in spins. This is because a spinwiz recreational player may be targeted through data sharing? and cash game players never share reads? or target unknown players?

So to summarise, it is ok to target recreational players through huds but not ok to target weak players through seating scripts for non cash games.


Hopefully I haven't missed anything.

Lol, to sum up : it's ok to use hud, becouse I use hud. Its ok to use seating script becouse I use it. It is not ok to use spinwizz becouse I do not care.

I agree btw that poker with in-game advice as we have now is a fun game with a lot of room for innovation and creativity. That's why I think current rules are decent. The thing this is different game than recreational players expect to be in (at least from what I talked to recreational players it's for sure not true for all).
I think current rules are fair and there is place for innovation etc. I prefer no in-game advice at all option but I think leaving them as they are isn't the end of the world at least it's clear what's allowed more or less.
When you play chess online the reasonable expectation is that your opponents don't use software for in-game advice. If they do - you feel cheated. There is the same expectation in almost every other game. Poker is big exception and you need to dig a bit to fully understand what is going on there.

I think in-between options as proposed in this thread (so you can still have a db and HUD but only if they are not powerful enough) minimizes both the "tech wars" side of the game as well as enforceability while they don't offer much in between other than some comfort for small group of players.

My perspective is limited because I only talked to few players I've met so maybe my sample is very skewed but that's what I have to go with.



I used to think that way but then I talked to people who are recreational players (play live few evenings every month) who dabbled at online and the reaction I've got after discussion about current state of poker software was surprise and anger. They feel cheated. You may say it's their fault for not getting informed but recreational players don't read small print or research what pros do. They (at least many of them) just want to play some poker and would prefer the game to be fair which it (at least in their view) isn't.

One way or another it is completely unfair that a recreational player these days in many game formats have 0 chances of encountering another recreational player.
I would never advise a rec to play cash games or HUSNGs or even normal SNGs and I am sure most of them wouldn't play if made aware of how table selection works in those games. I think this is bigger issue than in-game tools.
On the other hand, the rake is so huge , if we go with "fair" table selection that would be in effect taxing the regs even more and making many games unplayable so there is conflict between fantasy world of "fair poker" and realities which are such that everything which helps with table selection results in more money in regs pockets and less in poker sites pockets which - having in mind how much of the pie they take already - is good.

Most of it is cheap but some isn't. If someone in the future wants to sell a solution to say CAP HU NLHE it won't be cheap and most players won't be able to afford it.
It's a big of arbitrary threshold what you consider available.

There is a concept of reasonable expectation. People expect to not be against bots or multiaccounters. They expect and are told by Stars at every occasion that you can't change your sn because sn's are linked to people and it's your right to develop reads and know if you play vs the same person as you did before.

We don't know if they share or not but in general poker is a game made for computers. It's math and statistical reasoning - 2 things computers are in general great at and people are not. The game doesn't require long term planning (like chess) and isn't huge computationally wise (like go). It's made for computers so to speak. It's just that it's a bit different and poker programming is in infancy and not as popular as other areas.

In case you haven't watched TV or looked at the internet in the last 10 years, robots can drive cars and fly planes. Playing poker reasonably solidly is a trivially easy pursuit in comparison.
There's not a huge leap between "playing on auto-pilot" (24-tabling with a HUD) and programming a bot to do it for you.

HU fixed limit is solved.
HU no limit bot gets a "statistical tie" (lol) against Doug Polk and friends.
Bots are biggest winners at 200PLO.

Also let's note that bots are now substantially better than the best humans at chess (I'm pretty sure about this but can't think of a source right now so I'm happy to be corrected).

"Substantially better" is an understatement.
All the top players use computers to do pre-game preparation and post-game analysis. During TV coverage of games, the commentators have access to the best "chess bots", and can highlight a player's mistakes immediately.
I think it adds a lot to the TV coverage, actually, as often the commentator will say "Can he find this powerful move that the computer is recommending?" or "Oh no, he's missed the only winning move!"
In live chess tournaments, cheats were proven to have cheated either because they had concealed an i-Phone on their person, or chose a long series of moves that only the chess bots recommended, but that almost no human is capable of calculating.

I think it's harder to prove poker bot use from the play itself, because so much of the play is "obvious", and there are mixed strategies, such that the best player's moves (in the short run at least) can look very similar to those of a "GTO" bot.
Detecting "illegal" software should be easy (at least if it's running on the same PC as the poker client). Stat analysis needs much larger samples, and is more for "confirming" a suspicion.

If what u say is that u cant arrive to any conclusion

Well then without absolutely no factual information is surreal someone can

so again, biscuit/pies/MrJ discussion is meaningless. on the other hand, there would be a twist to it if they happen to be alice bots.

hi biscuit. how old are you?

The point is % of edge not if there is edge to be had

133 pages of discussing something and theres not 1 single actual palpable Data information u can use there are only wide notions , if u need to understand why this approach is wrong
then this is time wasting discussion

I don't get his double standards either. There are regs with spinwiz who will sit every new user. There are also regs who won't sit anyone. It's pretty much the same as cash non-zoom players with seating scripts, except you cannot purely bumhunt and avoid all action from better regs. I guess it's somewhat in between zoom lobbies and normal cash lobbies.

Imo it's healthier than the cash game equivalent since you cannot deny action from better players should they choose to sit you.

where did this discussion take place? was it in "'; DROP TABLE responses; --" ?

I think stars will just ignore all this discussion on spinwiz tbh since I don't see them banning seating scripts any time soon (many of their new pro team members use them).

Idk what they will do about software aids tho that offer in game advice. I would go with banning as much as possible whilst providing enough incentive not to cheat.

if someone makes cards in Barcode and reads them with scanner , they will have instant handhistory in some king of sql server and they can handsharing again. They dont need HHs. Iam not sure i want give theese kind of advices .

I agree, you'll probably regret it when you sober up.

lol, no one needs a HUD to target recs, most of them will end up losing their money anyway in the long run just because of poor decision making and lack of understanding of the game, so in that aspect they exploit themselves.

Also there are still high stakes regs and some of the best that keep making tons of money without a HUD, and also there are tons of players that can't beat the games despite having a very good HUD or all the software, so is just a matter of choice, if you dont like a HUD dont get one, but don't blame technology.

Some people will stay the worse players even if you give them the best tools and some are going to crush without them, bad players don't lose cause they dont have a HUD, they lose cause they are bad and so surely a HUD won't turn anyone into a crusher! sure a HUD is a tool, but is useless if people don't know anything about poker...

calm your tits

I was trying to illustrate how difficult it is to truly apply comprehensive principle based rules but I feel bad that I've let you down

My post was more about me wanting consistency across all software types. People in their own bubble are able to justify how some software is fair yet other types of software can be so offensively unfair that the software could expose Pokerstars to some kind of class action.
Both software types target recreational players AND regs.

Under current rules data sharing is illegal so properly enforced Spinwiz should be illegal anyway. I have never shared reads on players with anyone.

I play Zoom because I don't like any seating scripts, whether cash games or tournaments.

I have no problems if individual seating scripts are banned: they waste a lot of time and make the game less enjoyable for everybody.

I have no problems if HUDs are banned but if HUDs are banned so should all seating scripts be banned.

For the record, I use a HUD/NC extensively away-from-the-game. Mostly I use a HUD/NC in cash game. I don't use a HUD in HUSNGs or MTTs. I do have paper charts, lots of them but I rarely refer to them. They are there for confidence and to review before I sit to play.

I do not use a seating script of any kind, not for cash games, not for tournaments.

+1

Consistency across software types IMO is the wrong objective as the games have different characteristics: Some are potentially and actually more solved than other game types.

What does everyone think of the following proposal:

* Ban all third-party software when the Pokerstars client is open.

* Stars provides the most basic of HUDs: VPIP/PFR/Ag that you switch on or off in your Pokerstars setting just like display of VIP status except that the stats contain only hands played in the current session.

* If one person at the table has the HUD set on then all players will see the same stats on all players at that table for the current session whether all players have the setting on or off.

* Alternatively, you could make it like a veto: the HUD only shows for all players if all players have the setting on (like run-it-twice). If one player has the setting off, then the HUD disappears for all at that table.

* If a new player sits at the table the HUD is cleared: only hands in HUD are those played by all players at that table.

WDYT?

How old do you think I am?

I am not as old as Doyle but I am older than any famous Phil.

I like the idea.

I think it would be good that if you have your hud off. Your stats wouldn't be shown to others. And ofc you can't see anyone elses stats.

These group seating scripts are clearly collusive. I understand that creators of this software may not like this idea and as a fellow software developer I am with you guys.
But the ToS is clearly breached, unsuspecing recreational players are playing with colluding regs. After all when you create software you can as well read ToS to check if it will be inline with what is allowed.

So the only question left is whether anyone can try to appeal for those colluding seating scripts (Spin&Go sequential seat-in for starters) as being not colluding scripts but something that is fair and doesn't violate the PS ToS.