In anticipation of the end of mining after Party Beta takes effect

[Wynton]

I apologize if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find anything.

My understanding is that Party Beta software does not permit importing observed hands, and that will become the rule eventually.

I've never been a big miner myself, mostly because I've been playing elsewhere. But I'm just curious: are people making any special efforts to datamine at Party in anticipation of this change?

And is there going to be a big market for selling observed hands, in the immediate aftermath of the change, whenever it happens?

[LImitPlayer]

[ QUOTE ]
My understanding is that Party Beta software does not permit importing observed hands, and that will become the rule eventually.


[/ QUOTE ]

Is this true?

[Wynton]

According to what I've read at the Poketracker forum and elsewhere, it is true.

See this thread, for example. (http://www.pokertracker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9988&highlight=)

[DarkKnight]

the current version of the beta does not save observed hands to the local drive and doesn't give the play by play in the chat box - so, yes it appears to be true.

I still have the the original PP on my comp. anyway to keep it from upgrading?

[DarkKnight]

[ QUOTE ]
I still have the the original PP on my comp. anyway to keep it from upgrading?

[/ QUOTE ]

Once the beta is over - Unlikely

[soko]

GOOD.

[punter11235]

Writing a program which read HH's from what is going on the table (you very easily can read chat or even recognize card images) and then convert it to std HH format is very easy programming task (my friend wrote it in one day for other site when he had his crazy bot ideas). I think dataminers will be quick to get their own program for that.

Best wishes

[jba]

if they are keeping the ability to open tables and continue to pump the hand info to the chat box something can easily be done a la UB hand grabber.

[Wynton]

Well, Dark Knight says here that "the current version of the beta does not save observed hands to the local drive and doesn't give the play by play in the chat box."

does anyone know when they plan to release the new sofware?

[TylerD]

[ QUOTE ]
the current version of the beta does not save observed hands to the local drive and doesn't give the play by play in the chat box - so, yes it appears to be true.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Freudian]

I predict a lot of players making good use of the function to change screenname once the changes kick in.

[BigBrother]

[ QUOTE ]


And is there going to be a big BLACK MARKET for selling observed hands, in the immediate aftermath of the change, whenever it happens?

[/ QUOTE ]

You do realize selling HH's is very much against T&C's, no?

[Wynton]

No,actually I didn't realize that.

[KSOT]

This is the worst news I've heard all year.

Datamining is my first love.

[Wynton]

[ QUOTE ]
This is the worst news I've heard all year.

Datamining is my first love.

[/ QUOTE ]

There, there. As far as I know, Party hasn't indicated when this change is going to occur, so enjoy mining while you can.

Isn't someone developing a program called "supamine"? What's the point if Party Beta is going to make it irrelevant?

John

[POKhER]

[ QUOTE ]
Writing a program which read HH's from what is going on the table (you very easily can read chat or even recognize card images)

[/ QUOTE ]

Very easily identify the cards from the image analysis huh? I can program, and i can't think of a way to do this.

PM me the details mate.

Guys - I'm sure there will be ways around it, We'll have to see when the software is released.

The main problem will be POKERACE "mucked cards" no longer displaying... Oh joy... poker gets worse and worse.

[Voltron87]

do you guys all realize that if party wanted to they could just say "if you run [name of new mining app] we will shut down your account", its one thing to design a new program but if they want to they will have their way.

[mmbt0ne]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Writing a program which read HH's from what is going on the table (you very easily can read chat or even recognize card images)

[/ QUOTE ]

Very easily identify the cards from the image analysis huh? I can program, and i can't think of a way to do this.

PM me the details mate.

Guys - I'm sure there will be ways around it, We'll have to see when the software is released.

The main problem will be POKERACE "mucked cards" no longer displaying... Oh joy... poker gets worse and worse.

[/ QUOTE ]

I thought this was only and issue for observed HH. If you're actually sitting at the table, they're still giving you your game information so you can keep records.

[raze]

So all in all, PT users / data miners won't have a *massive* advantage over everyone else anymore.. just a *large* one. womp womp

[joop]

[ QUOTE ]
do you guys all realize that if party wanted to they could just say "if you run [name of new mining app] we will shut down your account", its one thing to design a new program but if they want to they will have their way.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can't you open several tables without actually logging in?

[TheRempel]

'Very easily identify the cards from the image analysis huh? I can program, and i can't think of a way to do this.'

Couldn't you just datamine on a second computer and replace all the card images with white fields containing a code that is easily decipherable by software?

[Terry]

There are many screen scraping utilities available. The kiddies do it all the time, writing bots for MMORPGs. Reading the cards shown is pretty simple but they still won't get the unshown hole cards.

This isn't something new; it is just going back to the way things were before Party started keeping hand histories on your computer instead of by email only. Hand histories should never have been available for observed hands in the first place.

[teddyFBI]

[ QUOTE ]
'Very easily identify the cards from the image analysis huh? I can program, and i can't think of a way to do this.'

Couldn't you just datamine on a second computer and replace all the card images with white fields containing a code that is easily decipherable by software?

[/ QUOTE ]

n1

Not being a Beta player, I can only ask this here.

If I'm in a hand, is the history stored on my local hard drive?

Also, you say that dealer chat is not giving a blow-by-blow to the observers? Is it giving any chat at all (summary, winners, starting hand, etc?)

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
do you guys all realize that if party wanted to they could just say "if you run [name of new mining app] we will shut down your account", its one thing to design a new program but if they want to they will have their way.

[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. PokerStars banned the analogous StarSpy and made it stick. Party can easily do the same.

This is fantastic news. You made my day /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[david050173]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
do you guys all realize that if party wanted to they could just say "if you run [name of new mining app] we will shut down your account", its one thing to design a new program but if they want to they will have their way.

[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. PokerStars banned the analogous StarSpy and made it stick. Party can easily do the same.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are whole books devoted to image analysis. Go to amazon and do a search. This case is really easy since reading pixels is a heck of a lot cleaner than reading photographs.

The value you lose is not seeing losing hands. You can still calculate a bunch of numbers but you can't learn that he calls down with weak aces, semibluffs a lot, and so on...

[Unabridged]

[ QUOTE ]
Isn't someone developing a program called "supamine"? What's the point if Party Beta is going to make it irrelevant?

John

[/ QUOTE ]

he's already working on a way to get observed hands without reading the .hhf

[Voltron87]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Isn't someone developing a program called "supamine"? What's the point if Party Beta is going to make it irrelevant?

John

[/ QUOTE ]

he's already working on a way to get observed hands without reading the .hhf

[/ QUOTE ]

right, and then party will ban the new supamine program or pahud. if party wants observer mining gone, goddamnit it will be gone.

[Pov]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Isn't someone developing a program called "supamine"? What's the point if Party Beta is going to make it irrelevant?

John

[/ QUOTE ]

he's already working on a way to get observed hands without reading the .hhf

[/ QUOTE ]

right, and then party will ban the new supamine program or pahud. if party wants observer mining gone, goddamnit it will be gone.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, for the resourceful they'll never be able to prevent screen capture (assuming they would ever intend to). To anticipate, no, they can't prevent you from running an external program because you can always run Party from a virtual machine or terminal and screen capture from the host system. Of course that's too complex for the casual player, but then again, the casual player doesn't really gain anything from data mining in the first place I suppose. So anyway, if they want to remove observer mining they will have to remove observing.

[POKhER]

[ QUOTE ]
'Very easily identify the cards from the image analysis huh? I can program, and i can't think of a way to do this.'

Couldn't you just datamine on a second computer and replace all the card images with white fields containing a code that is easily decipherable by software?

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed, this just sparked so many ideas off /images/graemlins/smile.gif Time to get coding /images/graemlins/grin.gif

Of course most programs released to the public will get banned, thats why most programmers who release their products will find themselves having to constantly upgrade and redistribute the software they have made to their paying customers(Provided they have offered support I.E. PAHUD).

Thats why i'll never release any software i create ^_^ unless people pay a big price and even then, i wouldn't offer support.

[Voltron87]

ok, i will change my statement to "if party wants observer mining gone, goddamnit they will make it infeasible and too much of a pain for 99% of players."

[ QUOTE ]
ok, i will change my statement to "if party wants observer mining gone, goddamnit they will make it infeasible and too much of a pain for 99% of players."

[/ QUOTE ]

Not that it matters. 90+% of the players don't mine anyway (the casual players). Of the 10% remaining, it only takes .1% of them with programming knowledge to decide to sniff the IP packets and write a program that mines on a and displays status on a separate system.

For serious 2+2 types, I doubt requiring a 2nd monitor and system to run mining software and have all the stats will deter them. All this work to prevent datamining really will have a minor impact, particularly if you count hands played.

Say:
90% of hands are by people who don't datamine
5% (the semi-serious players) will give it up
5% (the die-hards) will work around it with a 2nd system

Now, weight that by hands played, the die-hards play waaaay more hands than anyone else. The EXACT demographic that plays the most datamined hands won't be really affected.

So, all this effort only stops a fairly small percentage of played hands from using datamining help. Effort I'd much rather see spent on improved bot and collusion detection, or, god forbid, good customer service.

[jba]

"Of the 10% remaining, it only takes .1% of them with programming knowledge to decide to sniff the IP packets and write a program that mines on a and displays status on a separate system."

if this is actually possible I'm never playing online poker again. It almost certainly isn't..

[slavic]

[ QUOTE ]
"Of the 10% remaining, it only takes .1% of them with programming knowledge to decide to sniff the IP packets and write a program that mines on a and displays status on a separate system."

if this is actually possible I'm never playing online poker again. It almost certainly isn't..

[/ QUOTE ]

Possible? Yea anything is possible. Doable in our lifetime, yea probably. Worth the effort, not likely.

[OrangeHeat]

[ QUOTE ]
I apologize if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find anything.

My understanding is that Party Beta software does not permit importing observed hands, and that will become the rule eventually.

I've never been a big miner myself, mostly because I've been playing elsewhere. But I'm just curious: are people making any special efforts to datamine at Party in anticipation of this change?

And is there going to be a big market for selling observed hands, in the immediate aftermath of the change, whenever it happens?

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow. Best move party could make! Took long enough.

Orange

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Of the 10% remaining, it only takes .1% of them with programming knowledge to decide to sniff the IP packets and write a program that mines on a and displays status on a separate system."

if this is actually possible I'm never playing online poker again. It almost certainly isn't..

[/ QUOTE ]

Possible? Yea anything is possible. Doable in our lifetime, yea probably. Worth the effort, not likely.

[/ QUOTE ]

Christ, it's trivial for anyone with IP traffic knowledge (and there's plenty). There are packet sniffers freely available.

You simply have a system A watch traffic on the network and datamine. You play on system B on the same network. You know the reason your boss could track EVERY thing you do on the web at work? Because all that info flies over the network. It's not like you have some sort of private line for your data.

God awful trivial. Again, you just need ONE motivated engineer to figure out the packet structure. He then just sells/gives the app to everyone else just like the guy that made PokerTracker did.

Then you get the arms race of Party encrypting packets, rotating keys, etc, and we'll see if the datamining engineers want to try to keep up with it.

[jba]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Of the 10% remaining, it only takes .1% of them with programming knowledge to decide to sniff the IP packets and write a program that mines on a and displays status on a separate system."

if this is actually possible I'm never playing online poker again. It almost certainly isn't..

[/ QUOTE ]

Possible? Yea anything is possible. Doable in our lifetime, yea probably. Worth the effort, not likely.

[/ QUOTE ]

well you're picking nits. It isn't possible now, and if it ever is I quit online poker. I'd lay very long odds no poker player is going to pull this off. if it becomes possible you can expect online poker to completely disappear.

while we're nitpicking "not likely" is understatement of the month.

[jba]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Of the 10% remaining, it only takes .1% of them with programming knowledge to decide to sniff the IP packets and write a program that mines on a and displays status on a separate system."

if this is actually possible I'm never playing online poker again. It almost certainly isn't..

[/ QUOTE ]

Possible? Yea anything is possible. Doable in our lifetime, yea probably. Worth the effort, not likely.

[/ QUOTE ]

Christ, it's trivial for anyone with IP traffic knowledge (and there's plenty). There are packet sniffers freely available.


[/ QUOTE ]

it's encrypted already. good luck dude.

[PokerAce]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Of the 10% remaining, it only takes .1% of them with programming knowledge to decide to sniff the IP packets and write a program that mines on a and displays status on a separate system."

if this is actually possible I'm never playing online poker again. It almost certainly isn't..

[/ QUOTE ]

Possible? Yea anything is possible. Doable in our lifetime, yea probably. Worth the effort, not likely.

[/ QUOTE ]

Christ, it's trivial for anyone with IP traffic knowledge (and there's plenty). There are packet sniffers freely available.

You simply have a system A watch traffic on the network and datamine. You play on system B on the same network. You know the reason your boss could track EVERY thing you do on the web at work? Because all that info flies over the network. It's not like you have some sort of private line for your data.

God awful trivial. Again, you just need ONE motivated engineer to figure out the packet structure. He then just sells/gives the app to everyone else just like the guy that made PokerTracker did.

Then you get the arms race of Party encrypting packets, rotating keys, etc, and we'll see if the datamining engineers want to try to keep up with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

You guys realize that the network traffic between the poker clients and their servers is encrypted right? It's not as "trivial" as you might think.

There's a reason why your credit card information is safe when you submit it over a secure connection. This stuff isn't easy to crack, even if you have access to the network packets.

[HRFats]

[ QUOTE ]
the current version of the beta does not save observed hands to the local drive and doesn't give the play by play in the chat box - so, yes it appears to be true.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, the CURRENT version of the BETA does not but who's to say the final realease won't? Maybe the programmers released the BETA before they coded in the HH lines. Maybe they left out the HH download capability in the BETA in case there was some bug that f'ed up your hard drive. Has anyone seen a final release of any software that was unchanged from the BETA? Doubtful. So Chicken Little, the sky may not be falling after all - but only time will tell.

[PokerAce]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
the current version of the beta does not save observed hands to the local drive and doesn't give the play by play in the chat box - so, yes it appears to be true.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, the CURRENT version of the BETA does not but who's to say the final realease won't? Maybe the programmers released the BETA before they coded in the HH lines. Maybe they left out the HH download capability in the BETA in case there was some bug that f'ed up your hard drive. Has anyone seen a final release of any software that was unchanged from the BETA? Doubtful. So Chicken Little, the sky may not be falling after all - but only time will tell.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true, and because it's a beta I have not spent much time trying to find out why PA Hud doesn't work perfectly with the new beta. They may end up changing things before the final version and I don't have enough time available to go wasting it.

However, because of Party's determination in destroying any services that offer shared hand history data, it's very likely that this feature is intentional and will be the same in the final version.

[aucu]

I data mine all tables before I sit down but probably won't miss it too much if it's similar to what AP now has.

[Pov]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Of the 10% remaining, it only takes .1% of them with programming knowledge to decide to sniff the IP packets and write a program that mines on a and displays status on a separate system."

if this is actually possible I'm never playing online poker again. It almost certainly isn't..

[/ QUOTE ]

Possible? Yea anything is possible. Doable in our lifetime, yea probably. Worth the effort, not likely.

[/ QUOTE ]

Christ, it's trivial for anyone with IP traffic knowledge (and there's plenty). There are packet sniffers freely available.

You simply have a system A watch traffic on the network and datamine. You play on system B on the same network. You know the reason your boss could track EVERY thing you do on the web at work? Because all that info flies over the network. It's not like you have some sort of private line for your data.

God awful trivial. Again, you just need ONE motivated engineer to figure out the packet structure. He then just sells/gives the app to everyone else just like the guy that made PokerTracker did.

Then you get the arms race of Party encrypting packets, rotating keys, etc, and we'll see if the datamining engineers want to try to keep up with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

You guys realize that the network traffic between the poker clients and their servers is encrypted right? It's not as "trivial" as you might think.

There's a reason why your credit card information is safe when you submit it over a secure connection. This stuff isn't easy to crack, even if you have access to the network packets.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not really difficult either, just time consuming. But just as you state, that's not why your credit card is secure. In a routed network you only have access to your own packets anyway. In order to packet sniff the masses for credit cards you have to hack your way into a router on an ISP's network (or something similar) before you can even start trying to decrypt anything. And most ISP's worth doing this to are pretty good at preventing it. Good enough to send hackers looking somewhere easier - like some 2nd or 3rd tier ecom site's customer database for instance.

You have all the access to your OWN packets you could possibly want or need which is what the poster who started this all really meant IMO - not sniffing OTHER people's packets, but the ones that were legitimately sent to you.

In any event, image recognition would be easier anyway, particularly since you can replace the images of the cards with something easy to recognize as someone else already pointed out.

And a second system is hardly necessary. Virtual PC software is readily available (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx).

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
the current version of the beta does not save observed hands to the local drive and doesn't give the play by play in the chat box - so, yes it appears to be true.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, the CURRENT version of the BETA does not but who's to say the final realease won't? Maybe the programmers released the BETA before they coded in the HH lines. Maybe they left out the HH download capability in the BETA in case there was some bug that f'ed up your hard drive. Has anyone seen a final release of any software that was unchanged from the BETA? Doubtful. So Chicken Little, the sky may not be falling after all - but only time will tell.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is their response to an email I sent them regarding the beta:

"Dear Player,

With reference to your mail please be informed that a observer player cannot save hand histories unless and until you take a seat at a table.

Such a feature will not be available in future."

[AlphaWice]

This is rediculous. PT software, and mining, in the hands of good players, confer a rediculous advantage.

For example, in a $600 NL I was playing, a very good player that I will not name, called my CR all in with a QJ high board, on the turn, with 55, because of my VPIP and PFR statistics.

I think its unfair that, essentially, anyone that wants to play high stakes and not get crushed needs to set up 2 computers, screen scraping software, PT datamining, etc. - its just stupid. I say ban it all.

[ddubois]

I anticipate trying some other sites.

I am datamining with Partybeta and have been for the last couple of weeks. I had to reconfigure pokertracker a little to make it work, but nothing special.
Did they release a more recent update of the beta that prevents this or do you all just have bad information???

[Wynton]

[ QUOTE ]
I am datamining with Partybeta and have been for the last couple of weeks. I had to reconfigure pokertracker a little to make it work, but nothing special.
Did they release a more recent update of the beta that prevents this or do you all just have bad information???

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you datamining observed hands or merely using PT to record your own play at tables? PT will continue to work to record your own play, but reportedly does not permit tracking observed hands at the beta.

[PokerAce]

[ QUOTE ]
I am datamining with Partybeta and have been for the last couple of weeks. I had to reconfigure pokertracker a little to make it work, but nothing special.
Did they release a more recent update of the beta that prevents this or do you all just have bad information???

[/ QUOTE ]

You are using the older beta.

[jba]

Wynton,

I think there are two versions of the beta floating around. I downloaded on the first couple of days, and I'm definitely getting the play-by-play in the chat window and hhf files.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am datamining with Partybeta and have been for the last couple of weeks. I had to reconfigure pokertracker a little to make it work, but nothing special.
Did they release a more recent update of the beta that prevents this or do you all just have bad information???

[/ QUOTE ]

You are using the older beta.

[/ QUOTE ]

That explains it. I hope I can keep using it.... forever.
I'll trade the crashes every 4 hours for the ability to datamine (and resize tables).

[imported_leader]

[ QUOTE ]
"Dear Player,

With reference to your mail please be informed that a observer player cannot save hand histories unless and until you take a seat at a table.

Such a feature will not be available in future."

[/ QUOTE ]

How does this company stay in business? Morons!

[OrianasDaad]

[ QUOTE ]
This is rediculous. PT software, and mining, in the hands of good players, confer a rediculous advantage.

[/ QUOTE ]
Good players confer unto themselves a large portion of the advantage. PT doesn't make good players better, it makes them more efficient.

In a B&M, it's easy to focus on one table. PT and PAHud help internet players get the same loose/tight-passive/aggressive reads that they would get without it at one table. It facilitates multi-table play.

[ QUOTE ]
For example, in a $600 NL I was playing, a very good player that I will not name, called my CR all in with a QJ high board, on the turn, with 55, because of my VPIP and PFR statistics.

[/ QUOTE ]
In a post I did earlier in the year (software forum), it was seen that the vast majority who responded to the poll used primarily VPIP, PFR, and AGG and not much else. I don't use much more than that myself on a regular basis. I do spend an hour or two each day studying the play of a regular opponent. A read like this doesn't come from VPIP and PFR, either, but you already knew that.

It might help if you didn't call all-in raises with unimproved JT overcards either.

[ QUOTE ]
I think its unfair that, essentially, anyone that wants to play high stakes and not get crushed needs to set up 2 computers, screen scraping software, PT datamining, etc. - its just stupid. I say ban it all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Or learn how to use the tools that are availible.
Or learn to play a poker variant that isn't supported by PT.
Or play at a site that isn't supported by PT.
Or play in a B&M casino.
Or play according to your opponent, and not dogmatically.

That's all I got. Another 20 minutes down the drain. Posting is generally -EV, I'm coming to consider. Oh, VTW, who cares what Party does? As long as it doesn't go back to e-mailed hand histories, I'm OK with it.

[OrianasDaad]

[ QUOTE ]
How does this company stay in business? Morons!

[/ QUOTE ]

Seriously? PokerRoom doesn't save observed hand histories either, and they are doing pretty well.

[jba]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How does this company stay in business? Morons!

[/ QUOTE ]

Seriously? PokerRoom doesn't save observed hand histories either, and they are doing pretty well.

[/ QUOTE ]

- you didn't get it. try parsing the quoted email one more time

- pokerroom isn't "doing pretty well" compared to party and it isn't close

- you can get pokerroom hand histories without even observing

[Sniper]

I may be wrong, but I think he was referencing their use of the English language /images/graemlins/wink.gif