The site itself is unlikely to make the HHs like Pokerstars HHs, nor release a free converter for it, but you will be able to buy one, if it isn't free. It might come with a notes transfer (tracker to site notes) function also if it is allowed by the site. It is best for the site to allow the trackers to support those HHs.

anonymous site = bots paradise

if the site starts to get some traction, russian/ukranian bot army will eventually move there and will be impossible to detect. Even collusion will be impossible to detect this way. If you can't enforce a rule 100%, don't forbid it.

Its one of those things that everybody wanted to be possible and I would love to be that way (like a football games without any mistakes by referee) but that is virtually impossible.
I've talked about this a dozen times:
- Huds are one of those things you can't enforce a ban on. I don't use it that much, and when I do is 99% against regs. Who needs a HUD to beat a fish?

In conclusion, by making a site 100% anonymous the effects will be the exact oposite of what you want - it will bring an environment where bots and collusion will be very comfortable

I think that is why ROI is trying to find a middle ground by not making it entirely anonymous. They will make hand histories available with all cards shown 24 hours after they were played. That should pretty much stop any colluding. Doesn't really help with bots as far as I know, but solves half of the problem you are describing.

@ above guy:

- collusion is proved not on a 24h session, but on an ongoing amount of days/weeks/months.

- everyone is talking about emulating live poker is the way to go. Is everyone playing with ski masks live game, so no one knows who is playing at a particular game?

- I would love to be playing 100% anon/no huds. It just simple can't be done. You will create niches where some guys develop pvt software, or find a way to collude and would be impossible to be caught.
I dont care what type of software Galfond says that he has in the works, the only way to prevent this would be a RIO representative in every household of a player.

- The huds protect weaker players. Do you guys think any decent regular need to use a HUD to beat a fish? If he needs, he prob should revalue his whole game

Pretty sure bots need a HUD to be effective


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1. That's interesting but I don't buy the basic premise that having a HUD is an advantage, unfair or otherwise. HUDs are inexpensive, about the amount of a minimum deposit on some sites. Anyone can get one.

2. A HUD is a tool, like a poker book, nothing more. If you and I were playing tennis and I had a better tennis racket I would have an advantage. There is no advantage when anyone can use PokerTracker or Holdem Manager, or buy a poker book. I got my early poker books from the library. I've done a lot of things in poker where I definitely had no financial or technical edge.

My only advantage is that I will take the time to explore the HUD and watch the videos to learn how to use it wisely. A beginner probably won't. I outworked him and because of that I have an edge. That's how poker (and many other sports and games) work.

I like playing with a HUD. No HUD? I'm out.

Anonymous does not equal a bots paradise unless you feel the site lacks the proper resources and ability to detect them and counter them. Otherwise the only thing that anonymous does is it makes it more difficult for the players to police the games.

The poker website has much more information available to them than the players and if proper security is put into place the trade off of more recreational friendly games is worth it. I

The dynamic avatar idea is a great idea. Also, like seeing the randomly generated names as opposed to numbers. I had this idea almost three years ago. The numbers always seemed a very impersonal experience for the players.

Do you guys think Unibet is overrun by bots? I don't and if I'm right then all it means is that a site can effectively police the games if they put the resources to it. If they don't the cheaters flock to the site because they know they'll get away with it. So if RIO goes this route they need to spend the money.

Internally they should estimate how many eastern euro players they expect vs. other markets and if that %# gets too high then they should know they are failing. (i accept my 7 minute racist ban in advance.)

This is one of the most ridiculous statements ever. First off HuDs or HuD generated data from past hands make the weaker players much easier to locate and target whether that be through a seating script or just bum hunting the lobbies.

As far as in game use; The value in a HuD is finding stats on players that deviate from optimal frequencies and exploiting those players. Weaker players deviate from optimal frequencies the most so insisting that the HuD has no value in exploiting those players is laughable.

Wut??

I wonder if it is not possible to make encrypted hand histories and sell the encryption to only those who want to offer a HUD on RIO. This way one could avoid datamining and limit the HUD like stars does. Additionally the HUD could be forced to only show stats from non observed hand histories, practically only to show the stats where Hero participated. Alternatively or additionally the trackers could also prevent observed RIO hand histories from being imported.

There was a slight essence in the early posts from Phil where it seemed like he would care about keeping the games reasonably profitable from the perspective of a pro. This was supposed to be in contrast to poker stars, which the players community boycotted twice after successive years of decreasing the profitability through (opaque) policy changes. Poker Stars was transparent about this eventually, announcing they would be squeezing the winning players. Thankfully there are finally players like doug polk that are calling out Dneg's rhetoric for what it is, a sales pitch to cover up the fact that poker stars intends to fleece the population as much as they can with no intention of protecting "the dream".

Phil knows about the dream.

And as I understand now, he has explicitly stated that he is guarding his tables against the dream and has also stated he adopts poker stars stance on this:

He doesn't talk about keeping money in the players pool rather than fleecing the games as much as possible:

See there is an issue because the conversation can get over-run with those that don't understand. Of course bots don't need HUDs, but that is an example of a poster that can be appeased with changes to the game that are actually negative in regard to policing it.

Phil is going to give everyone their played hands shortly after. And what will they be able to check? You can't have any meaningful stats on people, so who is being appeased and how?

If I get everyone's hole cards I can check the most basic kinds of collusion, and I must trust the site for the complex kinds. Why don't I trust the site for the easy kinds? What does having the hole cards allow me to verify that is meaningful as a "pro"?

Phil KNOWS about the nio nio story, he knows the players detected the cheating and would have if they didn't have aggregate data.

He is free to make any kind of site he wants. I think most players were hoping it would be one that favored poker, by the definition of poker that he was able to enjoy for much of his career.

I would love to play on that site.

On the site I play (poker is restricted and very regulated in my country) there are some anonymous tables, and I can assure you that those are extremely profitable. The simple fact that no one knows who is playing makes people want to bluff more / gamble more. You don't need a hud to play those and have fun / be profitable. However the implementation is pretty crappy, with players always being named "Anonymous 1" through 5. So if one leaves and is replaced you have no way of knowing it, even in the hh it won't show. Unless you saw him with a stack > 100bb and he didn't lose a pot and rebuy (and is now at 100bb again), you can't see if it's the same person who rebought in or someone who replaced him.

Those randomly generated names are awesome just because of that. You can keep mental note (or written notes for 24h) in cases he's catched bluffing or something, and that's it. And I love it. I'm not against huds per say and I've used them for years, but I can totally see the value for the entire ecosystem to completely remove them.

I have just 1 little drawback. There are "reg battles" that are fun to rail and probably fun to play for regs (otherwise they wouldn't play it). So I think there should be "pro tables" where anyone is allowed to give out his name, even a screenname, and can set rules to whoever want to battle them. For example I am Doug Polk and I'm fine with anyone knows I'm Doug and willing to play anyone, but I can set rules (or not) where you are allowed to use a hud if I am, you have to give at least a screenname that is unique over your career on the site, and stuffs like that. I believe he implies something similar about his hint on high stakes table, I just hope it's the case.

The new site is prob NOT gonna have a GUY L or Gus H playing on it, the Dangs, Phil G, Durrrr etc had a massive boost to their rolls thro them, like $30m dropped on accounts known as him, Gus H dropping another $20+m.

These ppl helped Phil G live the dream, to say he wouldn't have made it anyway would be silly, off course he would've , but the $50m losses he and others benefited from made the High Steaks a lot easier to break in those days?

This!! Let players have HU4ROLLZ battles if they want them ( while at the same time, let those who PG imagines get scared away by vids etc with HUDs, be able to choose the anon avatar tables. It will result in a natural balance)

I mean, he has a point that, anyone who is watching online poker on stream for the first time and see a massive hud will be scared anyway. There is no way for them to know that those are banned on regular tables, so it makes sense to ban them from the whole site.

But at least allow non-anonymous table for anyone willing to play on them (if you can effectively ban huds on those). Railing is fun too.

I'd have preferred Huds but I'm not overly fussed if they're not available. What I would like though is a basic in built hud, even if it only shows vpip/pfr/3bet. If the avatars are showing an interpretation of these stats then I don't see why they shouldn't give the option to show them.

The dynamic name idea is pretty good. It allows you to identify a fish for the day, but not to bumhunt him for eternity. It also prevents pros from angle-shooting by leaving and coming back shortly after, and pretending to be brand new players.

However, the dynamic expressions suck.

Their software is basically going to commit the cardinal sin in poker: The venue telling a player he is bad.

Most people who play poker -- even the fish -- have a delusion that they're far better than they actually are.

The weak-tight guy doesn't think he's weak tight. He thinks he's just smart enough to wait for the best hands and is sure get his money in the best spots.

The tiltmonkey doesn't think he's a tiltmonkey. He just thinks he is aggressive, and that aggression is a necessary skill to win in poker.

The inconsistent/weird player doesn't think he's making a lot of inexplicably dumb moves. He thinks he's being unpredictable and hard to read.

Now the software is going to label everyone:



"You're too tight, so we're making you a sleepy guy! See that, everyone! This guy is so tight that he must be sleeping! LOL!!!"

"You're playing like a tilting head case, so we're giving you a screaming lady avatar! Get it, guys? He's playing like a woman on her period! ROFL!!!!"

"You're playing like a weirdo with inconsistent, suboptimal moves! So guess what? We're going to make it look like you're drunk and/or ******ed. Isn't that hilarious? This player is a ******! AHAHAHAHA!!"

This is an absolutely dreadful idea.

The site should NOT be auto-labeling players with its opinion of their playstyle.

I've played with so many people -- mostly recs -- who were COMPLETELY UNAWARE that their playstyle was unusual/bad/different.

These avatars are basically playstyle-shaming. If you don't play well, everyone will see it in your avatar.

Ugh.

Kilowatt, it's actually unclear to me if you are shown your own avatar.

Those are some very good points in your post and I'm in agreement that the avatars are a net negative. While the idea behind them is an interesting way to give everyone some information without a built in numeric hud I don't think it works well because of the points you mentioned in your post.

Even if they are not shown their avatar they will be able to deduce that they fit into one of the categories shown in other's avatars.

Phil confirmed that you will be able to see your own avatar's dynamic expression.

My understanding is they won't see the avatar that everyone else can see. The avatar you see for yourself won't change

I'd agree with Kilo's post.

Avatar is really quite brilliant from an operator perspective. Ideal state for the operator is all players have equal skill.

Avatar is passive and free training for losing rec players to help them not be so bad. Literally will publicly shame them into not being so bad. Sort of like a simple version of LeakBuster for all players integrated into the site.

Also, site gets to decide how to influence losing rec players play style as they can adjust types of avatars and LeakBuster-type algorithms that determine their avatar . I would suspect they would do this to their benefit, not winning players.