Stars are trying to reduce the edge players have as it will increase the rake. These changes are being brought in under the guise of helping recreational players but the truth is things like NC and the coaching packages that come with it are all about targeting other regs. Fish don't last long enough to accrue the stats these packages target as you really only need their Vpip/PFR to know how they play and take their money.

Amaya will benefit from this and various posters on here who have never been able to beat online at any stakes will cheer on the changes even though they will have no impact on their loss rates.

maybe not at your micro stakes but at higher stakes the fish usually come back. I have 10k hands on a ton of daily whales.

And you think NC makes a difference to how much these whales are losing? Don't be ridiculous. Their leaks will be very obvious and easy to exploit, you don't have to search out small edges against them.

Also known as "recreational players", also known as "net depositors", also known as the people who keep the whole thing going.

Sure they will cheer a fair game even though they can't beat it. It's all they were ever promised and it's all they are owed.

I'm a recreational player.

You have 10k hands on multiple daily whales ? What time machine are you using ? There's barely a single whale on all of MSNL/HSNL Stars that plays daily.

Im not saying this to be mean, but after 8years on a poker forum you still play 25nl so i have a very hard time understanding how you would know such things?

Well yeah, over 10 sites and most of those i have 10k+ hands are from nl100-200. But they do dabble in 400+ every now and then.


Take Merge network for example. If you PTR every -30bb+ fish most of them have 10k to 150k hands at 200-1k. Those smaller sites usualy have loyal whales.

I have a good job and earn a decent living. I play poker for fun, hence why I said I was a recreational player. I'm easily beating these stakes and if I had any intention of moving back up I've won more than enough to do so. I've been a regular at 100nl pre black friday (and have some hands at higher stakes than that) but I just like playing for the enjoyment of it these days and don't do any of the work off the tables that is required to improve.

Now the ad hominen been swept aside (you can google that one to help you out) you can go back to avoiding the point I made.

"Dynamism" is about two things.

1) If you select statistics that are specific to one opponent then it is dynamic by highlighting a handful from hundreds of stats

2) If you select by street you mak the HUDidsplay more powerful overall as the practicable figures from those hundreds is refined by street.

Now 1) is worse, it is specific advice to that player. 2) is about limiting the power of HUDs overall.

This "non dynamic" HUD with stats fixed for all streets and for all opponents limits the selection of stats, the overall capability, if you want 50 on every opponent and can cope with that go for it - if you want your HUD to filter then by opponent or cutomise them "dynamically" by street then - No.

Once they allow colour coding of stats, if you allow street specific then the HUD is far more powerful, it is about clipping the capability of the s/w to what the human can read for all opponents.

Clunky? Sure. Difficult to enforce? Sure - does it make it wrong?Nah

The missing bits include enforcement, software decleration to the client, ability to check data used to populate the HD and more but this "committee" set of rules is a significant step forward by the quasi regulator Stars.

Sometimes you make smart posts, other times you don't, and this is one of those.
Sry, I don't wanna be rude or something, the fact is, you don't know what you are talking about. And I really cannot understand how can you make some statements without any knowledge.
It is pretty clear you don't know anything about softwares and their ban enforceability, how can you talk to 'big' people without knowing the topic?
You showed, even in previous posts about NC, that you don't even know NC's features...

Again, don't take it personally, I don't have anything against you. You can have your own opinion for sure, like fishes have their own opinion at the tables... without knowledge you can talk about this topics.

And this still does not explain how you would know what kind of fish we get at higher stakes than 25nl. There's a lot more 1 time deposits at micro stakes than at higher stakes. Usually 200+ gets degens that play most days of the week.

I don't think you understand the complete and utter uselsessness of what Pokerstars has said. I have a very advanced HUD but I can quickly redo it in maybe a day to have everything it has now but complies with their new rules.

I will still have all the advanced functionality I have today just as numbers or popups on my HUD.

The only way Pokerstars can achieve what they think they want would be to ban HEM/PT because there is enormous power in these base tools. What are they going to do? Ban PT4's expressions. Ban NC completely and half of HEM's functionality? No.

I can vouch for Husker. He's a good player who could play higher with more time and desire. I agree with him that a HUD is completely unnecessary to target a whale. I need less than an orbit to target them. HUDs are for playing against regs when multitabling in large pools. You don't really need it for small pools and you don't really need it for say 4 non-zoom tables or less.

Pokerstars is simply ignorant in cracking down on things they don't understand that are not used for what they think. Advanced HUDs are zero threat to recreational players. Pokerstars own color-coding is the biggest threat to recreationals! Are Pokerstars going to remove that feature? No, the ignorant village idiots aren't.

Is CoffeeHUD now banned given it has stats by stacksize?

^good posts. I am pretty shocked there isn't more comment in this thread recently.

Who knows? It doesn't feature the one example banned stat. It is left very unclear as to whether the only stat bans are stats for specific flops, or any stat for any x.

Long term winning poker players are playing closer to a fundamentally sound strategy than non winning players.

It may be easier to spot someone playing a fundamentally wrong strategy without a HuD than it is to find a leak in a relatively strong opponent without a HuD but that doesn't mean that the max value from the software isn't coming from the opponents that are playing the furthest outside the realms of fundamentally solid strategy. Most of the large value comes from the those players.

That's why most of this software is in a large part most detrimental to the lowest stakes online. This group could be considered the entry level to online poker and these are the players that are often playing the furthest from the optimal line.

If forced to one table where you'd have close to optimal focus on that one table it might be more beneficial to have advanced software against other strong regs but as the table count rises I'd much prefer the advanced software for spotting all the highly +EV leaks in a lot of the random very unbalanced opponents.

You're presenting an argument for entirely banning HUDs - which is fine, but not what is happening.

Consider the example given - Aggression frequency vs Aggression frequency on 2-tone flop. The latter is an entirely useless stat against someone you don't have a large sample playing against, and far more detail than is needed to target a player playing a far from optimal strategy.

In a small pool you analyse key opponents away from the table and then destroy them with your reads in game. That's why you don't need the HUD in game (in a small pool) unless you're lazy.

After dealing with regulators for years in my job, I have to say I find it pretty surprising that after all this talk, Pokerstars has stuck a pdf up, sent the link to a few developers and failed to directly address the major concerns from this thread - particularly relating to creating rules that are unenforceable (forget Huds, how are Pokerstars going to constrain people to 1 A4 piece of paper - and why would they want to).

Assuming Pokerstars wants to continue to self regulate, I would have thought they would have been more comprehensive/thoughtful.

Hello guys, from the recent PokerStars email conversation I had :

Hello Hand2Note,

Thank you for your response.

>> 1. Is the following preflop diagram allowed?
>> https://gyazo.com/b0a47c15f0dfbab3095c06de671d4418

No. The dynamic colouring of the heat map would be considered a graphical representation of more than one numerical datapoint.

The raw display of a count per starting hand would be permitted considering it is the display of a numerical based statistic.

>> 2. Is the following postflop diagram allowed?
>> https://gyazo.com/802c9822d736d0c6f54997eb67edfc2c

No. The stacked bar is made up of more than one numerical datapoint.

>> 3. Is the following data in popup on stat allowed?
>> https://gyazo.com/520907c515b0132185a132ab9b56da60

The bet sizing information would similarly not be permitted. However, the information under the postflop diagram would remain acceptable.

Essentially, what we mean is that if you have "TRASH = 34%", you are permitted to represent 34% in a single column or bar graph as opposed to displaying the numerical data itself.

Summary

1. Looks like those people on pokerstars responsible for the new rules have its own unique understanding of what is "dynamic coloring", "numberical datapoint", "multidimensional data representation", "graphical representation on several numerical datapoints". Btw, graphs are always displaying at least two data points by its definition. Also word "dynamic" often used to describe things that are changing over time but looks like not in case PokerStars .

2. Preflop/postflop diagrams are still available in the numeric form without coloring. You can create a table like TRASH 35%, DRAW 15%, PAIR 20%, NUTS 15% etc., but you can't display a colored rectangle behind it. So, it provides exactly the same information but with much lower readability. Hard to figure out their reasons to do that. Looks like them want to foolish those who are against advanced huds or they are just unprofessional.

3. Bet Sizing stats are prohibited. It was really profitable because lots of people have unbalanced overbets and small bets. It was much more profitable than stats by boards or badges. The question is how PokerStars going to guarantee that my opponents are not using those stats against me. I am a professional programmer and I don't see any way to enforce these restrictions. For sure, some private users will still use them especially at higher stakes.

That's.. interesting. The way I'm interpreting their guidance is that:



Is not allowed, but that:



Is allowed?

I suppose you could always modify your stacked bar chart into a value/trash statistic and then have a subpopup with a bar chart like the one below 'postflop diagram'..

I think they mean that second chart is allowed but only in case of colored numbers instead of colored rectangles

Maybe, but then something like this should be ok?



Either way, in both graphs, each 'graphic' displays only one numerical datapoint.

edit: at least in the sense that a single bar chart (ie your postflop diagram) does.

On the asix X is hand strength, on the axis Y is its percentage. So, yes, it has only one numerical datapoint exactly as usual postflop diagram. The second one (hand strength) is not numerical datapoint. That's why I sad PokerStars have its own represantation of "numerical datapoint" and "datapoint" itself and possibly even unknown for themselves.

Actually, I am not surprised that those people created so ambiguous and indeterminate document. Not much people have mentioned that and I want to pay you attention, guys, to the following quote from the first post from PokerStars Steve:

Almost every less or more regular player knows that NoteCaddy doesn't have and has never had HUD changing depending on actions in hand and, especially, hole cards.

This mistake is not too serious itself. But it is like a symptom of serious decease. It shows that PokerStars team was completely unfamiliar with most popular poker software tools for the last several years.

And you still believe those people could control that your opponents don't use bet sizing stats against you? You still think them even care about that?