Hello; I literally had to sign up on this site, after I read this quote above, to respond to this. I've never posted in a poker forum in my life, but this one really got me going.
I've got to call BS on this statement. You chose NOT to support Bovada because they....24 hour AFTER release hand histories of what EVERYONE'S hole cards are. So WHAT?!?!
Your confusing two different components of our software. The tracker is the main application, the HUD is just a display of the information in the tracker; but the HUD is not as important as the information contained within the tracker. We could certainly support Bovada if we wished to within the tracker, which is what we explained the post you incorrectly claimed is BS. Also, in case you were not aware, the technology actually does exist to create a HUD at Bovada, the Bovada poker client is not that secure - it would not be that hard to tap into the memory to mimic a hand history from memory. With that said, this is something we will not do; it is against our moral code.
Our original quote is below to verify that our statement was 100% accurate and true.
PokerTracker said:
Originally Posted by Randall McMurphy
Bovada/Bodog does not allow those trackers, as far as I know.
Actually this is not true. The terms of service for Bovada do allow personal tracking. Bovada chose to provide hand histories 24 hours after the game is completed and include all of the hole cards. Can you imagine if you played a live poker game where at the end of the hand everyone turned over their hole cards - even those who folded preflop? Thats why we choose to not support Bovada. It might also surprise you to know that Bovada actually asked us to support their 4.0 software, we declined their request. We supported Bodog 3.0 software with the company's full permission, in fact we were close with the CEO at the time.
Everyone is anonymous on Bovada. There is ZERO advantage to knowing what (let use an example) say "player 6" had even if he folded preflop. OMG "player 6" fold XYZ hand I'll remember that for next time.....UMMMM no you won't, because you have zero clue who player 6 is going to be next time.....
Partially incorrect. We agree there is no advantage, but we also never claimed that you have an advantage using a HUD at a normal table... a losing player with a HUD will still be a losing player, there is no advantage to be gained. What the HUD provides is productivity... you could slow down the game and take meticulous notes on each anonymous opponent, or you can use the HUD's ability to track each hand do this for you. PokerTracker supports anonymous tables at
partypoker, iPoker, and Microgaming MPN for example - and in each situation the use of a HUD helps the player by allowing him or her to be more productive, and possibly play at more tables at the same time without having to over-rely on taking meticulous notes.
Your analogy of the live poker game is just not even in the same realm, if it was live and you saw everyone cards yes that makes no sense, but anonymous online gives you zero edge knowing what everyone had 24 hours later, because you'll never know if your playing that same person again.
Bovada decided to re-write the rules of the game to help them combat fears of cheating through collusion by showing all of the hole cards. It does not matter if the game is anonymous or not, showing all the cards at the table does not conform with the rules of poker in any format; and therefore something we will not support for personal tracking. Our decision has nothing to do with edges gained, its a rules issue in our eyes, and we are confidant that we made the right choice morally. Additionally there is the issue of post-Black Friday legality, which we discuss below. As you can see, this is a rather complex topic!
PS: There is a third party Bovada converter for PokerTracker, this converter changes hands to
pokerstars format. PokerTracker will import these improperly formatted hands because our importer cannot tell the difference between an authorised PokerStars hand and an unauthorised third party conversion, however these hands are not officially supported. They have been known to break many of our filters because they were not designed to address hands where hole cards for all players are known.
PS -- I only bring this up because I 100% wish you would make your program compatible with Bovada. I really miss the tracking features and being able to replay big hands that I won and lost on. Checking all my stats/percentages and comparing them to others. Also that graph charting your wins and losses is a thing of pure gold. I really miss watching that chart going up over time...so cool....
See our answers above, but if you have a specific question we will be happy to answer if this post does not clear things up for you. Its unlikely that our policies on this matter will change because the management of Bovada has been indicted, we do not wish to add support for any companies that have been indicted by the DOJ, its not good business to do so. Instead our focus is on the regulated markets, for example we are proud to support the state of
New Jersey in the USA. We still support some legacy networks such as WPN, Merge, and Cake but that is primarily because we supported them prior to black friday - we do not support any new US facing networks post black friday unless they are licensed, regulated, and legally allowed to perform within the market. PokerTracker's parent company prides itself on being an accountable company within the industry, we work closely with sites and regulators whenever possible to assure compliance.