Some places may have too many hand histories of all their hand jobs. It may be impossible "protecting players" in those circumstances. Think about it.

Yeah, I concur. At least a crackerjack box offers a prize when finishing that off in its entirety.

No tools in game. If you are unethical and get busted, you get banned and funds can be confiscated. Use solvers, huds, w/e you want off of the table, but when you sit at the table and play, its person vs person. If the sites cant police it then players will go to a site that can. Seems pretty straight forward to me, its a human vs human game and thats how the game should be played.

Sharkscope will also not work after June 17. That makes it almost impossible for stables continue having players on party. Its good for recs for sure, but...its just me thats this sound like some money laundry scheme going on? Idkn

It is not surprising to me that the conversation has mostly turned away from hand histories because removing hand histories is indefensible. There is not a single valid reason to no longer write hand histories.

If this is near unanimous knowledge among us, then Rob Yong must also know this. My question to everyone is then what is their motive/incentive for no longer writing hand histories?

-Derek

This statement is wrong. If we are considering one table or fewer tables and a smaller player pool your statement might hold some weight but considering the vast amount players using HuDs at low to medium stakes online and the wide player pool with 8+ tabling tourney regs/4 zoom tabling pros, etc this limited HuD information you downplay as insignificant is actually hugely valuable. Those stats quickly reveal certain players as marks and put targets on their backs. As someone with much success over low to medium stake online tournaments and SnGs I can tell you that some of the greatest value of my HuD comes from the HuD's ability to quickly locate these players across my 10+ tourney tables while I'm playing online. Even not having any information on players in certain formats/games is often times a signal that player might be new to the game and a weaker player but as soon as their stats start to show any imbalance and deviations from what might be optimal play they immediately become a target to play more pots with online. Much of a good regs bb/100 increase can come from these such pots in online tournaments. I still appreciate the HuDs ability to find deviations in other players games that I have larger sample sizes on but I would be hard pressed to trade that for the information gained just by "finding" the weakest players for me. Especially in lower to midstake online MTTs, SnGs, and Spin and Gos where the fields are large and constantly changing over time.

For you, maybe. But hud does not work with pt4 on Ignition (the whole network I believe). I still win. HUDS are not the issue here, studying the game with hand histories is.

I made no argument for or against hand histories or studying your db or really even for or against HuDs only that FreakDaddy is delusional if he thinks those small sample sizes on certain players deviating significantly from sound strategy are not valuable information to a player that plays multiple tables and/or in large player pools.

PT4 HUD does work on Ignition and the whole Pai Wang Luo network fwiw

I remember a thread years ago where a mid stakes grinder did 100k hands with a hud and 100k hands without a hud. There was only a small dip in winrate without the hud.

There's lots of successful players that use trackers but don't bother with huds, I don't get it but they are there.

They had issues. There were just so may people coming to play back then that you didn't notice. Awareness of the tools in existence was very low back then as well.

You are just dumb on purpose here, I am sorry. Your reasoning is based on: "ZOMG, many regs played, HUD not a problem". I mean this is ignorance of the highest order which shouldn't be ever displayed by a software dev. "If A goes up and B is coexisting that surely means B doesn't negatively influence A" you would fail high school test with this kind of thinking and then you call others out as well.

It's obvious to anyone with head not deep into their ass that assistance tool during play are:
-unfair to the recreational players
-widely considered cheating or at least unfair advantage by them
-damaging to the image of poker as a fair competitive game

I mean, just talk to people out there who are not professional players and who dubbed in playing online or considered doing so before they have learn about reality of it.

The cause is that they don't have a clear strategic vision for their product. On one hand, they've just spent the last couple of years trying to attract high-volume, poker enthusiasts (eg, high, volume-based rakeback; spending big chunks of money on taking online poker streamers; etc) but on the other hand, they're listening to clowns without a deep strategic understanding of the issues here (OMG! HUDs are killing games!).

It's just erratic floundering, there is no evil malice to it.

Obviously, removing hand histories under the guise of "player protection" is incoherent. It reminds me of this parable:
(Source: The Thing]

Inb4 another AP/UB scandal on PP hehe

If partypoker was all about "protecting players", they'd go anonymous or at least allow (maybe even promote/enforce) periodic SN-changes, no? Instead they're trying all these crazy things.

I can't believe Rob says things like "CG traffic has been stagnating for a long time, so there's nothing to lose". lmao. How about a big chunk of the stagnating pool starts playing on other sites and never comes back? The fact, that the most dedicated NL2-grinder of all times (PG&Cers know who), who played on Partypoker exclusively, will quit because of this says it all really.

This company has been clicking buttons forever, but now it's getting really adventurous!

Well, we'll never know if there's AP/UB cheating on PartyPoker, because they've hidden the hand histories that would allow players to protect themselves.

Im gonna withdraw my roll and go Elsewhere. Just a shame, FF tables were fun with good Software and decent games with HEM2.

Yeah, this has been my experience with Party over way too many years to even mention. I would speak to and work with the people who developed the various reward schemes over the years, and it was often times a chaotic mess, usually the result of some new manager bringing his unique (often times horrid) vision.

There were times where the programs were simple and stupidly exploitable (get VIP through depositing!) and at times so complex one needed a supercomputer to figure out how it actually worked, and it was clear there was never a long term vision with how it should be implemented, rather it was a "we need to do something" change.

This feels similar. Create a twist of SNE then later that year remove HHs. There is no malice, but that does not mean its a well thought out plan, and sadly this is somewhat standard in the industry, as even pre Amaya Stars had some doozy ideas at times. Post Amaya Stars will get back to me in 3+ months from now on my feedback...

Not on tourneys

* For all stables but bitB, I reckon

This is excellent for me. I know I'm going to get a lot of hate for this but i'll post it anyway:

I'm 1-2 reg in my local city and sometimtes 2-5 if the game is juicy. I completely stop playing online because the tables online have become extremely tough compared to live poker. When you don't have tracking software you end up playing with guys who are multitabling 5-10 tables who know exactly how to play against you based on hand histories. This is extremely bad for recrationals player because they will mostly lose very fast. Now that poker has eliminated all hand histories i'll consider playing in partypoker to see if it's a viable option.

Right now the only place I play online is PPPoker because: it's growing extremely popular in latin america, it doesn't allow multitabling, is full of fish and cashouts take 1-2 hours max. That is because the site is benefing recrationals instead of professional players.

honestly, the reason bad players are losing is not because of HUDs. it's just because they're bad. but if bad players think HUDs are the reason they're losing, it doesn't really matter what the real reason is, because the "threat" of HUDs will keep them away. so i say screw it, just ban HUDs. i play most of my volume on HUD-less ignition zone tables and it's fine. fish are still fish.

the bigger issue that's getting buried here is the removal of downloadable hand histories, which is just completely ridiculous and out of line. not sure what party was thinking, or if they were thinking at all, but it's an incredibly stupid decision and they should reverse it.

And you're being disingenuous, as you benefit the most by the removal of hand histories. Not to mention, it's just bad etiquette what you're doing.

My main points again were, HUD or no HUD, hand histories should be available to players. There's no reason they shouldn't be. Even if they are delayed in someway. It's just an inexcusable position by a poker site for game integrity purposes.

I understand the problems with my causality argument. You have the same problems in trying to make the argument. The main concern here is how to maintain a healthy poker eco system and ensure fairness. I've proposed several straight forward solutions. But just to illustrate how absurd your argument is as well, but I'll do it with kindness and no name calling...

Basic logic... You can't claim something is unfair if everyone has access to it. Period. Similar concept: You can't claim ignorance of a law as a defense.

You can say we shouldn't have these tools, or whatever other argument you want to make, but saying it's unfair is the same as claiming someone who didn't want to invest in good clubs for their short game, sucked at golf, and they lost because the other person did take the time to research and invest in their game. You can say, well, to beat that person fairly you should be using the exact same equipment. Baring that almost never happens, you should never go into any competitive environment, especially for money, and claim ignorance as a defense. That's on you.

Online poker is NOT live poker. As a poker player personally, well before being selling any products, one of the things I enjoyed about HUDs was having more information to try and out think and out strategize my opponents with. I don't enjoy playing live as much as online. I enjoy being able to play many tables, and make constant decisions while playing. Poker becomes fairly boring for me otherwise. I don't need a HUD to beat rec / fishy players. Not having a HUD will just reduce my ability to play more tables at once.

If you take the position of wanting to remove HUDs because you don't think they should be a part of online poker, and you want to try and make online poker more like live poker, all that's going to happen is that software is going to go underground. And IF the goal was to protect rec players.... what then? There will be even less opportunity for them to have a level playing field because they won't care to locate these underground tools.

If the goal is to restore and maintain a healthy poker eco system, HUDs are near the bottom of this list on why the games have changed, but they are the easiest and most tangible thing to blame, and for why rec / casual players are depositing less. The order of why the games have become less profitable is something more like this imho:

1) Government regulations and recs not wanting to jump through several hoops to deposit.
2) GTO Solvers that have allowed average regulars to understand proper range balancing.
3) Increased amount of poker training sites w/ good content.

HUDs have been around for nearly 20 years online. The only thing that's changed in the last 20 years is the above.

So round and round we go... I think there's plenty of reasonable solutions to appease everyone. It seems everyone wants to float from one extreme position to the other though.

It's weird that you blame the challenges of PartyPoker's "difficulty" as a place to play on the availability of hand histories, and not on their strong and concerted effort over the last two years to attract a large number of high-volume regular players.

governments are killing online poker way way way more so than solvers or whatever tools people are using to gain an edge

I differ in that there seems to me there may be a clear strategic vision for their product. (I have not followed any direct pronouncements, only this thread, but ...)

Incremental strategy of :

1. Rein in any access to raw data that players might currently hold.
2. Channel all access to data thru the MyGame process
3. Make player rankings, publicly or sub rosa, to classify "skill levels" by some MyGame algorhythm.
4. Then create "skill-matched" table segregation to "protect players" from other players who are "too good" for them to play.

This would present a strategy not inherently "evil" like facilitating bots/collusion, but rather one more like what a would-be a benign despot or plantation owner might offer ....