Party Coming Out Against Poker Tracker? [Archive]

RickDecker

04-15-2005, 11:46 AM

I found this post in the Poker Tracker Hold'em Support forum under the message subject "I'm a Freakin Idiot":

It looks like a guy was concerned whether Party was worried about the use of Poker Tracker and this was their response:

______________________________

Dear College Kid,

Thank you for contacting PartyPoker.com Customer Care.

With reference to your e-mail, as we have already mentioned, as part of our initiative to block prohibited software/programs that might give players an undue advantage over the other players on the table, our team of technical and game experts are carrying out the necessary research into such products and based on their findings we would proceed to monitor/block the use of such software/programs from running in conjunction with our PartyPoker.com client.

Though Poker Tracker is not an Artificial Intelligence product, our gaming and technical consultants are coming up with a combative strategy to counter the use of such products on our site and we will be sharing this information with all our players when it comes in the near future.

Contact us anytime, we are available around the clock to assist you with your account related questions and suggestions.

Sincerely,

Some Party Guy
Investigations Team
alerts@partypoker.com

________________________________

I am not the guy who asked the question, I just think this e-mail is interesting given all the discussion about data mining recently.

Cheers,

Rick

grouchie

04-15-2005, 11:49 AM

if they find a way to counteract PT during gameplay I'll be exceptionally happy as then we might be rid of GT+ and PV.

People might actually have to make reads again.

Guthrie

04-15-2005, 11:52 AM

[ QUOTE ]
if they find a way to counteract PT during gameplay I'll be exceptionally happy as then we might be rid of GT+ and PV.

People might actually have to make reads again.

[/ QUOTE ]

TobDog

04-15-2005, 11:56 AM

And this is why your hand histories are stored on your hard drive, seems silly to me, Party is making it easier for PT to work, not the other way around.

IndieMatty

04-15-2005, 11:58 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
if they find a way to counteract PT during gameplay I'll be exceptionally happy as then we might be rid of GT+ and PV.

People might actually have to make reads again.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

Subby

04-15-2005, 12:02 PM

Interesting. I wonder what kind of measures they would take. They certainly aren't going to stop providing hand histories. My guess is that the onus will be on the player to *not* use GT+ and PV...and that if the Party client detects their usage, the player could have his/her account locked.

TacoVendor

04-15-2005, 12:14 PM

In under an hour I can have PT and GT+/PV setup and working with no trace whatsoever if it being installed or running on the computer I play poker with. For anyone with the means this will be trivial to overcome.

This will help in some aspects where those not really 'serious' about playing online won't worry about getting around such a limitation, thus, not having PT running. For those that make a profit or are serious players then there will be little impact. To be honest, the players that will get around it are not the ones you are really looking to confrant at the tables anyway.

AncientPC

04-15-2005, 12:55 PM

[ QUOTE ]
In under an hour I can have PT and GT+/PV setup and working with no trace whatsoever if it being installed or running on the computer I play poker with. For anyone with the means this will be trivial to overcome.

This will help in some aspects where those not really 'serious' about playing online won't worry about getting around such a limitation, thus, not having PT running. For those that make a profit or are serious players then there will be little impact. To be honest, the players that will get around it are not the ones you are really looking to confrant at the tables anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

jon593

04-15-2005, 01:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
And this is why your hand histories are stored on your hard drive, seems silly to me, Party is making it easier for PT to work, not the other way around.

[/ QUOTE ]

i dont think they care if you use it to track your own play, or others to use before you start playing they just dont want it running with partypoker loading all the data so that you can see what kind of player they are on the fly without making a read

flair1239

04-15-2005, 01:07 PM

The only thing they would have to do is put a delay on HH. Instead of putting them on the CPU instantly, maybe the would just be put on when you finish the session.

I don't datamine. So one of them more conveinent aspects of GT+ is displaying the stats on new players as they become available.

LondonBroil

04-15-2005, 01:33 PM

Why are so many of you against PT, PV, and GT+? Is it because you haven't gotten it yet and your jealous of other people who have it?

AncientPC

04-15-2005, 01:35 PM

Why would they be jealous of others having it? Except for PT, PV and GT+ are free.

PoorLawyer

04-15-2005, 01:40 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In under an hour I can have PT and GT+/PV setup and working with no trace whatsoever if it being installed or running on the computer I play poker with. For anyone with the means this will be trivial to overcome.

This will help in some aspects where those not really 'serious' about playing online won't worry about getting around such a limitation, thus, not having PT running. For those that make a profit or are serious players then there will be little impact. To be honest, the players that will get around it are not the ones you are really looking to confrant at the tables anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

maybe they will have a freeroll tourney with all the money they confiscate.

Jeffage

04-15-2005, 01:44 PM

Lol yea. I hope if they ban it and people try to get around it, they confiscate every cent in their account when they catch them through other means. Right now, it's not against the rules...but if it's banned and people continue to use it, I don't want to hear ANY crying when accounts are frozen (though I'm sure we'd see a few threads a day about it).

Jeff

Reef

04-15-2005, 01:45 PM

[ QUOTE ]
if they find a way to counteract PT during gameplay I'll be exceptionally happy as then we might be rid of GT+ and PV.

People might actually have to make reads again.

[/ QUOTE ]

the thought of having to pay attention again scares me

J.R.

04-15-2005, 01:46 PM

it allows less frequent playing, marginal note-taking poeples to play better, i.e. win more and lose less, hastening the onset of the alleged "tragedy of the commons" problem that online poker faces

LondonBroil

04-15-2005, 01:51 PM

Could you elaborate on this "tragedy of the commons"?

Piers

04-15-2005, 01:54 PM

Actions speak better than words. Whatever some nameless Party support Guy says (or their Affiliate T&C says), in practise they seem to be doing what they can to encourage high volume professionals. Maybe they will change track at some point, we will just have to see what happens.

They clearly appear to be engaged in some sort of big auditing and think in, maybe restructuring, before going public, so who knows what they end up doing.

Reef

04-15-2005, 01:54 PM

party is just shooting itself in the foot

spamuell

04-15-2005, 02:08 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Party Coming Out Against Poker Tracker?

It looks like a guy was concerned whether Party was worried about the use of Poker Tracker and this was their response:

[/ QUOTE ]

Stop your scaremongering. Pat's response in that thread on the PT forums:

[ QUOTE ]
The support people at Party are clueless, they just know how to spout the line from the hand book dealing with outside programs. They don't know the difference between Poker Tracker and any another program. The main reason they put the hand histories on the hard drive was because of all the PT users clogging up their mail servers with hand history requests. I worked directly with their developers to get the format to a point that it would work with PT.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not too worried.

FlopMe

04-15-2005, 02:22 PM

I'm not worried either. The only thing that concerns me is when Pat will get the SQL database version released.

caseclosed326

04-15-2005, 02:23 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Could you elaborate on this "tragedy of the commons"?

[/ QUOTE ]

There are like these sheep grazing in a field and...hey didnt you take any freshman sociology?

BusterStacks

04-15-2005, 02:24 PM

The day that Party's techs can outsmart me is the last day I will ever touch a computer. I'm not worried.

doubledouble

04-15-2005, 02:26 PM

No winning player should be threatened by this. I was winning before the sites even offered a players notes feature. To keep my edge, I had to update my techniques as analytic software proliferated. I can dumb down just as easily and retain my edge.

Heck, I could hire a college kid at $10 per hour to sit beside me with a laptop and datamine manually during my hands, keeping the records on a spreadsheet. I would still clear $90 per hour net. Throw whatever you want at me. I will still always win.

Joe

Sponger15SB

04-15-2005, 02:29 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Lol yea. I hope if they ban it and people try to get around it, they confiscate every cent in their account when they catch them through other means. Right now, it's not against the rules...but if it's banned and people continue to use it, I don't want to hear ANY crying when accounts are frozen (though I'm sure we'd see a few threads a day about it).

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you out of your mind? If they froze the accounts of everying using poker tracker that would be like... I dunno...

$10,000,000 ? Maybe more ?

I don't think that would ever happen.

SackUp

04-15-2005, 02:31 PM

Ya, I'm not really worried at all. The people who use PT are high volume players and those are the people Party wants to keep. Party makes money off the good players, good players make money off the fish, so party has no reason not to keep the high volume players with the advantage unless it gets to the point that people are scared off...which there are no signs of yet.

The fact is simple, people either know about PT, PO, PV, GT, etc or they don't. If they don't, then none of this bothers them. If they do know then they either use it or they don't. If they don't then they are idiots as they either think they don't need it (too good for it) or they don't think it helps enough to make it worth the money - neither of which stops them from playing.

There are only select few people who know about the programs, know their value and still would rather not have them. People like grouchi are in the minority for sure. So unless there starts to be a large outcry on 2+2 about not using PT, don't worry and follow Pat's advance and stop scaremongering!

Rhone

04-15-2005, 02:33 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Party Coming Out Against Poker Tracker?

It looks like a guy was concerned whether Party was worried about the use of Poker Tracker and this was their response:

[/ QUOTE ]

Stop your scaremongering. Pat's response in that thread on the PT forums:

[ QUOTE ]
The support people at Party are clueless, they just know how to spout the line from the hand book dealing with outside programs. They don't know the difference between Poker Tracker and any another program. The main reason they put the hand histories on the hard drive was because of all the PT users clogging up their mail servers with hand history requests. I worked directly with their developers to get the format to a point that it would work with PT.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not too worried.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yea, the very first thing I thought when I read the original post was that some clueless PP support person took their standard form letter dealing with banned software and stuck PT into it in response to the query, without even bothering to look up whether PT was actually banned or not.

ptrack pat

04-15-2005, 02:42 PM

The original poster failed to mention the response received by Party Poker when he inquired some more:

[ QUOTE ]
Though Poker Tracker is not an Artificial Intelligence product, our gaming and technical consultants are coming up with a combative strategy to counter the use of such products on our site and we will be sharing this information with all our players when it comes in the near future.

[/ QUOTE ]

PT does not and will not in the future tell you how to play, when to bet, fold, real-time pot odds, etc. These are the types of programs they will crack down on first, if they crack down at all. I was contacted by a lead Party developer when they were in the process of storing the hands on the hard drive. We worked together getting the format to a state that could be used by PT. They know about PT, and I don't think they would have gone through all the steps they did in storing the hand histories locally if they had a problem with it.

pokerplayer28

04-15-2005, 03:27 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Ya, I'm not really worried at all. The people who use PT are high volume players and those are the people Party wants to keep. Party makes money off the good players, good players make money off the fish, so party has no reason not to keep the high volume players with the advantage unless it gets to the point that people are scared off...which there are no signs of yet.

[/ QUOTE ]

all party has to do to keep the high volume players is keep the fish. If party cancelled rakeback and banned PT PV GT the majority of high volume players would still play at party.

TacoVendor

04-15-2005, 04:05 PM

Unless they physically show up at my house they would not have any idea that I was running software. None. There would be no possible way for it to be seen with their software, no traces for them to find. None.

The people that resign themselves to the change of Party, et al., not allowing any other software to be run will get run over themselves - not quite as bad as the 'fish' but they surely won't be doing as well as they did before.

pokerplayer28

04-15-2005, 04:28 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Unless they physically show up at my house they would not have any idea that I was running software. None. There would be no possible way for it to be seen with their software, no traces for them to find. None.

The people that resign themselves to the change of Party, et al., not allowing any other software to be run will get run over themselves - not quite as bad as the 'fish' but they surely won't be doing as well as they did before.

[/ QUOTE ]

If party wanted to stop the use of PT and PV they would just change how they store hand histories.

what if they just made it so stored and observed hands dont show up on your comp until you leave the table. Plus let you change your screen name whenever you want and let you change your name to players old non active names.

This would make it very difficult to use PV GT+ and PT would only be valuable for your own play

point if party wanted to they could

PoorLawyer

04-15-2005, 04:35 PM

fyodor

04-15-2005, 05:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Though Poker Tracker is not an Artificial Intelligence product, our gaming and technical consultants are coming up with a combative strategy to counter the use of such products on our site and we will be sharing this information with all our players when it comes in the near future.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think everyone is missinterpreting Party's poor English. What they are trying to say (imo) is "PT is not AI. We are coming up with a combative strategy to counteract the use of AI."

I am an expert at translating English to English, having dealt extensively with all manner of English 2nd language situations.

flair1239

04-15-2005, 05:35 PM

All this is beside the point. Things like PT , GT, and PV are good for the game.

If the casual players knew about these things they would think it was great. People love gadgets even if they don't completely understand them.

I don't know if you guys know any obsessive fishermen, but look at all the crap they buy.

If you took a bad casual player and gave him this stuff, he would think it was neat and he would spend some time tinkering. At the end of the day he would probably still be a bad player.

Also an obvious tactic that Party could use to "level the field" if they wanted; would be to contract with PT and just start issuing it out to members as part of their software. I think this would be great, the bad players would feel like they had all the tools in the world and they would still be bad.

_And1_

04-15-2005, 09:33 PM

Still think that dataminim and observed hands shouldnt be saved or a possibility. Ppl are not supposed to be able to collect stats 24/7. Hands htat ppl play in are ofcourse a diffrent story...

EliteNinja

04-15-2005, 09:46 PM

As long as we still get hand histories, Poker Tracker will never die.

TimsterToo

04-15-2005, 09:56 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Though Poker Tracker is not an Artificial Intelligence product, our gaming and technical consultants are coming up with a combative strategy to counter the use of such products on our site and we will be sharing this information with all our players when it comes in the near future.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think everyone is missinterpreting Party's poor English. What they are trying to say (imo) is "PT is not AI. We are coming up with a combative strategy to counteract the use of AI."

I am an expert at translating English to English, having dealt extensively with all manner of English 2nd language situations.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think he's right, they are not referring to PT but are trying to say that PT is not an AI program that they are trying to combat.

False alarm, everyone can breath again /images/graemlins/tongue.gif