Making Moves

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.