A week or two ago I watched a stream of a guy playing Hanabi with some of the people who watch his stream. Hanabi is a hidden information game so playing it on stream has some potential cheating concerns. They solved the problem by having the people playing the game just stop watching/listening to the stream. In a cooperative game you're playing just for fun with people you have some reason to trust that seems like a fine solution. But it got me thinking about how one would go about streaming something like poker, where if one of the opponents was able to watch your stream they'd have a ludicrous advantage over you. Would you go to a long 'tape delay' where you wouldn't stream a hand until it was over? Find some way to blank out your hand? Both of those options feel like they're going to hurt the quality of your stream. People seem to like watching streams that are exciting or where they can have a reasonable amount of interaction and poker without a hand cam has proven to be pretty unexciting and throwing a long delay on it would remove any pretense of interaction.
So when I saw a stream yesterday with a poker tournament I was intrigued. The streamer went the 'blank your hand' route which made watching what he was doing less interesting for me. But he added in the interaction element by playing against people in the stream. They had $150 in prizes and no entry fee to sign up, so people were just around to hang out, play some free poker, and maybe win a non-insignificant amount of money. It turns out the streamer runs cash tournaments for a game called Puzzle Fighter II with some regularity and I'd actually tuned in to watch one of those many months ago. He generates the money for the prizes in these things from viewer donations. This seems like a really cool idea for how to make use of donations to ramp up viewer interaction.
At any rate, I watched the end of the poker tournament and wasn't terribly impressed by the level of play. People going excessively all in with 4th pair, or a small flush, that sort of thing. After the first tournament ended they ran a second one for fun, but then the streamer decided to throw in an extra $20 to the winner if they got at least 9 people. Then after that one wound down he decided to run it back again.
I wouldn't really say I play poker, but I read a fair bit about it. I've just been finishing reading a pair of books on tournament poker and I decided I'd take a break from playing WoW to give this free poker thing a shot. I ended up winning the 12 person tournament for a cool $20 profit. Woo! Now if that's just a factor of getting lucky or maybe knowing a little bit about what to do I can't really say, but it was fun.
As far as streaming goes I like the idea of running games with your viewers, and I like the idea of giving out prizes without there being an entry fee, and I like the idea of using donations to make that happen. But I don't think I like the idea in general of streaming poker. At least, I don't know that streaming hands with a hand cam turned off is interesting enough? Maybe I'm wrong...
Showing posts with label poker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poker. Show all posts
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Holdem Manager
I have a bit of an issue with the pursuit of perfection. If I'm going to do something I want to do it right! Unfortunately this often means that when I don't really know how to do it right I end up spending a lot of time thinking about doing things without actually doing them. Trying to get over that need is one of the reasons I started blogging (initially I wouldn't edit any posts at all because otherwise nothing would ever get posted) and it didn't kill me so I guess it's worked out a little bit at least? At any rate, trying to find the optimal option from a big list of confusing options tends to result in analysis paralysis for me, and nothing actually gets done.
That's where I am when it comes to giving poker a spin. There's a lot of different sites to play on, each with a huge variety of sign up bonuses. There's quite a few different stat tracking pieces of software. There has to be an optimal pair of site plus software that would be right for me. But how to find that out? Normally I'd turn to the internet and do some research but the internet is a little flawed here because most of the people posting about poker sites or software are getting paid to do so. Online poker has this whole crazy system of affiliates set up where the person who gets you to sign up for something gets a cut of what the something eventually makes off of you. And then those affiliates share some of that cut back with you. So the people who would normally be the ones talking about what is a reasonable thing to do end up being the people who make money if you listen to them. BLEH!
Earlier this week I decided to just say screw it. There may be an optimal solution but I'm not going to find it by reading books or the internet. So I picked a piece of software pretty much at random, installed the free trial, and went to play super low stakes to try it out. It didn't have a very good tutorial or anything, and it didn't seem to be working at all. It thought I was some other guy and couldn't detect a Ziggyny playing at all! Eventually I figured out that it gets the data it needs by reading log files and PokerStars defaults to not saving the log files. Turn that on and suddenly things started happening.
One of the many, many, many screens that HoldEm Manager has for stats. Of course this chart suffers from an incredibly small sample size. This was me just screwing around for a couple hours to get some sort of data and see what the software would do. I was even positive for a brief period of time! Woo?
More interesting was the stuff it was showing at the table itself. There was a screen with probably 30 numbers for each player, and I really need to figure out what those represent. But it also gave each person a little picture showing what the software thought of the way they were playing, and it would jot down notes about odd things they did. A fish, or a whale, or a mouse. It gave me a picture of a die.
The software also gives me a list of every hand I played, and shows the actions and results. It has an option where you can tag hands to look at later, which is nice.
I did have some issues with the software putting it's stuff over top of my cards. From one seat at the table I couldn't see my whole hand, which is a bit of a problem! I think I found a way to force PokerStars to always give me a specific seat when I sit down, which should help fix that problem. I know of at least one seat where I can see my hand properly!
Is this the software for me? Would PokerTracker or something else be better? Maybe! But I don't care! I have a starting point now, and the way to go from here is to learn how to use the one I randomly picked. Just having a path to walk along is the key, I think, and now I have one. Woo!
That's where I am when it comes to giving poker a spin. There's a lot of different sites to play on, each with a huge variety of sign up bonuses. There's quite a few different stat tracking pieces of software. There has to be an optimal pair of site plus software that would be right for me. But how to find that out? Normally I'd turn to the internet and do some research but the internet is a little flawed here because most of the people posting about poker sites or software are getting paid to do so. Online poker has this whole crazy system of affiliates set up where the person who gets you to sign up for something gets a cut of what the something eventually makes off of you. And then those affiliates share some of that cut back with you. So the people who would normally be the ones talking about what is a reasonable thing to do end up being the people who make money if you listen to them. BLEH!
Earlier this week I decided to just say screw it. There may be an optimal solution but I'm not going to find it by reading books or the internet. So I picked a piece of software pretty much at random, installed the free trial, and went to play super low stakes to try it out. It didn't have a very good tutorial or anything, and it didn't seem to be working at all. It thought I was some other guy and couldn't detect a Ziggyny playing at all! Eventually I figured out that it gets the data it needs by reading log files and PokerStars defaults to not saving the log files. Turn that on and suddenly things started happening.
More interesting was the stuff it was showing at the table itself. There was a screen with probably 30 numbers for each player, and I really need to figure out what those represent. But it also gave each person a little picture showing what the software thought of the way they were playing, and it would jot down notes about odd things they did. A fish, or a whale, or a mouse. It gave me a picture of a die.
The software also gives me a list of every hand I played, and shows the actions and results. It has an option where you can tag hands to look at later, which is nice.
I did have some issues with the software putting it's stuff over top of my cards. From one seat at the table I couldn't see my whole hand, which is a bit of a problem! I think I found a way to force PokerStars to always give me a specific seat when I sit down, which should help fix that problem. I know of at least one seat where I can see my hand properly!
Is this the software for me? Would PokerTracker or something else be better? Maybe! But I don't care! I have a starting point now, and the way to go from here is to learn how to use the one I randomly picked. Just having a path to walk along is the key, I think, and now I have one. Woo!
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Double Shootout?
On Sunday I was screwing around on PokerStars trying super cheap things out. (I apparently had ~$60 on my account, probably from when I tried to get a free backgammon set by playing on an affiliated backgammon site?) I was playing 2 tables of 1cent/2cent Omaha to get a feel for what sorts of hands were winning pots. It kept spamming me with messages saying tournaments were starting up so I went to check those out. There was one starting up with a whole bunch of stuff I don't understand in the title but that only cost 33 cents to join. The smart thing to do would have been to do a search for some of the weird terms, but the tournament was about to start and I had to act in an Omaha game so I impulsively joined.
I promptly got confused and made questionable plays in the Omaha games. On the plus side each mistake cost me 4 cents, so it's not like anything actually bad happened. And as long as I take a lesson away it's all good, right? The big one here is that mixing games when I don't really know what's going on is a bad idea. It may well always be a bad idea, I donno. Also, find out what I'm signing up for!
I lost that event, which turned out to be a satellite for another tournament later that day. An $11 tournament which had a ton of different types of satellites going on. I looked into what the most common one was and it turned out to be something they call a double shootout tournament. The basic idea was 36 people pay $1.02 and get split into 6 tables of 6 people. These ones were hyper turbo speed, which meant the blinds started high and got bigger really fast. They didn't reseat people when tables got low, though. Instead each 6 person table played until only one person was standing. Then those 6 winners started over from the start against each other. Top 3 won entry to the $11 tournament, 4th place got $3, everyone else got nothing at all.
Sounded interesting, so I played a few. When blinds and antes cost you 60% of your starting stack in one orbit around the table you have to make a move early. At least it seemed like everyone thought so, with people going all in right away. But even doubling up early didn't seem to be good enough. Now when your only options were all-in or fold. I played around a bit, and started trying raising the minimum to steal blinds instead of just going all-in. And other than the first couple hands of each tournament it seemed to work reasonably well.
Even then, winning the table isn't enough. I then need to finish top 3. With no difference between 1st and 3rd the strategy for the second table seemed to be different. It still opened the same way, with a couple people going all-in with whatever they had. But after that people were a lot more timid. But the hyper-turbo speed was still in play, so winning the blinds was really important. Min-raising to try to steal the blinds worked here too, and better than on the opening table.
I played around 20 of these and ended up winning 3 of them. It turned out after winning the $11 entry you could just go unregister from that tournament and get credited $11 in 'tournament cash' to your account. And then play more satellites to win the entry right back.
So I was up a bit, and learned a little about some of the tournament formats, and had some fun. I feel like I don't have a terribly good handle on how to properly play a double shootout, but I feel like a lot of the other people playing them had no handle at all. Given how fast these things were spawning I think someone who knew what they were doing would probably be making a lot of tournament cash playing them over and over. Tournament cash can only be used to enter tournaments so I'm not sure if that's even a good thing? I guess it wouldn't be that hard to spend it on something that pays actual cash. You'd need to be good at both this weird format and a more standard format, though.
I looked again on Monday but didn't see any tournaments of this type. Maybe it's an extra Sunday thing? Maybe I'll think to look this weekend!
I promptly got confused and made questionable plays in the Omaha games. On the plus side each mistake cost me 4 cents, so it's not like anything actually bad happened. And as long as I take a lesson away it's all good, right? The big one here is that mixing games when I don't really know what's going on is a bad idea. It may well always be a bad idea, I donno. Also, find out what I'm signing up for!
I lost that event, which turned out to be a satellite for another tournament later that day. An $11 tournament which had a ton of different types of satellites going on. I looked into what the most common one was and it turned out to be something they call a double shootout tournament. The basic idea was 36 people pay $1.02 and get split into 6 tables of 6 people. These ones were hyper turbo speed, which meant the blinds started high and got bigger really fast. They didn't reseat people when tables got low, though. Instead each 6 person table played until only one person was standing. Then those 6 winners started over from the start against each other. Top 3 won entry to the $11 tournament, 4th place got $3, everyone else got nothing at all.
Sounded interesting, so I played a few. When blinds and antes cost you 60% of your starting stack in one orbit around the table you have to make a move early. At least it seemed like everyone thought so, with people going all in right away. But even doubling up early didn't seem to be good enough. Now when your only options were all-in or fold. I played around a bit, and started trying raising the minimum to steal blinds instead of just going all-in. And other than the first couple hands of each tournament it seemed to work reasonably well.
Even then, winning the table isn't enough. I then need to finish top 3. With no difference between 1st and 3rd the strategy for the second table seemed to be different. It still opened the same way, with a couple people going all-in with whatever they had. But after that people were a lot more timid. But the hyper-turbo speed was still in play, so winning the blinds was really important. Min-raising to try to steal the blinds worked here too, and better than on the opening table.
I played around 20 of these and ended up winning 3 of them. It turned out after winning the $11 entry you could just go unregister from that tournament and get credited $11 in 'tournament cash' to your account. And then play more satellites to win the entry right back.
So I was up a bit, and learned a little about some of the tournament formats, and had some fun. I feel like I don't have a terribly good handle on how to properly play a double shootout, but I feel like a lot of the other people playing them had no handle at all. Given how fast these things were spawning I think someone who knew what they were doing would probably be making a lot of tournament cash playing them over and over. Tournament cash can only be used to enter tournaments so I'm not sure if that's even a good thing? I guess it wouldn't be that hard to spend it on something that pays actual cash. You'd need to be good at both this weird format and a more standard format, though.
I looked again on Monday but didn't see any tournaments of this type. Maybe it's an extra Sunday thing? Maybe I'll think to look this weekend!
Monday, May 27, 2013
Playing Poker?
If you go all the way back to my very first post on here more than 7 years ago one of the things I mention as a goal is to use the blog as a way to track stats on playing poker to see if it was feasible for me to do it to make money. But it pretty much never comes up after that. Why? What went wrong, and do those issues persist today?
Well, it isn't that I tried and failed. I didn't lose tons of money playing poker, or anything of the sort. Really, I didn't even try at all. Looking back, I think there were two primary reasons that kept that little experiment from even getting off the ground: World of Warcraft and bankroll concerns.
World of Warcraft was a big time sink for me back in 2006. I was probably logged in 16 hours a day, though not actually playing a good chunk of that time. I would be logged in while working on a second computer, but just to run an auction house mod or chat with Byung. Beyond that I was raiding 6 nights a week, and running dungeons with my roommates, and watching them raid, and PvPing. There was so much stuff to do, and I wanted to do it all. Part of me actually misses that now... But the idea that I would be able to work, and play World of Warcraft as much as I wanted, and learn to play poker at the same time? Not enough time in a day. Something had to give, and that something wasn't going to be WoW and it couldn't be work for the second reason.
That second reason is that, frankly, I was fairly poor. I had enough money to pay rent and eat. I had internet access. I could pay a WoW subscription. Don't get me wrong, I was happy. I had enough money to do what I wanted, assuming what I wanted was to barely pay my bills and play WoW. I still had ~$20k in student loan debt floating around that needed to be dealt with. I couldn't have just quit my job to try something else for a while as doing so would have meant I couldn't eat. And probably I would have just spent that time playing WoW anyway! But even if I'd wanted to play poker for reasonable stakes I couldn't have found the money to get started.
Do those two problems persist now? Not really. I'm not playing WoW or any similar game right now. I'm playing plenty of games, but they all need smaller chunks of time. Two hours for a Blood Bowl game, 45 minutes for a League of Legends game. I could sit down and play a ton of a Final Fantasy game, but even if I did that for two or three days straight it would end in short order. Time is really not a problem. Money isn't really, either. I have no debt right now, and I have enough money saved up to pay living expenses for a while.
It certainly feels like a fine time to do some more reading and research at the very least. Experiment a bit at super low levels and see what's going on. Because when it comes right down to it, I'd like to think I'm pretty good at games, and at working out the right play in a similar situation, and at spending a lot of time doing the same thing over and over. I don't think I have the sort of tilt issues that cause the big problems. Not to say I don't flip out sometimes, but that I think I know when it happens. I just want to run away when I get into that sort of state, and that's actually a fine thing to do. You can't lose money when you're huddled in a corner!
Well, it isn't that I tried and failed. I didn't lose tons of money playing poker, or anything of the sort. Really, I didn't even try at all. Looking back, I think there were two primary reasons that kept that little experiment from even getting off the ground: World of Warcraft and bankroll concerns.
World of Warcraft was a big time sink for me back in 2006. I was probably logged in 16 hours a day, though not actually playing a good chunk of that time. I would be logged in while working on a second computer, but just to run an auction house mod or chat with Byung. Beyond that I was raiding 6 nights a week, and running dungeons with my roommates, and watching them raid, and PvPing. There was so much stuff to do, and I wanted to do it all. Part of me actually misses that now... But the idea that I would be able to work, and play World of Warcraft as much as I wanted, and learn to play poker at the same time? Not enough time in a day. Something had to give, and that something wasn't going to be WoW and it couldn't be work for the second reason.
That second reason is that, frankly, I was fairly poor. I had enough money to pay rent and eat. I had internet access. I could pay a WoW subscription. Don't get me wrong, I was happy. I had enough money to do what I wanted, assuming what I wanted was to barely pay my bills and play WoW. I still had ~$20k in student loan debt floating around that needed to be dealt with. I couldn't have just quit my job to try something else for a while as doing so would have meant I couldn't eat. And probably I would have just spent that time playing WoW anyway! But even if I'd wanted to play poker for reasonable stakes I couldn't have found the money to get started.
Do those two problems persist now? Not really. I'm not playing WoW or any similar game right now. I'm playing plenty of games, but they all need smaller chunks of time. Two hours for a Blood Bowl game, 45 minutes for a League of Legends game. I could sit down and play a ton of a Final Fantasy game, but even if I did that for two or three days straight it would end in short order. Time is really not a problem. Money isn't really, either. I have no debt right now, and I have enough money saved up to pay living expenses for a while.
It certainly feels like a fine time to do some more reading and research at the very least. Experiment a bit at super low levels and see what's going on. Because when it comes right down to it, I'd like to think I'm pretty good at games, and at working out the right play in a similar situation, and at spending a lot of time doing the same thing over and over. I don't think I have the sort of tilt issues that cause the big problems. Not to say I don't flip out sometimes, but that I think I know when it happens. I just want to run away when I get into that sort of state, and that's actually a fine thing to do. You can't lose money when you're huddled in a corner!
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Revisiting Poker HUDs
Last year I posted about a new (to me) type of poker software, the 'HUD' or Heads Up Display. Were these things legit? Were they useful? My brother left a comment asking me to let him know if I found a free one so he could give it a try. Off and on since then I've tried to do more research and find a good free one for him and have come to the following conclusions...
In general these things are actually legit. Poker Stars has a list of 118 allowed pieces of software. But there are also lists of illegal ones as well, and apparently the Poker Stars client does some scans to check if you're running any of the bad ones. (Reminds me of Final Fantasy XI running scans for fishing bots!) The keys to being a banned program seem to be things that share private information (folded hands between players) or things that gather information from outside sources. It's fine if you've played thousands of hands against a given opponent and can glean stats from those games since that's something you could have done with your own brain. It's not fine to download a file containing information on everyone. That last part was one of the biggest things making this stuff seem sketchy to me so I'm happy to see at least one site has come out to say it's not kosher.
In general these things seem to be quite profitable. It sounds like they really help you play multiple tables at once without missing as much. There are some that monitor your historical play compared to your current play and guess when you're on tilt. Then the software locks you out from playing to give you a chance to cool down. This seems like it could save some people an awful lot of money if it actually works. There are scripts which show you your outs, or which give you quick bet options so you don't need to think or drag sliders or whatever to always raise the same amount every time. That'll presumably let you squeeze in more hands or remove bet sizing tells or both which has to help.
How about being free? Well, it turns out in an environment where people understand how to critically look at the value of certain actions that something that makes you money is worth spending money for. And the sort of people who will make good use of this sort of program is exactly that sort of person. So the companies making these things rightly understand they can charge a reasonable amount of money for them and get paid off. It reminds me of the trading bot situation on Magic Online many years ago. And just like back then, there are a few free solutions available, but it sounds like these tend to be poorly supported and are basically just things people who were screwing around put together. There's an entire forum on the two plus two boards dedicated to them. I'm sure there's bound to be some good stuff in there, but also likely lots of buggy junk too.
There's also a way to get the commercial stuff for 'free', in a sense. Poker sites are big into affiliate recruiting it would seem. This is similar to the way Riot gave me some free IP for recruiting Sceadeau to play League of Legends, or how Blizzard gave me a free month for convincing Robb to play World of Warcraft. A poker site will give the software developer a bunch of money for getting you to sign up and play a ton of poker. In return the software developer will give you their software for free. Everybody wins!
Well, in a sense. The poker site and the software developer certainly win. If you win remains to be seen. The thing is there are tons of different affiliates kicking around and it's entirely possible that you could sign up through someone else who will pay you enough cash to buy the software with some left over. There doesn't seem to be a single spot listing what all the different options are, so it's hard to tell. I guess it's the sort of thing you'd need to research if you were really into it.
In general these things are actually legit. Poker Stars has a list of 118 allowed pieces of software. But there are also lists of illegal ones as well, and apparently the Poker Stars client does some scans to check if you're running any of the bad ones. (Reminds me of Final Fantasy XI running scans for fishing bots!) The keys to being a banned program seem to be things that share private information (folded hands between players) or things that gather information from outside sources. It's fine if you've played thousands of hands against a given opponent and can glean stats from those games since that's something you could have done with your own brain. It's not fine to download a file containing information on everyone. That last part was one of the biggest things making this stuff seem sketchy to me so I'm happy to see at least one site has come out to say it's not kosher.
In general these things seem to be quite profitable. It sounds like they really help you play multiple tables at once without missing as much. There are some that monitor your historical play compared to your current play and guess when you're on tilt. Then the software locks you out from playing to give you a chance to cool down. This seems like it could save some people an awful lot of money if it actually works. There are scripts which show you your outs, or which give you quick bet options so you don't need to think or drag sliders or whatever to always raise the same amount every time. That'll presumably let you squeeze in more hands or remove bet sizing tells or both which has to help.
How about being free? Well, it turns out in an environment where people understand how to critically look at the value of certain actions that something that makes you money is worth spending money for. And the sort of people who will make good use of this sort of program is exactly that sort of person. So the companies making these things rightly understand they can charge a reasonable amount of money for them and get paid off. It reminds me of the trading bot situation on Magic Online many years ago. And just like back then, there are a few free solutions available, but it sounds like these tend to be poorly supported and are basically just things people who were screwing around put together. There's an entire forum on the two plus two boards dedicated to them. I'm sure there's bound to be some good stuff in there, but also likely lots of buggy junk too.
There's also a way to get the commercial stuff for 'free', in a sense. Poker sites are big into affiliate recruiting it would seem. This is similar to the way Riot gave me some free IP for recruiting Sceadeau to play League of Legends, or how Blizzard gave me a free month for convincing Robb to play World of Warcraft. A poker site will give the software developer a bunch of money for getting you to sign up and play a ton of poker. In return the software developer will give you their software for free. Everybody wins!
Well, in a sense. The poker site and the software developer certainly win. If you win remains to be seen. The thing is there are tons of different affiliates kicking around and it's entirely possible that you could sign up through someone else who will pay you enough cash to buy the software with some left over. There doesn't seem to be a single spot listing what all the different options are, so it's hard to tell. I guess it's the sort of thing you'd need to research if you were really into it.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Poker HUDs
Lately I've started reading on the bus to work again and my topic of choice has tended to be random poker books I downloaded a while ago onto my Kobo. One of them had a little Q&A section where one of the questions briefly mentioned something called a poker heads-up-display and asking if they were now mandatory for online poker. I'd never even heard of one (turns out they came into popularity long after my free-rolling days back in University) and figured it was worth checking out. The response to the question was pretty non-committal one way or the other. He said they can help and can be a great thing if used properly.
It turns out the basic idea behind a poker HUD is the HUD interfaces with a poker client to provide extra information on overlays. What kind of information? Well, it can display things like pot odds, or your chance of hitting a flush, or filling your straight. It also reads the log files saved on your computer to display mucked cards after a hand or to show statistics on your opponents from previous hands that session. It also seems there are sites selling databases of such hand histories so you can actually pull up stats for your opponents from every game they've ever played with anyone contributing to such a database. It can also generate personal stats in order to help find leaks in your game and whatnot.
Some of that stuff sounds useful and quite viable to have. Being able to work out your hourly rate just seems sensible. I'd have envisioned using an Excel spreadsheet (Excel being this carpenter's hammer) but I totally can see how a specialized program would be useful. And with so many people playing poker I understand how such a program should exist by now.
Some of that stuff seems questionable. Having the software list the outs you have to a straight feels like it's taking something away from the skill of poker. Maybe I'm just saying this because crunching numbers on the fly is something I'm pretty good at doing. (I find I'm beating people at Pergamon on Yucata because I'm just better than they are at figuring out the right spaces on which to bid.) That said, these are number you can work out on the fly if you wanted to and having them just appear on the client certainly makes playing at multiple tables easier.
Some of it seems over the line. The idea that you can see the mucked cards right after a hand or that you can look up thousands of hands worth of history on a new opponent just feels wrong. Seeing all mucked cards after a hand is a way to help catch cheaters so it makes sense in a way to have it as a general feature for poker clients. Getting a ton of history on an opponent feels like it's removing some of the skill of reading your opponent but I guess a guild of frequent players could share notes on a forum somewhere and this is along the same lines but potentially available to all?
I talked to Andrew a bit about this today and he didn't see a problem with any of it. His theory was that at top levels of play the opponents are going to be shifting their game enough that long-term averages wouldn't mean anything. You'd still have to figure out what your opponent was up to under the assumption he's good enough to be capable of anything. At low levels he thought it might inflate someone's idea of how good they were and cause them to end up playing against top opponents and losing. And if it actually does help a lot then getting used to using it would be a huge detriment in a live game. Having the odds available doesn't actually give anyone an advantage they couldn't have just by practicing anyway.
I donno. It still feels wrong to me on some level but it really seems like they've been declared legal by the poker sites and are here to stay. Has anyone made use of such a thing? Just how useful are they?
It turns out the basic idea behind a poker HUD is the HUD interfaces with a poker client to provide extra information on overlays. What kind of information? Well, it can display things like pot odds, or your chance of hitting a flush, or filling your straight. It also reads the log files saved on your computer to display mucked cards after a hand or to show statistics on your opponents from previous hands that session. It also seems there are sites selling databases of such hand histories so you can actually pull up stats for your opponents from every game they've ever played with anyone contributing to such a database. It can also generate personal stats in order to help find leaks in your game and whatnot.
Some of that stuff sounds useful and quite viable to have. Being able to work out your hourly rate just seems sensible. I'd have envisioned using an Excel spreadsheet (Excel being this carpenter's hammer) but I totally can see how a specialized program would be useful. And with so many people playing poker I understand how such a program should exist by now.
Some of that stuff seems questionable. Having the software list the outs you have to a straight feels like it's taking something away from the skill of poker. Maybe I'm just saying this because crunching numbers on the fly is something I'm pretty good at doing. (I find I'm beating people at Pergamon on Yucata because I'm just better than they are at figuring out the right spaces on which to bid.) That said, these are number you can work out on the fly if you wanted to and having them just appear on the client certainly makes playing at multiple tables easier.
Some of it seems over the line. The idea that you can see the mucked cards right after a hand or that you can look up thousands of hands worth of history on a new opponent just feels wrong. Seeing all mucked cards after a hand is a way to help catch cheaters so it makes sense in a way to have it as a general feature for poker clients. Getting a ton of history on an opponent feels like it's removing some of the skill of reading your opponent but I guess a guild of frequent players could share notes on a forum somewhere and this is along the same lines but potentially available to all?
I talked to Andrew a bit about this today and he didn't see a problem with any of it. His theory was that at top levels of play the opponents are going to be shifting their game enough that long-term averages wouldn't mean anything. You'd still have to figure out what your opponent was up to under the assumption he's good enough to be capable of anything. At low levels he thought it might inflate someone's idea of how good they were and cause them to end up playing against top opponents and losing. And if it actually does help a lot then getting used to using it would be a huge detriment in a live game. Having the odds available doesn't actually give anyone an advantage they couldn't have just by practicing anyway.
I donno. It still feels wrong to me on some level but it really seems like they've been declared legal by the poker sites and are here to stay. Has anyone made use of such a thing? Just how useful are they?
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