It seems to me that Cardschat split down the middle on the issue about that topic. Just like probably whole worldwide community lately.
I'm obviously with those part, who says "it's a big mistake" and "an illegitimate takeoff of our rights and security".
I just can't understand your euphoria about that! I think most (if not all) of you, who applauds for that change just don't see the whole picture...
Yes, when PartyPoker disabled downloadable hand histories, they are automatically disturbed legal hand database and tracker software, like PT4, HM2, Hand2Note etc. But it doesn't mean there will be no individuals anymore who will play with HUD.
There are enough illegal 3rd party software with HUD, that is not allowed to use by any of poker rooms, but some are still will be used by cheaters. But unlike with legal HUDs (which only collecting information from hand histories), such software also gives much more information, that gives really an edge even to a bad play, such as in-built EV calcs and based on calculations advice what line more profitable to take. Such things are never been used by legal software for ethical reasons, this is why basically it still legal on the most poker rooms.
Those black HUDs don't need any hand history and they use either screen-scrappers (a special software that logging action directly from the screen) or black data-mining databases (which been collected by bots-observers by black market merchants in order to sell it to the cheaters, who use such "black HUDs"). And the whole time such cheaters mostly been exposed by the players, who analyze their hands and found out suspicious luck of some players, who just always play right. So they send hands as evidence to poker room support for the further investigations and the cheaters get banned.
Also don't be naive, thinking that bots will be eliminated, when PartyPoker disable downloadable hand histories. In fact, there will be even more of them, as the players can't report any suspicious activity anymore, as the players had taken away the only evidence they had - hand histories. Just imagine for a minute, you were such kind of cheater, who use bots? Wouldn't you love this update and migrate all of your bots to play at PartyPoker instantly?
I remind you once again, that PartyPoker in their own blog reported that, for April 2019, “
39 account closures in the month, 38.5% (15) were directly attributed to reports submitted by PartyPoker players.”
I hope you understand, that numbers won't change that fast in this or in the following months. Which means, as players can't help anymore, there is a big lack of security in PartyPoker from now on!
While you may not use a hand history database, the players that do use them are helping to protect every poker player. When a player detects suspicious play or patterns of potential cheating via the analytics in their PokerTracker or Holdem Manager hand history database, they are often detecting cheating rings, chip dumpers, and bots that have cheated 1000’s of players prior to being discovered.
Also, in addition, I want to say, that using HUD is way much overrated. If you are a bad player and download a HUD, you won't automatically become better. If not believing me, you might try a trial version for one month of every legal HUD like PT4 or HM2 or Hand2Note. You will quickly realize, that it helps just a little faster to figure if someone loose or tight for any more additional information, that you may rely on, you actually need thousands of hands, which is very hard to get or almost impossible at MTTs for example.
Also, if you don't know how to read HUD proper it can be very misleading. In fact, many people even start playing worse with HUD, as they too much rely on it. I use HUD myself already some years, but it's just a slightly help for me to figure out a little faster who is a fish and who is a reg, who is tight and who is loose-goose. Ah yeah and it helps to calculate how many big blinds which stack consist too. That's basically the biggest use of my HUD.
But believe me, all these things regulars can do also without HUD, it just takes 10-20 minutes longer to figure. Or a few seconds to convert chips to blinds. And it might be harder to play many tables like 12 at once, as you need more to concentrate on the action. But it's not really kind of problem.
But in the end, with HUD or without, bad players keep loosing and good players keep winning. It's really a made-up story for recreational players to attract them to play on PartyPoker, that if you take away HUD from sharks, they will automatically lose the most of their edge and fish start winning more. That's just ridiculous really. And adult people shouldn't believe fairy tales so easily.
It will be more like, good players migrate to play somewhere else and being replaced by cheaters and bots, who love to be well masked. But in the end, bad players will lose money to them as well. So it's not a good deal for recreational players actually.
At the same time, PartyPoker will be losing a huge amount of their earnings, that regulars been grinding for them daily. They will feel it very soon and it will hurt.
I can't believe they ever attract so much recreationals, who could cover that.
Also, on my own example and I think it's the same with all regulars, who take their game seriously, the prohibition of HUD is not such a big deal, as the fact, that we can't tag, download, copy & past our hands, that we played, in order to analyze them and learn something from it. I'm absolutely sure, that it's essential for any solid player, who want to develop his skills and improve his game or just having the ability to ask poker buddy/ community for a hint how to play on that or another spot. This is the main reason, why I don't want to play on PartyPoker for
real money anymore. And I think most of the regs leave this room, just because of that, not because of HUD.
And at the end of this post, I also want to remind you of the story of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. One of the biggest cheating scandals in online poker history involved
poker site “insiders” cheating their own players. These cheating scandals were only detected because players had the ability to analyze hand histories and then reported their findings publicly.
Well, I don't want to blame PartyPoker for anything yet, as I never heard they been involved in such scandals yet, but you never know. From now on, they can do what they want and guess what? You have no evidence anymore! The hand histories are gone.
Tell me, if you really still happy about that updates after reading my post or there are doubts? If you doubt now, then this post wasn't a waste of my time. Thanks for reading. And sorry that it was a bit long, but I had a lot to say.
p.s. I loved PartyPoker before too, but this update is just a kick in the nuts. And in my opinion it doesn't favor any player, it just taking the rights from the players and letting PartyPoker or Cheaters do what they want without being on risk to be exposed.
p.p.s. I strongly believe we shouldn't appreciate this and better tell them they are wrong.
Because if other poker rooms start to do the same thing, we're in trouble. Then, as a solid player, you really can forget about online poker and moving to casino playing live. Because it's not safe to play online anymore.