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Charles Hawk's picture
Pokerstars allowing automated decision software? (Daniel "Pl@yerABC" Sklar's opininion)

One of the fundamental criteria for allowing software should be its availability to the general player pool

 

Charles Hawk: Have you used it and could you comment on how better it is with this programm than without?

Daniel "Pl@yerABC" Sklar: I have never used this software (or any other bot-like software).

 

Charles Hawk: What do you think about such things?

Daniel "Pl@yerABC" Sklar: I don't want to spend too much time just rambling about philosophy and how the games should be completely fair and everybody should be nice and follow the rules 100% of the time. We live in a real world and so let's think about what is technically possible to do in this situation.
For me, the real question is: How capable is PokerStars when it comes to detecting different kinds of sofware running on a player's computer at the time of play? That's the question that people with more IT experience could try to answer. My idea is that PokerStars should only have rules in place that could be effectively enforced. The nightmare scenario is having rules that are nice in theory but cannot be enforced in the real world. The result will be that nice people will follow all the rules and be put at a disadvantaged position because some shady people will be just breaking rules knowing that they will not be punished.

Poker is a very competitive game. I guess that when playing poker, we want to compete - who can outthink the other player, who is better at managing tilt, who can better understand theory and put it into practice... But when playing poker I personally don't want to compete on the IT level - meaning I don't want to compete over who is better at programming a bot in Java, C++, C#, Python or whatever other languages are out there. If I wanted to spend my time creating programming code, I would have created a start-up company and looked for venture capital.

I still think that some kind of software is good. I am using software for displaying HUD, so I will take it as an example. These properties are good imo:
1. Almost everybody knows about it and it's available to everybody. Yes, I know it's not free - but developers should be paid and the price is very reasonable. When I am playing $60 tournaments I assume that all of my opponents could afford to buy a license. So if they are not using it, it's their choice. 
2. There are advertisments, forum posts, ... all over the place - so everybody knows about it. It's not like some secret sofware used only by a small privileged group of players.
3. It makes the game more interesting because it adds information for you to think about. You are the one making decisions.

Bots or sofware that automate some or your decisions are a different story. Minimising the human factor is a way that leads to the end of online poker for money, whis is obviously a way nobody wants to go.

There was a page on PokerStars's website (I cannot find it at the moment) with a list of allowed and banned software. It should be made very clear what is permitted and what is not. One of the fundamental criteria for allowing software should be it's availability to the general player pool - so everybody has a chance to buy it and use it while playing. 

 

In the end of the day it's all about what PokerStars could technically do in this sofware jungle. There is lot of money in poker, new softwares will be appearing constantly, so it will be an ongoing battle. As a player I would like to have as much information as possible - so it's great that we are discussing these issues on the forums. I also want to thank fellow regulars and recreational players for their time and effort to keep the game environment fair.

 

I wish you good luck at tables!