Quote:
Originally Posted by dhubermex
Thanks for posting, Michael.
I'm not very familiar with the technical aspects of SEAT ME... is there a way operators could eventually resolve the issue of the OBSERVE option being less entertaining as a result? Or is this something that must come along with the territory in any SEAT ME or similar feature?
If a poker site
wanted to allow players to observe any table, they certainly
could do so.
I think there's value in allowing players to observe tables for a few different reasons:
(a) Prospective players can get an idea of how the games look/play/appear/etc.
(b) The playing community benefit from greater transparency
On the other hand, a poker site might want to prevent observers for different reasons:
(c) chiefly to mitigate the risk of data-mining (there are different ways to mitigate this risk too) but also because;
(d) it would require some time and effort to program and create this feature.
I don't know whether PokerStars will allow much observing of tables - they'll probably come up with a feature similar to their Spin + Go and Zoom observer functions, and allow players to view some hands/tables. That will give them the benfit of (a), mitigate the risk of (c), and they can probably re-use the functionality of what they already having, minimising the cost of (d)
I think it is likely that sites and others will lean towards preventing meaningful, widespread, universal, observation of their hands. I think that's disappointing from the point of view of (b) above, but if poker sites continue to allow customers to record their own hand histories, that probably isn't a big problem in the long-term.