At the beginning of May RunItOnce Poker boss, Phil Galfond announced that his soon to be launched poker room will not be allowing the use of heads-up displays (HUDs). This isn’t ground-breaking in itself, but it does mark an important moment in what form the online game will take in the near future.
A Change of Focus
The last few years have seen many changes implemented by poker rooms regarding the use of additional software. This has taken many forms, from Pokerstars forcing the developers to nerf certain options on a package such as Notecaddy, to the likes of PartyPoker banning HUDs on their anonymous cash game tables but allowing a hand history download. Up and coming poker room Unibet has always banned HUDs and doesn’t even allow you to save the hands you played for your own off-table analysis.
The simple reason that these changes have been made is because the skill level between an experienced player and a complete novice has stretched so far that recreational players are losing their deposits at an unprecedented rate. This in itself isn’t a problem if the players enjoy themselves and return, but we have finally reached the point where they aren’t coming back like they used to.
Phil Galfond highlighted this in a crystal-clear way in a recent blog post.
“…most losing players have, more or less, a finite amount that they are willing to lose playing poker. Taking it faster doesn’t create a larger supply… Those amateurs who want to play for fun, or in the hope of improving and becoming a pro themselves, are, in some cases, losing so consistently that all the fun (and hope) is sucked out of the game for them. They quit sooner and find somewhere else to spend their time and money.”
It’s decision time for those who run the poker rooms. They have been telling us for years now that high-volume pros can’t be the focus they once were. Have we all been selfish for too long and only want to see what benefits us? One of the facts of life here is that without fun players enjoying their experience there is no poker scene.
Taking a Wrong Turn
With all the recent focus being on Pokerstars’ ham-fisted maneuvering around loyalty schemes and rake increases less has been said about just why fun players need protecting. Daniel Negreanu’s frequent habit of being misquoted has maintained this focus on those details rather than encouraging the poker community to take a good look at what the online game has become.
With HUDs becoming ever more advanced, Galfond is of the opinion that a recreational player watching poker on Twitch is more likely to be scared off by all the stats than they are to feel they can compete against this level of detail. He even wrote that some will even think this is a bot stealing player’s money.
What about the players who are not even aware that a HUD exists? It’s surprising at this point that no poker room has bitten the bullet and installed one as a part of their software. The Jivaro HUD integrates nicely and is simple enough not to scare anybody off. A package in this style, accompanied by some instructional videos, would help to keep the biggest losers afloat for longer if they are interested enough to improve their game. Surprisingly, Galfond and the RunItOnce team still thought that giving a HUD to an amateur would intimidate them and they opted for dynamic avatars in the end. While this is a fresh idea, it isn’t going to placate those who are long-time members of the poker community and were expecting Phil Galfond to hand everything over that the pros want. There are simply too many of us that have never played live poker and only ever played online with a HUD.
So, we’re back to the point of what will the mainstream poker rooms do in the short term to protect new players and their deposits.
Pokerstars as the market leader has been afraid to change too much overnight on that score. As much as they wanted us to believe that the rake and bonus changes were in the spirit of protecting the long-term health of the poker ecosystem, all that did was to take money out of our pocket and put it back into theirs. If they were to suddenly ban HUDs that would be different, it would be a massive gamble that a room such as 888Poker will be ready to exploit.
Raising the Ceiling
One point which hasn’t been talked about in the mainstream poker media is how the profit threshold shifts for players on the brink of being able to turn professional. When Phil Galfond made his announcement a couple of years ago many long-time pros were ecstatic and immediately pledged their support. But what about those who are just scraping by and can’t afford to move down in stakes at all? The vast majority will be using HUDs and playing a decent number of tables. Without HUDs though, they simply won’t be able to cope with the same volume.
On one hand, Galfond is telling how important he feels it is for players to have that potential goal of becoming a professional, but now with this decision on HUDs, he is raising the bar a lot higher. In one fell swoop, he has excluded a not insignificant section of potential customers.
Predatory Behaviour
It is arguable that maybe today poker is undergoing some kind of identity crisis. The game has always been about winning money from your opponents – both friend and foe – but now we are starting to realize that the number of weak players is not inexhaustible. It’s one thing to use a tool such as a HUD as it adds interesting dynamics into the game, but seating scripts are a different thing altogether.
Seating scripts have added absolutely nothing positive into the game yet have arguably become the most important tool to have. For those of you who are not familiar with them, the idea is to automatically place you in the best possible seat as soon as a known weak player sits down. The pro with the best/fastest script will win the seat. This is bumhunting on a whole new level.
Another area where the games are negatively affected by this software is that players are disincentivized to start new tables. If they know there will be fish along soon enough then they just wait. A few years ago it was estimated that high-stakes volume across the sites was down by as much as 30% because of this trend. This is something that we can all do without as it infiltrates down the stakes ladder.
One solution for this is the “Seat Me” button that is becoming more popular and expected to arrive at Pokerstars this year. This we can all agree is the same as live poker, so there can be no real complaints.
Not that long ago Daniel Negreanu found himself targeted in this manner and was shocked to see the game break up within a few hands of him leaving the table. As soon as he had sat down to play the table instantly filled. None of this is good for our game.
Solvers
At the highest level of the game, the solvers such as PIO are now necessary to even compete. The length of time and amount of computing power needed to complete calculations mean that we don’t yet see people using these applications in-game, but things move fast in the world of computers.
It’s possible that this is already the pinnacle of poker software. After all, a perfectly solved solution is the aim and that is what we believe we have for small snapshots.
Undoubtedly, this is the future of poker software, but don’t get disheartened too quickly. While knowing what the GTO solution is for any given play is helpful, the real money in poker comes from exploiting your opponent’s mistakes, not from becoming unexploitable yourself. All that we need to worry about is technology such as this being used in-game, but that possibility is still a long way from being possible.
Final Thoughts
Is it conceivable that poker software to use in-game will slowly be phased out? It’s starting to look like we’re heading that way, but still unlikely that there won’t be some places to play with all the add-ons you like. Maybe a middle-of-the-road solution will work best with poker rooms giving us their own version of a HUD while banning the most predatory applications.
We should also all try our best to separate what is best for us and what is best for the game. The tale of the golden goose couldn’t fit any better into this story. Many players will be happy to just move on once poker no longer suits their needs, but for those of us here for the long haul we should really try and listen to what a man like Phil Galfond is trying to tell us.
