IMHO, one of the reasons HUDs spoiled poker is that one of poker's main attractions as a game is the way it causes interaction and conflicts between system 1 and system 2 thinking. Human's aren't very good at judging a frequency without careful thoughtful calculation, and that is an expensive thing to keep up all day. And if you spend your brain power on that you may get tilt-y instead. Its a great balance.

HUDs give you the frequencies, let you think about other things more, and destroy the balance. It is not only an unfair advantage vs recs, it also removes a really interesting human aspect from the game.

I would like for there to be a site that allows HUDs and one that doesn't and for players, recreational or not, to be able to make an informed decision on which site they would prefer to play.

What I would really like to see in the future, when the technology has advanced sufficiently, is VR poker which successfully mimics the live poker environment, maybe even down to having a similar pace.

what about a human with a HUD and a million pages of XYZ charts? That's a human with the answer right there

So it would seem.

Can't remember the last time we had a thread discussing the state of and/or the future of online poker that didn't get turned into a debate about HUDs.

The point of my post was using a HUD properly requires some level of studying, examination, etc... what I consider to be as "work". To do work, I get paid quite well, and if I chose to, I could do more work and make more money than I can by doing "work" with a HUD. My hourly doing work at my job is more than working on a HUD and "playing" poker can provide.

By the way, I win money online without a HUD, so everyone inferring that not knowing how to use a HUD = losing player is off base.

If you can make decisions without computer help in a timeley manner, that is fine.

If you need an aid to help make decisions, be it a HUD or a BOT, that makes poker less fun and drives Recs away far moreso than higher rake does.

I was watching over the shoulder of a friend of mine once and he asked me "how could that guy make that call there...", that guy always is on his tables etc...

I got him to close the poker client and showed him some videos of a guy using and explaining his HUD stats. After about 3 minutes, the guy went back into his poker account, cashed out his money and has told me (and anyone who will listen) how online poker is full of people who use programs to cheat and he will never play again.

I would wager he had no idea what the rake on his games was.

It seems that HUDs are an important issue to the future of online poker.

You seem to be under the impression that getting paid well for work is something you need to constantly repeat. There are probably a lot of people on here who are the same, myself included, you just choose to be lazy in terms of poker and like to use your work as an excuse for this. As I say, there's nothing wrong with that but don't make excuses for it other than an unwillingess to learn. This stretches beyond huds for you, and includes learning poker, or improving at it, in general.

+1

again and again, why are you not printing money with huds if they are the so called cheats?

HUDs are the bogeyman that steals all your chips.

This thread is proving why sites should block HUDs for pure PR purposes.

. . .

x post from Casino Rama thread.

Rake goes up... winning regs leave game.

hmmm

Actually it seems clear HUDs were an inevitability since the inception of online poker and this debate would have been topical several years ago - the ship has sailed

but enough about that, any chance you could reiterate whether you earn more money in your day job than you do grinding the micros? any other convenient stories about guys' shoulders you have been peering over?

I think it's important, regardless of how normalized the idea of continuously raising the rake on players becomes, to continue to fight for fair prices on poker games

I like almost all of the suggested changes here. Limiting multi-tabling has had a great effect on the games over at Bovada, I think most people would be for some sort of generally lowish table cap if it made games better.

Also, most of the high end rakeback programs don't make sense anymore, so I am ok with the removal of those. The only caveat is some warning before people spend 10 months grinding out a promised program before deciding to remove it.

The reason it is so important to have a blend of luck and skill, is because it keeps the dream alive of one day becoming a professional player. Many, many poker players got into the game because they wanted to one day become a professional player. If the rake is too high to make that a reality, the longterm trajectory of the game is undoubtedly in question.

While it would be nice for low stakes rec's to be able to play on their own, im not sure how realistic that is.

Also obviously agree expert players should have the oppurtunity to have good win rates.

^ good points, good post dp

More rake = More rakeback

If "Site A" charges $1 per tournament and gives you 10% back, you'll still get a larger rb payment from "site B" who charges you $7 for the same tournament but only gives you 5% back, it's simple math

I play poker, very occasionally, for fun and I do happen to win at it, or at least am up a decent amount lifetime.

I don't want to use a HUD and I don't want to play against someone who uses one.

People who keep posting about how I need to get better or do the work to learn how to use a HUD are missing the point.

Does it kill the dream if the rake doesn't make it impossible to become a pro, but does mean that the dream journey of micros to nosebleeds takes significantly longer so that no one can copy the meteoric rise of online heroes without having a huge tournament score build their bankroll?

Flawed argument: More rake is better because it keeps the pros away from the game. With less pros, that means more recreational players, so better games!

Reality: In equilibrium, the game will always balance out so that pros who cannot beat the rake leave the game, and pros that can beat the rake stay in the game. What we are left with are only pros who are absolute crushers, and a few recreational players who don't play enough to care about the rake. This makes for a worse game. If you were a slightly winning player in the past, now you must contend with absolute crushers in the game, less bad regs, and higher rake on top of it all.

Long term implications: Who wins? (1) Only the absolute crushers and (2) whoever is taking the rake. This means the crushers have less money (from higher rake), the recreational players have even less money, since their opponents are bad players, absolute beasts at the game, and a higher casino rake, and the casinos win in the short run. Eventually, recreational players will get tired of sitting in games populated by beastly pros, and leave the higher rake games to go elsewhere, where they have an actual shot of winning. Meanwhile, the pros battle it out, hoping to get a few BB per hour, all while maintaining the same lifestyle. Eventually the pros will need to move games.

Casinos/poker sites may love the idea of increasing rake, since it will add to this quarter's profit. But in the long run, the more money taken out of the poker ecosystem, the worse off we all are.