Poker Software Tools: Good or Bad for Poker?

In my opinion when you sit down at the table all things should be equal. In a cash game you can choose your starting stack to a degree and in a tournament everyone gets a fixed number of starting chips. No one should be treated any differently in this regard. As soon as you buy in, everyone, before skill and variance get involved should be on an equal footing to maintain the games integrity. Ideally both online and live poker should have all of its players start out on an equal footing, but that is not the case for online play.

When you play online poker tracking software can give a big advantage to any player using it. If you aren’t aware, software exists that records every hand seen and each action that a player takes. It will record things like how often you 3bet or how often you fold to a continuation bet. This software can be purchased and used by anyone, but typically only serious players are going to pay over $100 to have the software. Someone owning the software will have numbers displayed next to their opponents telling them exactly how often they take each different kind of action, and they can use this information to make better decisions against their opponents. To make the playing field equal again I think tracking software should be built into the poker client, so that everyone can use it, or like other sites have done, it should be banned completely so that no one can use it. Many recreational players don’t even know that it exists at all, and are oblivious to it. This puts them at such a severe disadvantage. Tracking software is insanely powerful nowadays.

The thing that really upsets me about tracking software is that people can share databases using it. It just seems unfair to me that someone could play a thousand hands against one opponent, and they both learn about each other’s tendencies, for that opponent to then share this information with a friend, or sell it on to someone. An opponent that someone has never met before shouldn’t start out from sitting down at the felt with an advantage over someone in the form of information about their tendencies acquired over thousands of hands gained from playing against someone else. They have no idea that he knows exactly how often they C-bet an ace high board for example and he can use that information to make money off of them. He or she is starting out with a massive advantage over an opponent that they have never met, and what’s worse is that opponent has no idea this has happened and is pretty powerless to counteract it. The only way I can think of to neutralise database sharing would be to ban the software, but that in itself would cause massive problems. Software allows many players to play many more tables than normal, and poker clients make more money with the more tables a person can play. The other problem would be software gurus making their own trackers without poker clients knowing it, forcing the practice underground.

Seating script software is something I really hate. If you aren’t aware, this software scans cash game tables for someone new joining the game. It automatically reserves a seat to the left of this player and the person using the software can then choose to sit down if the player is either new, or known to be a poor player. Targeting new players or “fish” so vehemently hardly creates a fun or friendly atmosphere. As soon as they realise that they are being targeted they will feel insulted and many will quit playing. Aside from it being bad for the poker economy, a random person gets insulted and upset and fleeced from their money which is hardly a morally sound thing to do. UniBet Poker’s client has random seating at its cash tables and I love that idea. I hope other clients follow in their footsteps.

One final point I’d like to make from a professional poker players view is that all the rules in poker, both live and online come from feedback from people who play poker regularly and therefore the rules end up favouring the professional players. If the edge in poker becomes so high against a new or recreational player then the poker economy will collapse. You don’t see me playing high stakes chess because there is no chance I could win. The appeal of poker comes from anyone being able to win. Jonny nobody can sit down next to Sam Trickett and win, and he gets to go and tell that story to all his friends which in turn makes them want to play. If the edge gets too big, this story will happen all the less frequently and so less new players will enter the game. I feel that software that assists in online play makes the edge for a professional player that much higher and I wonder how many more recreational players there would be contributing to the poker economy if it had never existed.