Pokerstrategy.com advocating bumhunting and being predators against fish

I agree and I believe tracking software should be banned as well.

Fix link in OP. _80474 is after /url tag.

As to OP obv I agree, not that my opinion would matter to anyone.

Hi Dublimax,

the answer to why we advocate this software is not too hard, but I agree it might be controversial and will probably not convince you.

2 Statements first:
- Poker is fun for everyone
- Poker earns money for a lot of players

We are providing a lot of fun stuff to attract new customers. We are giving them small free bankrolls to try out the games, putting freerolls on top. We are and will be doing more community promotions like the upcoming Heads Up Championship to embrace how awesome Poker is. Of course, with our new Poker Lessons and in general with our Learning offer, we'll try to convince guys that also learning and improving is easy and casual.
Result: PokerStrategy.com is one of the main contributors when it comes to bringing your new fish, probably people that like to play just 2 sessions per month for the sake of it - because they found it through above mentioned stuff.

On the other hand we have the fact that Poker earns money - for us, for the Poker room, for a big chunk of our users. If you don't have the money aspect, wouldn't have winning players - the attractiveness of the game would be lost.
As it is a competitive game, having the second best content is not good enough for us. If we now would turn a blind eye on the topic of Tablescanners, our VIPs would probably miss a chance that other guys at competitors do not have. Should we also stop offering tracking tools? Having said this, the Pokerrooms provide frameworks with rules that are valid for everyone. We are making sure to stick to those rules and will ensure our players keep at par with the competition. Btw, it of course also works the other way around, with a fish using this software to make sure he does not only sits down with Regs at the table.

bottom line: yes, we know that such tools will make it tougher for a part of the players. However, so does our poker education in general and we won't stop that either. We continue to make it our challenge to have a balanced offer for both winning-players and recreational players and believe that we are on a good way & believe that it is a good to also implement offers like TableScan Turbo in our portfolio.

Sven has it spot on.

Although I agree with OP that these softwares should be banned (esp. the tracking software ), we can't place the blame on PS.

The people who should take action are the poker rooms. Sadly, doesn't seem to be ever in the horizon; which is very surprising given that they should understand that the recreational players will dwindle in numbers since they are getting pwnt so hard

If you don't like bumhunters, just play fast fold.
More fun IMO anyway

@ NightFrostaSS: Thx for pointing out the mistake in the link. Fixed now.

@ SvenBe: Thanks for taking the time to answer. As expected you didn't convince me and I'll tell you why.

To me providing poker education is very different to promoting a seating script (which is what it is in the end).

Seating script doesn't make the competition tougher as education does. It creates a bad and not sound environment for poker players (esp rec players).
And it removes the fun which as you pointed out is very important to most of us.

This is extremely short term thinking to say that you want your vip players to have the biggest egde as they can using a very border line software (yet allowed I agree).
What are you going to do when the online poker scene has dried up so much that your revenues have decreased so much? (And here I am not talking about the fact that players are getting tougher I am talking about the fact that the poker environment is so hostile that rec players will and have stopped feeding the poker economy).

I mean it is not rocking science and everyone that plays small/mid stakes will have to agree with me that the situation is absurd and dangerous for the long term poker economy. My guess is that this will be the same soon at 100nl and then 50nl and eventually on all stakes...

Whilst I also understand you will make few bucks out of this it really saddens me to see that you are not looking at the long term future of this game and deliberately choose to promote a controversial (quoting you) software.

Originally posted by gormless
If you don't like bumhunters, just play fast fold.
More fun IMO anyway

I knew someone would have said that

Yes I can and will prob get back to zoom soon but the reality is that we are looking at the poker economy as a whole and rec players might be more attracted to normal ring games. What do a rec player do when there is no free seat available (bc very few are willing to start tables) and 5+ waiting lists on all the table with a rec player? Guess he leaves and go watch TV. It is a lose/lose situation.

Std economical problem you are describing here
For the general population it's in everybody's interest to do action x.
If everyone does action x , as an individual doing action y has more EV.
As such, everyone starts doing y, lowering overall EV:)

As stated, only changing the rules can have an impact

Originally posted by yoshiwa
Std economical problem you are describing here
For the general population it's in everybody's interest to do action x.
If everyone does action x , as an individual doing action y has more EV.
As such, everyone starts doing y, lowering overall EV:)

As stated, only changing the rules can have an impact

Completely agree with you.
I can't blame weaker regs to use that kind of software but pokerstrategy as a major actor of the economy should try to promote sound poker for its long life.

Tablescan turbo is not a seating scipt, it pretty much doesn't do much more then autojoins the waitlists.

And ppl whining about scipts are those who don't have them. The fact of the matter is that when a fish sits at 2/4 or higher the table is going to fill up with in seconds regardless of the scripts. Its not that hard to observe one empty table and click the seat the old fashioned way

Its just the way it is given how the state of the games from 2/4 and up. Pretty tough to get on a table once a fish sits since there's around 30 other ppl wanting the same seat

Originally posted by SvenBe
On the other hand we have the fact that Poker earns money - for us, for the Poker room, for a big chunk of our users. If you don't have the money aspect, wouldn't have winning players - the attractiveness of the game would be lost.
As it is a competitive game, having the second best content is not good enough for us. If we now would turn a blind eye on the topic of Tablescanners, our VIPs would probably miss a chance that other guys at competitors do not have. Should we also stop offering tracking tools? Having said this, the Pokerrooms provide frameworks with rules that are valid for everyone. We are making sure to stick to those rules and will ensure our players keep at par with the competition. Btw, it of course also works the other way around, with a fish using this software to make sure he does not only sits down with Regs at the table.

Really? for one how can you compare this with having the best content, this is a software that really make the fish feel like a prey.

Originally posted by MatejM47
Its just the way it is given how the state of the games from 2/4 and up. Pretty tough to get on a table once a fish sits since there's around 30 other ppl wanting the same seat

That's it. Ask yourself why this is the way it is.
I personally now rec players (some being whales) that have stopped playing up to 3/6 as they didn't like the feeling of being hunted. How silly from us is that?

And I am not whining about not having a seating script, poker is a rec activity for me at the end of the day that's not going to make much difference to me.

Hey Dublimax (and all who took time to read and post),

thanks for bringing this up - glad we're having a discussion with valid arguments.

Sven has already explained why we do what we do and the reasoning behind it. We appreciate that you might have a different opinion and we totally respect this.

As a company with a various customer profiles (occasional/fun players, regular players and all those in the middle), we want and frankly, have to, cater for everyone's needs. The overall offer will be perceived differently depending on which group you'll ask. As a business we also need to be competitive and if we don't have an X offer, someone else will have.

I do understand the morality/fair game aspect that could be argued here - but again, as a company with many many various groups to cater for, we leave it up to individuals to decide whether they want to make us of our offer or not.

Anyway, just wanted to drop a note (that somehow expanded into 3 paragraphs!) that we appreciate your point of view and understand where you're coming from. We don't expect to convince you and change your mind, we're happy to have a good discussion and shed some light on the reasons behind our actions.

Regards

Originally posted by Dublimax

Originally posted by MatejM47
Its just the way it is given how the state of the games from 2/4 and up. Pretty tough to get on a table once a fish sits since there's around 30 other ppl wanting the same seat

That's it. Ask yourself why this is the way it is.
I personally now rec players (some being whales) that have stopped playing up to 3/6 as they didn't like the feeling of being hunted. How silly from us is that?

And I am not whining about not having a seating script, poker is a rec activity for me at the end of the day that's not going to make much difference to me.

So we're suposed to wait a few minutes before joining the fish to make them feel comfortable? Even if some are willing to do that then the other 30 regs are not and the game is going to fill up just as fast.

The biggest problem is the lack of fish at those stakes and unless that changes the fact that the tables fill up instantly wont change.

And thats not likely to happen since a lot of the 2/4+ fish came from US France and Itally and those currently can't play on stars.

@ Marta and Sven:

Thanks for the input.

Why not going one step further and offer your vip players a top notch seating script? After all those are not banned yet and will give ever more of an edge to your players? Where is the line not to be crossed?

Originally posted by MatejM47

Originally posted by Dublimax

Originally posted by MatejM47
Its just the way it is given how the state of the games from 2/4 and up. Pretty tough to get on a table once a fish sits since there's around 30 other ppl wanting the same seat

That's it. Ask yourself why this is the way it is.
I personally now rec players (some being whales) that have stopped playing up to 3/6 as they didn't like the feeling of being hunted. How silly from us is that?

And I am not whining about not having a seating script, poker is a rec activity for me at the end of the day that's not going to make much difference to me.

So we're suposed to wait a few minutes before joining the fish to make them feel comfortable? Even if some are willing to do that then the other 30 regs are not and the game is going to fill up just as fast.

The biggest problem is the lack of fish at those stakes and unless that changes the fact that the tables fill up instantly wont change.

And thats not likely to happen since a lot of the 2/4+ fish came from US France and Itally and those currently can't play on stars.

It is unofrtunate that the situation at midstakes + is what it is and I agree with you (even though imo a fish understands that something i going on when 4 players snap sit in at the same time as opposed to players filling up the table quickly). All I was trying to say here is that I felt it wasn't the right thing for ps to promote such software.

Originally posted by Dublimax
@ Marta and Sven:

Thanks for the input.

Why not going one step further and offer your vip players a top notch seating script? After all those are not banned yet and will give ever more of an edge to your players? Where is the line not to be crossed?

Hardly ever things are either white or black. Most of the time they are different shades of grey that, depending on whom you ask and how the light falls, will be interpreted differently. Same with the table scanners, seating scripts and everything else really.

Here is the case - we made a choice to promote an X product, which does not mean we will promote all products from the same range. The current offer is based on the reasoning outlined by Sven and myself.

I know this is very general but I hope you get my point.