My lone post about PE/Party/whiners/business logic

[smb394]

Ok, let me clarify my viewpoint here. I think that PE adding a value-added service beyond merely doing the datamining is clearly wrong.

I believe that collecting hand histories or more specifically crunched data from others, whether paid or unpaid, is wrong.

I do believe that datamining hands you are not involved in is wrong, but not as bad.

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, let me clarify my viewpoint here. I think that PE adding a value-added service beyond merely doing the datamining is clearly wrong.

I believe that collecting hand histories or more specifically crunched data from others, whether paid or unpaid, is wrong.

I do believe that datamining hands you are not involved in is wrong, but not as bad.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can certainly respect that. "Wrong" is subjective though. I think the party skins made a poor business decision making hands available to someone not playing in the hand and the compounded it with poorly written T&C. I don't think it's wrong for people to use the hand histories in whatever fashion they want though. Party has made no constraints on their usage, so any sense of "wrong" is entirely subjective.

I personally think is "wrong" for people to call for the banning of the datamining software. As long as Party supplies the data, it's foolish to then try to choose somewhat arbitrary constraints on what you can do with the data.

Address the problem at the source. Demand Party prevent access to the data. No data, no mining. I could live with that. Once the data is released, you simply can't prevent mining. There are too many ways technological to circumvent any watchdogging.

[smb394]

Yes, "wrong" might be an improper choice of wording.

I agree with what you have to say though, that the ultimate responsibility lies with Party in this case. Their ambiguity is amazing, in that they almost expect users to police themselves.

What is your position on running PT/PV while you are playing the actual hands?

[MicroBob]

I'm going to chime in here since I've been kind of quiet about it. Seems as good a place as any.

Reason I have been quiet:
I don't care.
I don't use pokeredge (or similar) and am really uninterested in whether they decide to ban it or whether they let everyone at my tables use it for free.

I feel I get enough of an advantage via PT and GT+.
If they decide that the heads-up display is too much then I won't use that. I've been experimenting with NOT using GT+ a bit already anyway just because I want to focus LESS on my players numbers sometimes.

If they were decide to ban pokertracker usage on their site then I would have to decide whether to continue playing there with it to get away with it, to continue playing there without it, or to play somewhere else (either with it or without it).
Again - regardless of whether they do any of this I am fine and will adjust.
I like pokertracker and it's been great for my game.
If they decide they don't want me using it anymore than no biggie.


I truly have very little interest in this drama.
I do think that their initial vagueness about which program is okay and which one isn't was rather unfair...although predictable considering it's party.
But if they tell me not to use one thing or another then I'm fine with it. Opponents who are VP-60 will still be beatable regardless of whether I have that little number at my table specifically telling me that they are VP-60.

[The13atman]

I agree with MicroBob 100%.

[TomBrooks]

Crush the Oppressive Overlords!

[MisterKing]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ok, let me clarify my viewpoint here. I think that PE adding a value-added service beyond merely doing the datamining is clearly wrong.

I believe that collecting hand histories or more specifically crunched data from others, whether paid or unpaid, is wrong.

I do believe that datamining hands you are not involved in is wrong, but not as bad.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can certainly respect that. "Wrong" is subjective though. I think the party skins made a poor business decision making hands available to someone not playing in the hand and the compounded it with poorly written T&C. I don't think it's wrong for people to use the hand histories in whatever fashion they want though. Party has made no constraints on their usage, so any sense of "wrong" is entirely subjective.

I personally think is "wrong" for people to call for the banning of the datamining software. As long as Party supplies the data, it's foolish to then try to choose somewhat arbitrary constraints on what you can do with the data.

Address the problem at the source. Demand Party prevent access to the data. No data, no mining. I could live with that. Once the data is released, you simply can't prevent mining. There are too many ways technological to circumvent any watchdogging.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, if Party switched off observed HH's, this would be a different situation. Unfortunately, I think we would STILL have some kind of PE type tool out there. It would work like this: a P2P suite for players who share HH's with their own cards redacted. PrimatePoker was running something very remotely akin to this (the H-cubed... aka Hand History Harvester - though it did not have a P2P element as far as I know) before observed HH's were switched on a few months ago.

The problem lies in the fact that the poker is digital, the HH's (whether observed or for hands a player has actually been in) are digital, and information naturally wants to be free. On the Internet, digital information WILL become free if there is an demand for it, and in the world of online poker for money, there IS a demand for it.

It would be much harder and more inefficient to data-mine and data-share if observed HH's are turned off, but that wouldn't stop the process. I personally think serious players need some kind of powerful table selection tool, and Party's decision is on whether they provide it or allow third parties to do so. Dissalowing third party support of PE-type tools creates a black market, which in many senses is much, much more unfair than the previous (current?) situation in which anyone can run a PE-type device if they want to without breaking the rules.

I do respect MicroBob's position, and think many players (most?) feel the same way. I, on the other hand, feel that open information is the only way to make online poker fair. Once you start setting arbitrary rules, the rules only become as good as the enforcement, and unfortunately enforcement cannot possibly be good enough on a site with 70K+ players at once. I follow the rules (or at least always try to), and KNOW that if PE-type devices were outlawed, some others would find a work-around to circumvent the ban. That would suck... not a huge deal, but it would create a small $$ incentive for rule-breaking, and I wouldn't be happy about that as a non rule-breaker.

[mmbt0ne]

All Party et al have to do to quash this whole debate is stop writing hhf files to the harddrive.

Look at that, I just solved all the problems!

If you need more information Diksh[/b]it, all I ask for is 100,000 shares of your stock, allowable to be cashed out immediately, or at any time I desire.

[robinsons]

The problem with stopping allowing you to harvest observed hands is that it could actually benefit programs like PE, which from what I've read (I've never used it) actually uploads your own HH's after you're done with them, effectively removing the need for them to do much of the data gathering on their own once they have enough players using it.
If you couldn't datamine yourself and wanted to have large quantities of data available on players (or at least data collected over a large number of hands) then methods such as this where you subscribe (either free or not) to a service where your own hands get shared with other users in return for their hands is the only option left.
So stopping saving observed hands could actually hurt people who datamine themselves, forcing them to pay for a service such as PE.

[Folding Pete]

[ QUOTE ]
I feel I get enough of an advantage via PT and GT+.

[/ QUOTE ]

You should really try out PA HUD a lot quicker and stats come up immediately ,you don't have to select table. I use PA HUD (Party and skins) and GT+ (everything else) at the same time a big time and resource saver than just GT+ on its own.