[WinHoldemSupport]

spike,

excellent post.

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He asserts that since other people are colluding, then it becomes an intrinisic part of the online poker experience and such should not be considered cheating.


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attaching a label to this activity is an emotive necessity and very understandable (but its just childish emotion). all we are trying to do is to get people to wake up and smell the bandwidth (regardless of how they feel about the subject). classic holdem is not safe in an internet environment.

you can either whine about collusion or you can do something about it:

1) learn how to collude yourself to fight fire with fire. (or if you are turned off by this thought then)
2) fix the current flaw by changing the game so that collusion is no longer an issue.

some players will want neither because they truely enjoy whining or because they feel that they simply would not be interested in holdem if it changed too much (also understandable).

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May I ask WinHoldEmSupport's views on players intentionally timing out or disconnecting in order to take advantage of all-in protection?


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playing online is risky. the quality of your internet connection is an integral part of your ability to fulfill your mechanical obligations during a hand of online holdem.

we do not think people should be rewarded for disconnecting, on the other hand we do not think they should suffer if their connection drops just as they draw the dead nuts on the river.

a dropped connection is kind of like a form of 'online death', and a timeout allin is kind of like a default will and testament. the problem is that the allin shields the player from the mechanical requirement of calling.

and this is where an intentional piece of AI could come in very handy. we of course sell programmable pokerbots so we understand formula programming techniques.

why can't the opc's allow end-users to set their own 'drop-connect-playing-formula' that the server will execute for them if they disconnect.

it would be kind of like an emergency proxy, if you disconnect then your formula set plays for you in the exact same way a winholdem formula set plays for you. your formula set becomes your disconnect will and testament. and as such, in a limit game you would NOT have the allin option, your formula set would provide the answers to just 2 questions - should i call? should i rais? (this is exactly what winholdem does btw). if you were in a no limit game then there would be a third question that would need to be answered - should i allin? and this allin genuinly means allin (bet all my chips), not "get-me-out-of-the-game-because-im-a-chicken-ass-whiny-loser-but-even-so-let-me-have-a-chance-to-win-with-a-timeout-allin"

so to sum up:
stop whining about collusion and do something about it; don't just complain.

ask the opc's to ditch the timeout-allin and move to a full formula based AI scripting facility similar to winholdem.

winholdem support.