I am going to make a case here for the support of tracking software. I will be drawing from my (horrible) experience on Party Poker.
Let's look at some stats.
Flopping a Set is round 7.5:1 (1 out of 8.5 flops). Or 36% making a Flush by the River when holding 2 suited cards and a board that has 2 cards of same suit.
My most recent session on Party Poker. I saw 29 flops with a pocket and hit no Set. This has never happened to me in history of playing poker anywhere. The same session I chased 5 Flush draws from Flop to River and none of them came. We are expecting to hit 1 of 3 here. The same session I had 2 Pair crushed by another 2 pair (one of them had an Ace as top, the other K as top). Same session, two of my AA were crushed and I lost 2 buyins on both; 1 crushed by 66 calling a 4bet and flopping a set while I didn't get one in 29 flops, and the other were crushed by KK.
This session had 1,178 hands. Equal to 13 hours play of single table game or 39 hours of Live play (which could be10 sessions). Of course I multi-tabled this, but I am using this example to demonstrate how devastating this would be for a single tabler or Live player.
Needless to say that I got absolutely robbed that session. I lost almost 6x buyins. This was a decisive moment for me, I've decided to quit Party Poker. It's just not worth it even with their rakeback (besides their cap is massive anyway) when you just cannot win there. I don't say this lightly. Of course you cannot judge by session. Although as demonstrated above "this session" could be weeks for a Live player. If I was new to Party Poker, I would say bad run and carried on. But I am not new to PP. I have been grinding there for over 9 months and it's just consistently bad. Not long ago (about 2 months ago) I was complaining that 4 of 5 preflop all-in AA got crushed heads-up when it should be the other way around. It is consistent on Party Poker that you are always behind as a favourite (not enough flushes, sets, etc). And when you make your big hands the aggressive regs involved constantly miraculously get out of your way and won't pay you off. Of course sometimes you get your due but small in proportion what you lose. But when the shoe is on the other foot and they have sets you always get like 2 pair or something very strong. When you have a set no action. But interestingly in battles for blinds between BTN and BB they are willing to call half or even more buyins with bluff catchers. But I digress...
Tracking software gives you the power to check all these very important stats about the poker site. We need to have this power to keep them in check. But tracking software restrictions have already begun! Party Poker already anonymizes hand histories. Meaning that I can only collect session stats on a player, as players are anonymized as Player #1, #2, #3, etc. I can no longer have aggregates. I'm sure you think it's great! But now I, we, cannot see players' Win at Showdown in the long run. Why is this important? This is a huge deal!! Say if you are a decent winning player your W$SH is something small over 50%. But you need massive hand volumes for this stat to be accurate, much much more than sessions stats. This stat could provide insight about certain "Regs" on pokersites; that is, if there are any anomalies.
I personally believe, my own conspiracy theory, that there are employees (kind of like a high tier department) or bots playing on Party Poker extracting value. But we cannot prove it because we no longer have the required hand histories needed for statistics. Introducing this feature, they literally have Carte Blanche and can do what ever they want. On the surface they can make it appear fair by having the basic stats in order (even that's questionable with PP at this point), but it is action that determines the sizes of the pot and winrates.
By the way, Party Poker's own rating system rates me as a Solid Gold Winning Player on over 70K hands and I haven't won anything there.
Full hand histories should be our absolute right as players from online poker rooms as we do not see dealers and player associations. We need this to keep them honest. But right now it is going in the opposite direction. In fact many rooms do not even provide hand histories, which is an absolute disgrace and unacceptable! I will never, ever play on a poker site that does not provide complete hand histories again. I don't trust them.
But to be fair, regarding HUDs I understand the concern by recros and HUD non-users. I would even be able to accept that HUDs not to be allowed during play. But I should have full hand histories and HUDs after session for study.
It is funny and ironic, that players are so concerned with the use of HUDs and that it gives edge to players. Meanwhile they are absolutely oblivious to the fact that they are being robbed of hand histories in the process which is way bigger issue than the use of HUDs.
mateuspoker