If you're trying to say "Poker is not a zero-sum game for players, because of rake", then no one will disagree, because it's completely obvious.
But the thread is about the use of software tools that likely make the games even tougher to beat. I've used Snowie (offline, for training) and I've used a HUD and Notecaddy. These tools give me a small edge over players that don't have access to them. That edge isn't as big as the rake, obviously, (buying a HUD doesn't magically add 5bb/100 to your winrate) but the widespread use of such tools is clearly very bad for the health of the game, since fun players get "hunted" to extinction.

Could be done, but would be trivial to circumvent.

following

Online poker is dead. Not yet, of course, but as you pointed out, it is inevitably heading there. Tools like this will ensure it.

Casinos have already banned Google Glass in their poker rooms.

They effectively banned "HUDs" before they existed, something that wasn't done by online poker sites, and probably should have been. The rub there is, it's very hard to actually prevent and enforce.

i agree. it has to be possible.

bovada and their anonymous tables etc model is sounding better and better imo.

If a game is beatable or not as a whole can only be determined by the rake.

On a personal level it might matter how you fare against other players, however as a whole the only thing that can make the game unbeatable is the rake.

I.e. if players lose 1M USD in a week, what matters is how much the winners in the game win. If the answer is close to a million than you have a beatable game. If however out of that 1M loss only 200k is being won than its in my mind an unbeatable game. That's exactly what is happening today. The effective rake is about 80% (obviously this differs per stake and game).

So what i am trying to say is that the effect HUDs etc have is negligible compared to the rake. They sure don't help but they are simply not the problem. In fact they only increase the effective rake. This is exactly what sites want. They want poker to work like a slot machine. Players think they can't win because all the other players are sooooo good. But of course thats not the case as its logically nonsensical. The reason they don't win is because rake is higher than the average winrate that turns all but the very best winners into losers.

If you take a look at winrates of the top 100 winners of a game, you will find they will pay close to 50% effective rake (until you reach like 2/4 and up). IF the top 100 pay that much how much do you think and average player will pay?

Folks just don't understand rake and what beatable means.

I think you're using 'effective rake' in a different way to its normal meaning of rake % after rakeback.

With that said, you and Arty are talking about the same thing; clearly the skill of other players is a factor in your effective rake calculation, but fundamentally I feel it's far harder to call out poker sites on failing to act rather than acting in a bad way, and it's not clear that they're actually doing anything wrong. Poker doesn't have to be potentially profitable.

As someone already pointed out in the thread, this would actually make it worse. GTO bots would have a huge advantage, players wouldn't even be able to identify them.

yeah but there's other ways to combat bots. I mean, it's great and all that players help identify, but the sites need to improve on their end as well. They can't just rely on players spotting them.

I agree with you. Poker does not need to be profitable. I just don't want to play a game that is a slotmachine. I.e. one where players can't win longterm. To me personally that is not poker as i onsider it a skill game. However from a pokersites perspective that is a perfect exploit of its customers. Hence i don't play online poker (cash games) anymore and instead play in casinos. Although I applaud pokersites for exploiting its customer in this way. I just dont want to be such a customer.

Effective rake to me is the rake relative to money lost. That is effectively the cost of moving money from losers to winners.

Yes if players play more similar this rake goes up, however i argue that is due to the way the system is designed. It could be done differently. You could argue its the players fault for playing to similarly (that however i find silly). Its like blaming a rape victim for being too pretty and being raped because of it.

I have experimented with pokersnowie on the trial and it has some strange advice.

I played a little against the snowie bot players and in one hand 2.5x open utg and another calls and I am on the button with 22 and the advice is to fold 100% getting 40 to 1 implied from all players. lol

Another hand I flopped a set HU and bet in position flop and turn but checked the river when the flush got there and there was a 4 card straight on board and I had bottom set and according to snowie that was a huge blunder. lol

Very true, and it will happen,. Unfortunately I heard this two years ago so your thought is not revolutionary.

What's online poker about nowadays anymore? I don't get it. All 3rd party software should be banned no discussion. This stuff essentially is like doping, put it how you want it. There was some great stuff done for the game thanks to software like HUDs but I think it reached a point it never should have (data mining, auto notes WTF?!). Why should newer players even bother anymore to play knowing whats out there? Rather play live or on Unibet Let the "pro's" go cannibalistic until there's a new software that give a solution to it for 5minutes ^^

Games are supposed to be fun and exciting because of the human element, the imperfectness. If all we do is rely on a bot/computer telling us what to do we can be replaced by it. I imagine it like nba players getting substituted by robots lol - instead of LeBron vs Durant I watch Bot1 vs Bot2 - that would be so much more fun!

It costs money for a site to police, probably lots of money. It also costs the site lost wages for X amount of tables lost because huds allow people to play 4-10x more tables. Sites than give bs responses saying huds and pokersnowie dont give advantages and are the same as poker books. I dont think the could police a ban properly of this and if it was possible it would be far to pricey in both those aspects, loss of multi tab regs and price of policing, a -ev for site. -integrity for players overall. Blackjack the new orange of poker.