An Ethical Quandry

[Exsubmariner]

Down down the dark path I go.
I am tracked in Poker Edge. Do I pay the $9.99 extortion fee every month to keep my name hidden from every one else who uses it? If I do, I might be tempted to use it myself. Do I subscribe or start a letter campaign to Potty to change their software such that hand histories are not publicly available to just anyone observing their tables? Do I take my business elsewhere or do I resign myself to playing a level that is so small it ins't tracked. Bigger stakes with lesser advantage or smaller stakes with greater advantage?
Looks like my viel is lifted I will never look at online poker the same again and I will now have to be forever vigilent against the 2+2 Borg Collective. Resistance is Futile.
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[teddyFBI]

[ QUOTE ]
Down down the dark path I go.
I am tracked in Poker Edge. Do I pay the $9.99 extortion fee every month to keep my name hidden from every one else who uses it? If I do, I might be tempted to use it myself. Do I subscribe or start a letter campaign to Potty to change their software such that hand histories are not publicly available to just anyone observing their tables? Do I take my business elsewhere or do I resign myself to playing a level that is so small it ins't tracked. Bigger stakes with lesser advantage or smaller stakes with greater advantage?
Looks like my viel is lifted I will never look at online poker the same again and I will now have to be forever vigilent against the 2+2 Borg Collective. Resistance is Futile.
X

[/ QUOTE ]

Holy Christ -- I'm so sick of this PE shiite -- you donks act like it's the holy F'ing grail...so what if other players know a little bit about how you play; frankly, 97% of the retards on this forum wouldn't know what to properly do with that information anyway...and the other 3% aren't even going to want to sit at your table (if you're a winning player -- which I'd wager nine tenths of the morons worrying about PE aren't).

Yes, it's regrettable that sharks might now drain the fish coffers at a somewhat quicker pace, but acting like PE is somehow allowing your opponents to freakin' see your hole cards or get a similarly huge advantage over you is ludicrous.

EDIT: (no offense to you personally submariner -- just a little tired of every other post on here being PE-related...since when does this not qualify as spam anyway)

[mackthefork]

You are wrong, people who use this are 'killing the goose that laid the golden eggs'.

Mack

[Derek in NYC]

Please dont take it the wrong way, but I gathered from a previous post of yours that you play 1/2 limit. At this level, using PE (or for that matter PT) is immaterial--both in conferring an advantage by using the software, or in being disadvantaged by not using it. Save your money, buy some books, and play ABC poker. Rinse repeat.

[bkholdem]

So poker edge is getting paid on both ends? They get a bunch of people to subscribe, charging a monthly fee. Then they get those same people to pay another montly fee to keep their data out? LOL. How do I get ahold of some poker edge stock? Pretty soon they will have 10 thousand subscribers paying for the list and also paying to keep their names out of the list so they will be making a boatload and there will be no names to track hahhhaaaa

[Exsubmariner]

I understand what you are saying teddy, and no offense taken. In theory, you are correct. In practical application, however, the table selection features alone of pokeredge are significant. What takes me 4 or five tables of watching a couple of orbits to figure out could now be done by just looking at the stats. This gives the other players significant edge on me. Also, if I sit down with a tight aggressive player and on the first or second hand I play get a really nut hand. I get way aggressive. If the TAG didn't have data on me he might have a second best hand and call me down with it or try to raise the turn and bluff me off it, if he has data that I play aggressively and might try something like a checkraise on the turn or river with really strong hands, he's going to fold. That's - ev for me. I don't like the idea that someone who I have never seen before has that kind of predefined read on my play.
I am not spamming. I hope to bring frank discussion and awareness of what this is. I couldn't in good conscience promote it's use. Some of the tactics the creaters are using to market their product harken back to the mob and paying "protection money" every month to hide yourself from other users. This is definately well within the boundaries of a very grey area.
I'll concede that the vast majority of people who read these boards will never be able to figure out what to do with this data or how to employ it because they have a hard enough time beating the game of poker. I am not among them, thankfully. I am concerned, though, about the ones who can.
Things just got a whole lot easier for them.
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[Exsubmariner]

I have since moved up. More sharks, less rake, less fish.
X
(edit: I made $350 last night. A night like that is becoming increasingly rare. The pots as I move up are more and more anemic. I pray to God in heaven that some Moneymaker repeat happens at the WSOP and we get an but ton of new players. Otherwise Party is going to be a perpetual rock garden. I thank you for the advice, you don't know me and I am not put out that you would tell me to do the things I keep doing already. But, I appreciate the sentiment you would take the time to say it.)

[Rudbaeck]

It gives someone a slight advantage against you for the first few dozen hands they play. After that the multitablers have their own PT data on you, and the single tablers have an even more solid read.

As soon as you've played 50-100 hands against someone you're screwed. They've got a good grasp on how aggressive you are, how many hands you play, and those that really pay attention know how you adjust to different table textures.

It's not going to make a significant difference in your bottom line immediately. For every shark that gets a read on you a couple of hands faster there is another shark who just avoided your table as you're (hopefully?) flagged as a shark yourself.

[ckessel]

Good freaking paranoid lord. And what about all the people with PT stats on you?

Look, I use PE. When I see someone whose a TAG, I avoid them. I don't want a table of tags. When they're in the pot, I'm wary. You should be happy other TAG's don't want to be at your table or tangle with you in the pot, that's a good thing.

If you suck at poker, PE isn't going to help your opponent much because, remember, you suck and they don't. You're going to be dominated and outplayed post flop in those situations(where PE value is limited anyway).

It's like someone just pointed out the elephant in the room or something. PE's value is table selection. It's not much more useful than PT when it comes to playing against a specific individual. In fact, the best TAGs play differently against other TAG's than fish in general, which means even if I had 100k hands on them in PE, I can't rely on it if the TAG knows I'm a TAG (which any PokerTracker or PE would probably knows).

Take off the tinfoil hat and go play poker.

[Uglyowl]

How hard is it to find a loose table. Big pots or high plrs/flop. That generally works.

[Derek in NYC]

[ QUOTE ]
I have since moved up. More sharks, less rake, less fish.
X
(edit: I made $350 last night. A night like that is becoming increasingly rare.

[/ QUOTE ]

Assuming you are playing 1/2, this is an extraordinary night by any measure. Your claim that 1/2 is becoming a "rock garden" reflects a misunderstanding of normal game conditions. If you're telling me that the 1/2 tables are going 3 handed to the flop 80% of the time, I'll listen. Otherwise, I think you're just plain wrong. Every game I have played on party up to and including 5/10 is beatable through ordinary, ABC poker.

[ckessel]

[ QUOTE ]
How hard is it to find a loose table. Big pots or high plrs/flop. That generally works.

[/ QUOTE ]

The big pot tables tend to have gigantic wait limits (often >10). Party and skins don't show players/flop. If they did, that'd be tremendously useful.

[sfer]

If I buy PE then I can't see any other customers' data and they can't see mine?

[Exsubmariner]

Not as easy as you might expect above .5/$1 on party. Party doesn't have the % players for flop like other sites. If you get a 10+ BB pot average on a table the waiting list magically goes to 12. Ironically, I have found the players/flop number a much better indicator than pot size of a good table. If party had this column on their software I might not care so much about Pokeredge. But they don't so I have to sit at a table for a couple of orbits to know if it will be good or not. Users of pokeredge have one up on me in this regard, along with knowing how I play before I sit down. Something about the competitor in me is outraged by this.
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[Exsubmariner]

First you give me stock advice from the board and then you imply I don't know what the hell I'm talking about...3 handed to river 80% of the time, huh? Most hands I see are two handed and someone folds at the river. I'm beginning to lose patience here. Aren't you the poker edge user who aided them in their spam campaign yesterday that got deleted?
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[axioma]

teddy, [censored] you.

i could go into more detail explaining how you are ignorant to the point of entirely missing the real situation at hand, but from the tone of your post its obvious youre just an obnoxious little prick, so a [censored] you will have to sufice.

[scott8]

At what level does this software lose value?
I play exclusively 30/60 and I wonder what advantage this software could possibly give my opponent?
There is so little consistency to my play that more stats should make little difference.

Can someone point out why I should be worried about this, or if I am correct that this is really only useful for the lower limits.

-SC

[ckessel]

[ QUOTE ]
If I buy PE then I can't see any other customers' data and they can't see mine?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes and no. The stats aren't there, but the rating rules still apply. So, for example, if I have TAGs as <20 VPIP and >7 PFR, and you qualify, I'll still see that you're a TAG. I won't see the specific numbers though.

Hiding your stats is overrated though. You're hiding them from a small potion of users (PE users) and largely from other TAG's who probably want to avoid you anyway.

[Greg J]

[ QUOTE ]
Please dont take it the wrong way, but I gathered from a previous post of yours that you play 1/2 limit. At this level, using PE (or for that matter PT) is immaterial--both in conferring an advantage by using the software, or in being disadvantaged by not using it. Save your money, buy some books, and play ABC poker. Rinse repeat.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is so wrong it made my eyes bleed.

[Derek in NYC]

My guess is that at the higher limits, where there are fewer tables, you can get a lot of the benefits of PE through extensive datamining on your own. At lower limits, the size of the PE dB will exceed all PT dBs.

[Derek in NYC]

Greg, I dont play 1/2 so I truly am speaking out of my ass, but since my recollection was that 2/4 party could be beaten on autopilot almost without regards to player reads, I cant imagine that 1/2 is any different. Admittedly, it has been a while since I have played 2/4 or 3/6, but in general I have found that the complaints about the diminishing stock of fish usually come from players who are themselves struggling at their limit and who might not otherwise be profitable without rakeback and bonuses.

[Exsubmariner]

Stop plugging to sell this crap in my damned thread, Derek.
I move to have derek banned for Spam.
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[Greg J]

1/2 is not a hard game. The full ring game is somewhat tighter than 2/4 -- probably b/c most of the recreational action players are to be found at 6 max. 1/2 have a lot of relatively tight, and weak passive players who are winner at .5/1, moved up, still learning the game, and for the most part easy to bully. 2/4 is looser. 1/2 is very beatable though.

However, even at 1/2, PT pays for itself. Hell, PT payed for itself before I moved up from .5/1. I should have been clearer: I agree that PE is not worth the investment for micro players. But, PT is, and IMO it's not even close. The lumping in of PT as not worth it is what I was red flagging.

[Derek in NYC]

[ QUOTE ]
Stop plugging to sell this crap in my damned thread, Derek.
I move to have derek banned for Spam.
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[/ QUOTE ]

Dude, you're insane. Somebody asked a question, I answered it. I couldn't care less if anybody uses PokerEdge. Although I do find your tinfoil hat paranoia quite amusing. Please say hello to Elvis when you see him on the astral plane.

[Exsubmariner]

Dereks line of defending himself:
blah blah blah Pokeredge, blah blah blah, now let me pontificate about games I don't even play in, blah blah blah, I play higher limits so I must know more than you, blah blah blah, Pokeredge, blah blah blah, you play microlimits so you're paraniod, blah blah blah, Pokeredge, blah blah blah, higher stakes makes me smarter, blah blah blah, pokeredge, elvis, blah blah blah, buy some books, blah blah, I have no affliation with pokeredge, blah blah.
Sounds alot like boilerplate to me.
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[Derek in NYC]

All of this sound and fury about the [Product That Shall Remain Unnamed] is quite amusing.

People sit around all day and sing the praises of Pokertracker, and ask questions about it, yet nobody calls it spam. Amir develops, then decides to eventually charge for Playerview, yet nobody calls it spam. Krishan develops the pokerhandhistories.com datafile service for high limit players, which is discussed on the forum yet nobody complains.

Along comes the [Product That Shall Remain Unnamed] and people are all up in arms about how it will kill the game, how it confers an unfair advantage, etc.

Newsflash: Large farmed databases are on their way to a theater near you. In addition to [The Product that Shall Remain Unnamed], Pokerprophecy farms data for SNGs, PokerSherlock is a competing Party skin dB that went live this month, PokerScores is in beta now and is available for testing, and Playerstalker farms hand histories for Pokerstars.

YOU GUYS WINGEING ABOUT LARGE, FARMED HAND HISTORY DATABASES NEED TO DEAL WITH REALITY They are here to stay. A year ago guys were bitching about people "trading" Pokertracker databases, but those complaints seem so antiquated now. Learn to play better and stop blaming your marginal results on collusion, defective random number generators, or [The Product That Shall Remain Unnamed]. Bonuses and rakeback wont keep you alive forever.

I hope everybody Googles the names of these products so they realize that my original thread about [The Product That Shall Remain Unnamed] was not spamming, pimping, ruining the game, whatever--it was an early warning announcement for what the next generation of tools will look like.

[Exsubmariner]

Wow Derek,
I retract my assertions about you. That was really a very intelligent argument. Perhaps the question is not if they will be around or allowed, but ultimately who (fish?) is going to feel comfortable playing someplace that allows them to be around? For me, the solution to the problem is easy, fork over $10 every month and use the program, hide my username and participate in the system of graft, corruption, bribes, and patronage, or I could go play someplace else. Ultimately I will weigh the pros and cons applicable for me where I am right now and decide. More education is never a bad thing. I bet Potty is going to something up on their FAQ about this kind of stuff eventually and then the word is out....
I think the steps taken by UB recently are encouraging. Points in their favor in my mind.....
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[memphis57]

[ QUOTE ]

There is so little consistency to my play that more stats should make little difference.

[/ QUOTE ]


Here's your answer - be like this guy and be less predictable. How do you think the big name pros keep winning when everybody is watching how they play?

In short, for all you guys concerned about PE and PT and GT etc. - Don't be a robot. Adjust your play to fit the situation. Vary your play to keep your opponents off guard. It's all a big game of spy-counter-spy, like the old Mad magazine cartoons. I love it, it keeps things interesting.

[Exsubmariner]

Rudbaeck,
You make some very salient points. It has taken me a while to think to formulate a response.
The thing I will ultimately have to do, if I continue at Potty, is to use the product myself to level the playing field. For me, PT is more about my own game, my own private data that I get from the hands I play against others. I don't like the idea of being forced to use a tool or else be at a disadvantage. I feel I have lost a degree of privacy and annonimity here that I would get to keep and use to my advantage. This whole thing is -ev and I hope Potty makes some kind of change that squishes it, so I don't have to be subjected to extortion by some internet datamining mob that vigilently records my every play.
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[swolfe]

one thing these centralized hand history farms may eventually help with is early detection of cheaters. these are going to be the ones with the most information to flag players that meet criteria for collusion and/or disconnect abuse.

EDIT: also, i noticed that the stats on me are pretty far off from my A game. probably all that 100% VPIP stuff i've been doing down at the $25NL games.

[Exsubmariner]

Now that is interesting......

[axioma]

they are far from "here to stay". party and skins are already umming and arrring about what to do with simalar programs.

your comments about bonues and rakeback were pathetic and just make you look like a moron.

[Rudbaeck]

My point is: There is a surprisingly low limit to how much numbers can tell you. It's not very much you change if someone is 15% vpip instead of 18% vpip, or if he is raising 8% preflop or 10% preflop. If his aggression is 2.4 or 3...

Not the least because even with thousands of hands on a player these numbers still have a rather large confidence interval, and as far as I can tell PE doesn't strip out old hands. So you get a fuzzy, slightly outdated picture of the rough style of someone's play. And frankly that's as far as the numeric analysis of our opponents can help us. We can put them into the proper category quickly, so our plays against them can exploit likely weaknesses. But numeric analysis can't tell us for certain that they do in fact have the weaknesses their category tends to have.

Numbers and obsevervation is alot more helpful against each individual. If someone has a high aggression factor doesn't really tell you if he habitually 3-bets when someone check-raises him on the flop 'just to find out where he is'.

[ckessel]

[ QUOTE ]
For me, the solution to the problem is easy, fork over $10 every month and use the program, hide my username and participate in the system of graft, corruption, bribes, and patronage, or I could go play someplace else.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hiding your name won't help you. Unless you plan to do so with every product that will be out there. And then PokerTracker will still have you.

Just know when you play you've been tracked. Don't play the same way every hand. Mix up your check raises with betting out. That's all part of becoming a good player regardless.

There's a great chapter in Theory of Poker on semi-bluffing. It doesn't matter if your opponent knows you semi-bluff because if you do so in correct relation to the pot odds, the opponent is in a lose-lose situation.

The same is true with your numbers. There are many reasons why tight/aggressive is the preferred strategy, not the least of which is that even opponents that know you well can't easily put you on a specific hand.

[Lestat]

Thanks Teddy. You are soooo right on and I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Lestat]

<font color="red">from the tone of your post its obvious youre just an obnoxious little prick, </font>

But a very correct one.

[axioma]

in your opinion.

[jackdaniels]

Post deleted by Mike Haven

[david050173]

[ QUOTE ]
My point is: There is a surprisingly low limit to how much numbers can tell you. It's not very much you change if someone is 15% vpip instead of 18% vpip, or if he is raising 8% preflop or 10% preflop. If his aggression is 2.4 or 3...

Not the least because even with thousands of hands on a player these numbers still have a rather large confidence interval, and as far as I can tell PE doesn't strip out old hands. So you get a fuzzy, slightly outdated picture of the rough style of someone's play. And frankly that's as far as the numeric analysis of our opponents can help us. We can put them into the proper category quickly, so our plays against them can exploit likely weaknesses. But numeric analysis can't tell us for certain that they do in fact have the weaknesses their category tends to have.

Numbers and obsevervation is alot more helpful against each individual. If someone has a high aggression factor doesn't really tell you if he habitually 3-bets when someone check-raises him on the flop 'just to find out where he is'.

[/ QUOTE ]

What about whent he numbers get better? What if it tells me the that 75% of the time when you check raise you have trips or better? Or that you will bluff on missed draws 45% of the time if checked to? Yes you can randomize your play a bit to beat these type of players but you have to make sure you don't start making suboptimal moves against the rest of the table.

Personally I am a bit against it because it gives a database of hand which you could never acculate on your own. The other scary part is that only the good/dedicated people are going to get and learn how to use datamining advantegously. Long term that could upset the gambling/skill balance.

[morgant]

[ QUOTE ]
(after doing so myself I was asked to post about this here)

[/ QUOTE ]

Please stop these dodgy spamming campaigns. What dont you understand. BUY AN AD. you fish

[Yeknom58]

Sooo not worth the money. Now if it were a one time fee of 10 bucks that's one thing but every month no way.

[PokerBob]

change your screen name

[Rudbaeck]

Then the problem becomes, how do you access all this data in real time? You pretty much need a system that can show you the data relevant to the current situation. Atleast if you're going to play more than one table without constantly timing out.

[spkid]

I'm not sure why PE and PT are viewed as so much different from one another, ethically, that is. Note: I am assuming that PT is being used with GT+ or PV, which I'm sure that in the majority of cases it is. Does the fact that you have to do a little more "work" with PT make it more ethical to use. I find it pretty easy downloading hand histories to PT, autorating players, and running GT+.

I agree with a post I read in another thread that compares these programs to steriods in sports. They are not quite ethical, yet if you don't use them yourself you are giving away an egde to the competition. That's MHO on using the programs.

Now as far as PE using what might be considered a form of extortion by releasing your stats and then requiring a subscription to keep those stats from being released... That's extortion at it's finest!