I don't understand why people are so stubborn against the HUDs usage but I am pretty convinced that those who ''hate'' so much those programs first and foremost they don't understand the difference between live/online poker.
I do actually understand, why some people think, third party software should not be allowed during play. It does after all put those people, who are not using it, at a disadvantage, however small or big it is. Lets be honest here. If we did not think, the HUD gave us an advantage, we would not bother turning it on.
Even if third party software is free, as some HUDs are, its still a hassle to install them and learn to use them, which probably does not sit to well with people, who just want to play a bit of poker and have some fun. HUDs typically also dont work on mobile phones.
However with all that being said my main point here was, that the changes on PartyPoker is really not about HUDs. I have to admire the marketing people at PartyPoker. They are doing a great job of convincing a lot of people, that they were losing in poker because of those evil bots and HUDs
So now, that Party has cracked down on both, poker is going to be fun again, and more importantly they are going to win! Well that is not exactly, how its going to work. If you play to many
hands, limp into pots, donk lead the flop and call down multible bets with any pair or even A high, then you are still going to lose, because these are not good strategies.
And if anything there are going to be more bots on PartyPoker in the future, than there were in the past, because now they can hide behind the anonymity, that PartyPoker is creating for them. If you look at 2+2, there are threads about people reporting suspected bot accounts to PartyPoker more than 6 month before, the site publicly took action, and getting no response.
These bots were discovered, only because players had collected large samples of hand histories, that showed certain patterns. Now players are going to be denied hand histories, and therefore they can no longer act as independant third party inspectors to secure the integrety of the games.
And to answer OPs question: No playing without a HUD does not make you a better player. It makes you a worse player. This is because a HUD is only part of, what is called a tracker. A tracker collect all your hand histories, and this in turn allow you to work on your game away from the table and become a better player.
You can share hand histories in a forum like this for instance and get response from other players. Or you can import them in a program like PokerSnowie and get PokerSnowies opinion about, where you made some possible mistakes.
But hey thats not fun. We should all just sit down and splash some chips around, until our deposit has been eaten up by rake, and we make a new one. Or at least this is, what the management at PartyPoker wants us to do, and why I say, that the site is now only going to be for gamblers.
