If you can beat the game, you don't get involved in a stable. You spend your time beating the game.

It comes back to the phrase "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

stables make sense for high-variance, easy to beat formats, like spins or mtts, where there are many players who can't handle variance at the levels where they would achieve the highest theoretical hourly.

Less so in cashgames, where they usually take form of coaching for profit. Also, some players have trouble handling variance on their own, so they are willing to take unfavorable staking deals so they don't have to deal with it.

Returning to the subject, I would be very sad and surprised if this turned out to be true, I know a few people behind Smart Backing personally and they all had good reputation in Polish poker community. That being said, since they were bought out by SmartSpin (they were functioning under a different name until a buyout around a year ago) I wouldnt be that surprised, I really dislike SmartSpin's management style.

As I know SmartCoach pretty well, i have some comments.

Excatly whats wrong at 3:25 ? I dont see any problems that SmartCoach ( togather with trial account) is running togather with ps, becouse as you can see - charts are basic in nature and permitted at all times.
1)Example from pokerstars ( http://prntscr.com/kspycb from file they send me 5mins ago -> https://www.pokerstars.com/assets/co...ence-guide.pdf )
2)Example of OP shared video 3:25 minute. http://prntscr.com/kspzdj

Looks very, very similar, so I beleave there is no abuse of rules.

As an ex smart spin player and user of Smart Coach program, I can tell that this program closes when it detects pokerstars client, becouse inside this program are advanced charts (more then two dimensional information), that are not allowed to use togather with pokerstars client ( basicly its for learning purpouses in offline mode ).

thats ok as you probably have their apk which puts all the charts in an app on a tablet - well away from pokerstars.exe's preying eyes

do you also have their dynamic hud which boasts:


also where you one of the many smartspin players and coaches that somehow where able to block themselves from the infamous spinlyzer datamining site long before that option was rolled out to other players?

I used to in a stable around 3 to 5 years ago and I can honestly say I never seen cheating happen the once I was there. In fact I remember a guy being outed for multiaccounting just before I joined.

Depends on your definition of cheating. I have two experiences of stables (despite never being in one)

Once where I was added to a stable Skype group for reasons I can’t remember. Once reading over a friend who was backed shoulder

In both groups huge EV decisions at final tables were mass discussed in real time including stable owners/big winners whose advice acted as like the final decision maker ie ghosting

Other advice was constantly sought between players ie “hey does anyone have notes on X villain” etc

Stables are gross and it’s a stain on the community that a thread like this is basically ignored.

The recs deserve a more fair gaming experience, they are not getting it though and stables and software are the main reasons for that

Yeah that is straight up cheating. Not even remotely "depending on definition". Which groups were they? They need to be called out.

But does the OPTAH rule apply to online poker?

Yes

Why isn't this thread in the top of discussions yet?

If even Pokerstars pro Jeff Gross is using forbidden software while playing, can you imagine the scale of the tragedy?

What does OPTAH rules stand for please?

One Player To A Hand or something like that

Ok that makes sense, thank you for your time.

First it was the holocaust, now there's this.

Not sure why you left out the word your there, because it makes quite a bit of difference to what I was basically saying to the poster above me.

And i completely agree with you, I’d love to put them on blast but it was 8 years ago I can’t remember the names. I tried to look up my friend who I lost contact with but no luck.

It’s not hard to figure out the dynamics of stable Skype rooms. Loads of mostly desperate grinders carolled by crusher investors. What happens when one goes deep? OPTAH? Yes. Everyone just rails silently except celebrating won pots I’m sure. Can’t ever imagine a stuck grinder reaching out in a tough spot to the guy he owes a **** load of $ to

Good thing this thread hasn't already quickly lead to some derail about bumpnrum talking about the shadiness of online poker players. Oh wait.

Keep beating the drum, man!

Oddly shrill accusation. This thread was already about the shadiness of online poker players

Some of us hate the systematic cheating and unethical software use destroying the games. Others are those cheats wanting it kept as hush as possible for their own financial gain. Pretty obvious which side you sit on

if you're talking about that picture from last page or w/e that's not illegal software that helps you in realtime, that's raise your edge ranges.

i never heard of printed/screened ranges being illegal.

Due to the significant interest that arose following false accusations of Smart Backing members using forbidden software, we feel obliged to make an official statement about this situation.

The initial post was written by a person who has been a member of Smart Backing for only one day. The contract was rescinded at the player’s request, which was clearly an expression of goodwill from Smart Backing’s side. Please mind that, as a termination reason, Gagna90 pointed out that his English level is not good enough, even though it was to his knowledge that English is a default language within our school. It is also worth mentioning that the recruitment phase went smoothly on his part - he did not have any difficulties with the language at that time. The author of the original post has given the Russian community only speculations and there was not a single proof to back up his claims.


The title of the original post suggests that the guilt has been proven and therefore it misguides less knowledgeable members of this community. We strongly point out the followings: we do not use, have never used and will never use any software which is forbidden at any poker room where our members are playing. We are communicating on a regular basis with representatives of the two biggest poker rooms (PokerStars and PartyPoker), and we regularly consult with them all novelties, innovations and features we wish to implement into our strategy. It is worth mentioning that we have always been open to audits conducted by Integrity Teams of all top poker rooms.

We have always been professional, and as a service provider, we feel the urge to provide our members with a top-quality service. Apart from having access to the best poker coaches and players in the world, to a fantastic community, live events, strategical videos, mentoring, and mindset help, we also offer our members professional tools which speed up their learning process. One of those tools was Smart Sheet, which is currently not being used and has been replaced by much better solutions:

- Smart Coach Pro - a learning platform for better understanding of Spin & Go games. It was designed to help our members acquire advanced poker knowledge. Even at the early production stage, we were consulting the PokerStars Integrity Team about this tool. Moreover, PokerStars has constant access to the code repository of both Smart Coach versions



- Online Chart Trainer - preflop charts prepared by our most advanced coaches: Limitless for cash division and Dominik Pańka for MTT division. The charts were purposefully designed for ease of memorisation process. The charts can be used only for the learning process and off the tables. Unlike our competition, we loudly inform about this fact at the banner placed on the charts page.




We operate on every continent (except Antarctica ), in over 60 countries in the world. We are the leaders on a backing market and we support all community members - both regular and recreational players. We know how important it is for the poker ecosystem to function properly. We try to improve the image of poker on unregulated markets or in those countries that have passed discriminatory laws. We joined this fight so that our jobs could still be here in five years (and hopefully, even long thereafter). We know perfectly well that bots, sitting software and automatisation programs are the doom for poker. Poker is a game for people, not a battle between AI’s computing powers. We have joined the Russian community just recently, and we understand the curiosity that every new project brings. We hope that despite the perturbations of the recent days, you allow us to bring our values, priorities and goals to your world.



We believe that we have fulfilled our obligation to thoroughly explain this issue. We do not intend to continue a public discussion about it. However, for any further questions, do not hesitate to contact us via e-mail at:

contact@smartspin.com or contact@smartbacking.com

Yours faithfully,
Aleksander Malinowski
Regional Manager Smart Group

Chart rule isn't enforceable and as such shouldn't even exist. Anyone can make/use any sort of chart he wants and there is no way for PS to prevent it.

bollocks!! the screenshots from the skype clearly show the admin guy suggesting the charts are for using in play, that banner on the page is precisely there incase someone finds out you are using these charts and you can use that as your disclaimer whereas within the SS community you are actively pushing players to cheat, break stars TOS. Similar to the way killuifyouplay wanted kurva to que with him in 500s spins, a format deisigned specifically to stop regs bumhunting. The stable is literally the scummiest stable that i know to of ever existed doing everything they can to squeeze every little edge out of the games while flying under the radar. **** Smartscum

Oh yeah and lets not forget the time a SS founder stole 7500$ from a fellow reg https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...ht=bakudranski READ PAGE 7...... or the massive data mining of HHS that goes on.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...stcount=123528 scum scum scum... i wonder if the stable would actually have any winning players if it wasnt for all the cheating going on. would definitely be better for the eco system if these bastards were mass banned and those regs who actually put in the work off the table legitimately remained.

Look at bottom right corner

https://imgur.com/a/FuhpkFx

Stables are an absolute cancer on the poker community. I doubt there is a single one behaving within the rules entirely. If stars would step up and ban stables altogether, it would be the best thing to ever happen to online poker. The standard of play in the games would drop in general. The players would have more money (even those who are currently in stables after a period of time), and there would be far less cheating going on.

Long story short - they are greatly accelerating the decline of the games. The stable owners will tell you otherwise but they are mostly too short sighted and greedy to see the reality.

I would have said the same thing about party but since they practically are running a stable themselves it doesn't seem particularly likely that they'll end the staking businesses.

A quick update. We had a "radio debate" on gipsyteam where i got a chance to ask all my questions directly to SmartBackings person. Lets just say they failed pretty hard. Ill write more detailed post later today when my grind is over.

Here are broadcast parts in the text format. Its just translated by myself, if someone wants to hear original version in Russian let me know ill link you to it.("T" is myself and "M" is SmartBackings person).

Smartbanking has confirmed the use of a program that contains prohibited charts:


Was surprised smartbackings person had no idea if they had any conversation with stars or not.


Finally he admits that he will give me the proof of hes words.


After our show , they wrote a post on gipsyteam which had no proofs whatsoever , which makes it clear as **** that they are using this software/charts till this day. And the best part is(remember they said they moved to SmartCoach in about may but look at this: In july 29 they still had "advertisment of smartsheet"

Fun fact , after we posted this on gipsyteam they instantly deleted it from the website lmfao.