Once again people have not been complaining about PartyPoker no longer allowing the use of HUDs. One can be for or against the use of HUDs. I like HUDs, but I can not use a HUD, neither can my opponents (unless they cheate), so I dont have any big principle problem with HUDs not being allowed.
The complaints are about PartyPoker no longer allowing players to download their hand histories. Hand histories are important to allow players to analyse their game away from the table. And they are also important for the integrity of the games, because they allow players to detect and expose patterns, that indicate cheating.
Its amazing how PartyPoker can get away with putting out this smoke screen and not even attempting to answer the serious issues, which has been raised by many players.
I have PT4 and loved the experience of using it, both on the tables and using it for analysis off. I've been having a break for a few months after self excluding on
pokerstars. I decided to try something a bit different and ended up on
party poker coming back, and this has coincided with the big changes they've made. For now I'm comfortable playing without a HUD when I know my opponents don't have one either. I'm really interested in how this might affect the play at the tables and whether I will notice a difference in the play, and in the strength of opponents.
I'm interested to see whether Party Poker do address the concerns some people have. A statement of just how they intend to catch and expose cheating now that players are powerless to notice would be very insightful. I play for peanuts and am not hugely worried, but I can appreciate why some other people are concerned.
The one change I'd definitely like to see is being able to make notes against players when reviewing the
hands I've played. Making notes playing Fast Forward is a bloody nightmare. What I've discovered is that if I review the hands while still at the table (but sitting out), I can see villain names and at least make some handwritten notes - I've started sitting out at the end of my session and reviewing a few hands before I close the table. Unfortunately at this stage I cannot add any notes against the players on the software. It is a bit of a pain that if I close the table and use the hand history in the main client I can no longer see villain names - this makes the hand history rather useless in regards to anything outside of reviewing my own play. I totally get the HUDless argument and think it is a good thing we have options out there for players who want to play with a HUD and those who do not, but feel that there is a big difference between a HUD making things very easy to target the fish and get reads on regs, compared to a player who is dedicated enough to make their own notes and spend time reviewing hands to look for
tells & player tendencies and manually do all the legwork to get the upper hand. So I do strongly feel that the ability to take notes should be improved, by adding that facility to the hand reviewer.
