I was reading about Party’s latest software update and I saw that they have added two features that I think are questionable additions and one that is highly controversial but that, in the end, I agree with.
Rabbit Hunt and Show a Card are being called “fish” features by Bluff Europe and that’s who they mainly appeal to.
Basically, Rabbit Hunt allows you to see what the turn and river card would have been which means fish will hang on to the runner-runner hands once they see that they could have made the nuts if they didn’t fold. Show a Card is for taunting your opponent. You can flip up one of your cards and get inside their head if they are thinking about calling.
I’m not unfamiliar with either of these features. We discussed them at Party many times. The reason I call them questionable is that I think both end up slowing down the games which means less hands per hour per player. It could result in players playing longer because they enjoy the features but that’s not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that both features will slow down the game. So, I refer to both as questionable since there they could be profitable features or end up costing Party money. Only time will tell on that.
I like that Party is experimenting with entertainment features like this though. I’ve been saying for many years that your average recreational player wants to be entertained. These features mean next to nothing for your typical grinders but they’re fairly major developments for recreational players who play for fun.
The third feature is Anonymous Tables where players can play without using their main username. This prevents other players from gathering stats in software like PokerTracker.
This has been a fiercely debated issue in the online poker world for a long time. I think this came to the poker world’s attention when Lee Jones came out and put his support behind the idea. I support allowing players to change usernames or play anonymously. I know it pisses off the sharks but this is one of the fundamental dilemmas facing online poker.
As a poker room manager you try to keep online poker as true to live poker as much as possible. Sometimes you can’t. But you try.
This is why buying hand histories and mining hand histories has been shut down by most poker sites. A player shouldn’t be able to gain an unfair advantage by buying hand histories or sitting there mining hand histories when your opponent can’t easily get the same information about your game.
But if we really want to keep the game true to the offline version we have to admit that there is no HUD (heads up display) in offline poker. There is no crunching of thousands of hands against various mathematical rules to rank players or predict how likely they are to fold to a bluff. Realistically, in an online game you should be able to store that information in your head if we are trying to keep things equal with the offline poker world.
In the offline world you might remember a few key hands and base your opinion of an opponent off of that limited data set. In the online world you can have a stats program compute the result of every single hand you’ve every played against an opponent. That’s not the way the human mind normally works though. So, many of these programs that store thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of hands seem like an unfair advantage.
One of the arguments for allowing players to collect stats is if all players were given the same software advantage then all things are equal. If you and I both have the same software and can both analyze each other’s tendencies then it’s a fair matchup. But that requires that both parties purchase the same third party tool(s). You can’t make someone go out and buy PokerTracker just to get a fair game.
Another argument is that players play so many tables online at one time that they need these tools. Well . . . quit playing so many damn tables! 🙂 I know that sounds silly coming from a (former) poker room manager but the reality is that just because you decide to play 20 tables at a time doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be given software tools to make up for the fact that you can’t pay attention to 20 different tables and remember the tendencies of your opponents.
I mean, that would be like saying, “Sure, I’m going to sit down here and play poker but I’m also going to be watching the football game and might even take a few phone calls so can you please flip up one of your cards if I decide to get involved in a hand?” Okay, maybe not that drastic but the point is that you choose to distract yourself over many tables. That doesn’t necessarily mean you should get help.
Again, that sounds funny for someone from inside the industry to say because the poker rooms make more money off multi-tablers but if you’re 20 tabling, you’re probably a winning player. That means you’re tearing through the food chain faster by multi-tabling. It would probably be healthier for the system if the sharks weren’t given tools to help them beat the fish even faster. It’s in everyone’s interest to keep the ecosystem as healthy as possible rather than giving the sharks tools to gobble up the fish as quickly as possible.
So, kudos to Party for having the guts to finally launch something that I hope becomes an industry norm.
The rabbit hunting idea is amazing. I hope pokerstars implements something like this soon.
@Mosche: I think the delay is because players rabbit hunting will take longer to act. Thinking about what they should have done. Maybe getting frustrated that they would have won. Whatever. The actual implementation may not be all that slow but the way the players react to it is what I was talking about.
@bil
please check when you have time how the rabbit hunt was implemented – i believe you might come to a conclusion that even the 5% reduction is way above what is actually been done here – less than 1% slow down was the target, and that is what i believe was achieved with the way it was implemented – minute change to game speed at most.
i am aware live games comparison have nothing to do with online, and made no attempt to compare the two.
A lot of good comments and I think it shows that people have been thinking about some of these things for awhile now.
On rabbit hunting . . . I think it would be an interesting twist if the player had to earn X number of points to rabbit hunt. So nobody can just rabbit hunt every hand they have to earn 5 (or whatever you want to make it) points to rabbit hunt. This keeps players wanting to earn points so they have rabbit hunting powers 🙂
I also agree with Lin that these features have a limited appeal. Maybe they should be restricted based on stakes.
@Moshe: Glad to hear that game speed has been taken into account. Though I don’t believe you can compare live game speed to online speed. If you get 20 hands per hour live and 40 or 50 hands per hour online and you implement rabbit hunting and the hands per hour goes down by even 5 per hour, when you multiply that over a large number of hands it is going to have a rather large impact. It doesn’t matter what the hands per hour live is. It only matters what the before and after hands per hour online is.
A reasonable compromise on the rabbit cam and show-a-card issues is to only provide these features below certain stakes. They have no place in medium and high-stakes games.
I’m against anonymous tables but not for any of the reasons commonly cited. I’m against them because most cheats are caught by players reporting something suspicious, and this often involves observing the same player(s) over multiple sessions or tables. It has become obvious that the sites either can’t or won’t do enough to catch cheats programmatically. But since most cheats are hit-and-run artists, I’m okay with allowing users to change their IDs, say, once every 60-90 days. Even better would be to allow you to keep your old IDs, so you can re-use them if you move up in stakes or change to different game.
There are other things I’d like to see the sites do:
(a) restrict the number of tables you can play at any one game/stakes/structure combination to four;
(b) implement smart algorithms to set your total maximum tables based on how many timeouts you incur in a given period because you’re not keeping up; make MT grinders earn the right to play 24 tables at once; this alone would put a lot of these action-killers out of business;
(c) base point awards on action rather than the way it’s done now; (giving points to players who fold without putting any money in the pot is killing the action on Stars)
(d) don’t allow observers access to hand histories (Tilt already does this);
(e) don’t allow players to hide themselves from player search.
I don’t mind the rabbit hunting idea, but Yair makes a good point. Maybe they should limit it to just one rabit hunt per x amount of hands, per player.
Show a card – love it. I’ve played with this feature on Merge skins, and it’s a nice touch.
Anonymous tables – This is something Ladbrokes introduced a couple of weeks ago and my initial reaction was positive. But I don’t like the fact that the players are only known as “player 1”, “player 2” etc. If a player leaves and comes back you have no idea it’s the same player as before. Even if they have anti rat-holing rules, I’m still not keen on it. And it goes without saying that it makes it much easier for cheats.
And there’s a big difference between using your own data from players you’ve played against and those that have been obtained by 3rd parties; i.e. parasites such as PTR. The external data mining and associated software, such as table scanners, are bad for the long-term game, IMO.
I don’t agree with players being able to change screen names either. But I’m all for protecting the fish and creating a healthier ecosystem. I would much prefer to see them develop private tables where nobody can observe and data mine – unless you’re seated at the table. It shouldn’t be that hard to implement.
I support your concerns bill about game speed – thou the particular implementation of those features put a lot of effort in avoiding the problem – the risk is stil there, but worth taking IMO (at least for a test period).
I cannot seriously be concerned about the point Yair is making about the rabbit cam – when i represent a hand, i very rarely represent a specific card. VERY RARELY. i might represent an Ace, but is it really teh specific ace of diamond?
i would like to hear some particular example where this one specific card blows my cover completely, and even the one in a thousand case where it is true, is, well, one in a thousand.
I’ll comment on the rabbit hunt. I absolutely hate that feature. It will call a bluff of a player, even without a call on the bluff. If I’m playing a card which I don’t have, and the other player folds, and uses the rabbit cam, he might see that card on the turn/river. If he didn’t pay, he shouldn’t be given a chance to call a bluff.
As for the anonymous tables – I’m a big supporter. Especially in HU tables the anonymity levels the playing ground and leaves the HUD’s outside, where they should be.