This all day. I havent been in the online poker world much since BF but I dont understand why some people in here argue so much for HUDs to be allowed in game. Use whatever it is you want to use to learn and study, but in game, its you and only you, person vs person.

Do you play online poker? You dont right? You develop and sell solvers (its quite an impressive work, kudos to you).
I do play online poker, probably longer than u do.

I can make a good case where i believe introduction and massive marketing of solvers eventually have had big negative impact on volume and quality of games played online compared to any damage ever done by HUDs, since around early 2015 when they first started to come out publicly. I dont blame you, if u didnt make all that money that u did off solvers, someone else would in ur place.

Before fake 2p2 recs could at least argue that HUDs is the reason they cant win online. Nowadays close to nobody even debates why they dont play online, everyone knows there is nothing they can do to fight back kids with solvers.
Less and less people want to deposit and play online, not because of HUDs, but because they hear that `mighty machines beat them down`. Software that gives an operator in-game real-time advice based of GTOsolvers, or just pure botting where its been confirmed time and time again that bots XYZ took 100`s of thousands of $ off XYZ site before they got banned. Thats why recs dont want to play online.
HUDs somehow should be the least of our concern in 2019.

Audience that u sell ur product to, will suffer if decisions like this continue to happen, it will eventually bite your own bottom line. You are not selling the majority of ur product to people who want to play capped tables no rakeback HUD`less anonymous zoom poker trust me. You will understand it one way or the other, quite likely very soon.

The reason i wrote all the above, u seem to sincerely care about rec players integrity online (HUDs/bots policies etc), while ironically ur very own work and product pretty much demolishes those players at significantly faster pace/loserate.
You probably wouldnt mind if exploitative play would keep diminishing (sites remove HUDs/screen names etc, to `protect and improve ecosystem right?` and people mostly aimed at playing GTO-based poker (i can see some funny correlation there), maybe thats why ur so active and protective all of the sudden?

p.s. as far as OP is obv self interested in thread/topic, well dooh. But before u state the obvious, make sure you can debate points he`s making, instead of screaming blindly `lololol at OP all you care about money so im not even gonna listen to what you write here`.

One more thing, im getting a bit tired of hearing this same nonsense about how badly we need to protect recs by any means necessary. Im talking about true recs, not `used to grind 2p2 regs who dont put in hard work anymore, but do want to now and then fire up online session and win few buys a month online.`

They are recs (aka losing players) for A REASON. They dont put in the hard work necessary, its not their job its their hobby. And they SHOULD and WILL lose at the tables no matter how hard you try to protect them. Its just logical. If they theoretically lose at -100bb/100, just because u remove HUDs wont all of the sudden make them -50bb/100 losers, it will be -95 or -90 at best (if so, and i doubt even that). They will keep getting demolished no matter what.
If a rec deposits 1000$ and right now 700$ is getting won by better players, and 300$ gets grinded into rake, ideally each poker site wants to create such an environment (whats why u get ALL of these ecosystem changes) where of that 1000$ deposit, 50-100$ is getting won by players, and 900$ is now grinded into rake.

Unless we end up in each pokersites perfect world, where all thats played online are super low edge lottery type huge variance games w huge raketrap where there are bunch of marginally winning eastern european regs (who`s life cost is very very small, so they will keep molding deposits into rake no matter how bad it gets online), and poker site makes the vast majority of profit approximating to B&M roulette business.

Here`s a good solid suggestion. Lets take it to another extreme. How about each week 10-25% of winning accounts money/winnings is directly taken out and deposited into losing players accounts? Just because. Seems solid and fair to poor recs.

I knew this was going on, but had never read this post. When the stable owner admits that this is their strategy, how on earth are they not banned for life? This is the clearest admission of data mining and extreme exploitation of that that I've ever seen. Bear in mind that this is one of the very biggest stables out there (rumoured to be in the many hundreds of players), and also likely to be one of the biggest net winning stables. The sad thing is that this particular stable is not even close to the worst in terms of ethics.... perhaps someone will chime in regarding how the south american ones work....

I hope many people report this to stars. I would say the same about reporting it to party but given the close relationship between the two parties, I doubt that they'd care.

Since people brought up chess, in terms of "datamining" isn't chess the first activity where this happened?

Where every movement of a player was studied to exhaustion, every opening. There's even journals devoted to some players, every aspect of their play. Entire encyclopedias on the subject.

Curiously enough, I think it were the russians (et pour cause) the first to do this kind of such extensive analysis of a game. Also in chess every move is recorded in live play in a notepad, if not recorded on video.

Also kind of hilarious the author of a solver coming here throwing shade at pokertrackers. Business may be picking up even more in the near future, I guess.

Is there a representative from Partyou Poker on TwoPlusTwo who would like to respond to this thread and engage in discussion?

There are no PP reps on 2+2 anymore. They withdrew all support on here at the end of 2018 and all the old PP threads are now redundant.

I don't play anymore but I played professionally for 8 years. I have some experience in playing the game without trackers and HUDs as I was already playing professionally in 2005 (on old Paradise poker then on Party).
It's quite possible. While I think it's hard to put good arguments either way I think it's at least a reasonable position. Solvers killed HU games for example and will likely kill some more games in the future.

I don't agree. I don't mind they study away from the table with all the want. I want a fair game when actually playing - that is them not getting online advice from any source be it database, GTO solutions, stable analysis etc. The closer we are to this the better.

I agree with it. I've entered this discussion with a strong view about fairness of the games not because my bottom line. I think the more 3rd party tools are allowed in-play the better for us revenue wise although I can't imagine that particular issue (HUDs) have significant influence on that. I am in lucky position to not worry about that too much either. We are already passing a lot of borderline shady opportunities to make tons of money, it's just not much of a concern for me anymore as I can afford to do whatever lets me sleep better at night.
I am not against trackers btw. They are great tools for record keeping, analysis and preparation. They are going to sell no matter if you can use them during play or not similarly to how chess databases sell. I am just very firmly against allowing any in-game assistance. I think poker was better, more social and more fun game before those appeared. I remember there was more chatting, personal vendettas and overall fun during my first 1-1.5 year of playing than during remaining 7 years once multitabling reg became main type of the opponent I was facing. The first year was far from my most successful one financially but I remember those games being the most fun. The vibe was forever lost when disabling chat to focus on more tables which HUDs made possible became the norm.

Datamining and even chess engines changed the game but it's still mind vs mind during play and that what people want. The tools appearing evened out the field quite a lot. Back in the day you needed a team of GMs to work on openings and opponent specific preparation for you, today I can have Carlsen level of preparation (at least in specific openings) by firing up a computer with strong GPUs and letting it run for a few minutes.
I was lucky enough to play against world class players in chess, multiple world champions in bridge and national champions in squash. In every one of those games I was beaten soundly (although in chess I scored a few points in blitz) not because of equipment and tools but because my opponents were faster, quicker to see things, more precise in analysis, fitter and had better technique. That's exactly what I and I think vast majority of recreational players want in a competitive game like poker. The reason I can win one in X games against top 100 players in chess is that they sometimes make mistakes or miss things. They wouldn't ever miss if having a HUD and it wouldn't be fun to play against them then.
Seriously, talk to recreational players. You will hear it over and over again that in-game tools are cheating, if you describe exactly how they work they will often be shocked an disgusted. You talk about them as if they were cattle which is going to a slaughter one way or another. It's not like that - people want to have fun be outplayed by better players on fair ground not by superior equipment. About every competitive sport and game out there have the rules to ensure that. There are people who are willing to pay for the privilege to lose to a better player as long as they will that player uses the same resources available to them during play. A lot of people pay to be outplayed at golf - they wouldn't if the opponent had an aimbot. It's fun to play a simul vs Carlsen or Kasparov - wouldn't be so much fun if they were using a HUD during the event. I was lucky to play an online blitz game against top 20 chess player yesterday, I lost because he calculated a line better than me, I had a chance for a while having a better position after his slight mistake after the opening. It was a fun experience and something I am willing to pay for (it was an event for subscribers at a popular chess website). It wouldn't be fun at all if he had assistance during the game I could just as well played vs an engine on my PC instead then.

Because there will always be HUDs. If they are allowed by the network, everyone can have them, which somewhat levels things out If the network 'bans' them, only those willing to break the rules will have HUDs through screen scrapers. Would you rather we all have them, including yourself? Or would you rather give unethical players with their illegal HUDs a HUGE advantage over you?

Party's anonymous, isn't it, or at least allows a bunch of screen name changes? So why should I care?

He's wrong about lots of things but actually has the current climate nailed down perfectly

you use chess and golf as an example.

online/live chess for money is dead, not because of online assistants, its because theres 0 variance and because of the skill gap. you created a fantasy world in golf and chess where amatuers are happy to put their money up to play a pro, but wouldnt if the pro is using an assistant. but what you describe is a pay-a-fee for the experience type situation, not gambling. gambling vs pros in those sports does not happen. because people know they will lose.

poker is the same, people figured out they will lose. a site takes the hud away, amatuers come back (hopefully), they sit down vs 5 boris slavovic's. boris doesnt have a hud but he has premade solver solutions. x time and y dollars pass and they will figure out they are even bigger losers now. back to their live game they will go. all you did was cost them money and time and make them even angrier.

all of this doesnt matter anyway, the argument is whether this change will have the desired effect or not. it is the sites choice what software they want to allow. so lets look at some examples. feel free to add your own.

globalpoker doesnt allow huds, there are reported bot rings and collusion rings and they are starting to get a bad reputation.

is this the future for party poker? or do we blind trust a company with a horrific security record.

Conclusion: Will banning huds/hand histories have the desired effect, and make the games fairer? or less fair? vote below

https://www.strawpoll.me/18152775

The whole hud argument is nonsense. Fish got crushed when there were no trackers, it got crushed when there was only Pokertracker. All a reg needs to understand is whether a fish overbluffs or underbluffs and can then start exploiting him to death. You don't need a hud to do that.

Just take a look at the winners at live MTT (no hud) in the past 5 years, how many recs are up there?

So what? Some can use a screengrabber generating hand histories for a given position and generate mass pop tendencies.

A player can have a hud with sessions stat and can have pop tendencies for every position in a given game. Thats seems like a huge edge to me.

I will add only one thing... If the sites consider that some players having HUDs have a advantage, why they don't implement ingame HUDs for everyone?... for a rec to see what's happening he need like, I don't know, 15 stats overall...?? It would be not that hard... the REGs who payed for HUDs will have still the HH and all the info they think they need... the REC can have basic info for free, and make some basic data anlysys, and if he will be interested in having more specific info he will be able to buy a HUD by himself... ...

Well said. This is the only realistic approach.

lets ask a poker forum with a huge amount of online players if a HUD should be banned..

That's not true.

Football teams have coaches and medics. Top teams have better equipment than mediocre teams.

Rafael Nadal has a 725k watch he's wearing during the matches to offer post-game analysis.

So yeah, they have to win the games for the most part on their own, but preparation hugely also depends on what data you can collect during the matches. In our case that would be handhistories we can analyze before the sessions. I mean sport teams even spy on their opponents to gain edges, that would be considered data mining handhistories I guess.

well some people seem to think it will bring amatuers back and create a fair game, so if they believe that then it should be more important to their winrate than using a hud. i use a hud and would happily stop if the games improved.

if you ban drugs will it stop people getting high? no
if you ban guns will it reduce murder rates? no
if you ban huds and hand histories will it stop huds and other software??? will it make it better at least?? thats the question, thanks.

As I'm against HUD and HH ban your argument is kind a wrong XD...

Banning drugs, guns, huds will not stop people of getting high, murder or playing with huds, but it will significantly reduce the rate/no of it/them

This is completely untrue. The biggest evolution in professional sport over the last decade or two is the backup the sports science departments offer teams/athletes. While the majority of that is applied in between games/events a significant (and increasing) amount of support is being used in real time. One simple example would be GPS tracking/HR monitoring to allow coaches to decide when players have run too much/intensity has dropped and substitutions need to be made. In other sports they have the ability to use biomechanical analysis in-game/event (e.g. programs like Dartfish are often used during T&F field events like pole vault/triple jump etc.) to make minor technical adjustments. And long before these modern technologies existed sports like NFL have allowed in-game film to be used to analyse formations etc. and inform players and coaches as the game goes on.

In short, you are completely wrong and in fact your comparison to sport makes the perfect argument for HUDs to be allowed.

Rob Yong is the owner of a live-casino, maybe his plan is to destroy online-poker and protect his business?

Op Holden manger should of open a new account or got some to post the original op

Looks like hm is going to lose money so any argument against stoping hh just looks like hm saying anything that would be pro hh staying because obviously they are a company who need to make money so anything they say is going to be pro hh whether it's good for players or not.

It doesnt matter who makes an argument if the argument is correct.

Noone is stopping you from recording your games.

The main problem with his argument is that it is not enforcable. It does punish people who follow the rules or are recreationals while the professionals who dont mind bending the rules to gain advantages will still use custom huds, seat scripts, live aid etc. So the gap between those that are clean and those that use steroids become even greater than if you just allowed everything to begin with.

This +1000000, recs just dont want third party tools, they dont enjoy playing with or against it. A lot of them avoid online poker completly because of third party tools and those who try it often just leave disgusted. And the fact that they would loose anyway is not a valid argument - they dont expect to win, but they want to have some fun for their money.
For a rec player, poker is not a game where you constantly watch a table of 15 numbers and try to decipher what is the right move from it. Most rec play because they even dont know something like a HUD exists. And when they discover HUDs, they really dont feel great about it. They lost a bunch of money after trying to beat the game and suddenly you tell them their opponents were using a database of hands and a HUD to help them...