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Tracking software: yes or no?
It was announced this week that if you run the tracking software in another poker room at the same time as you were playing on GG, you risk a ban. Tracking software like PokerTracker could never be used at GGPoker anyway, but now comes with such a risk as part of a crackdown on data mining. Indeed, stacks of online poker players have scooped up millions of hands to gain an unfair advantage.
The GG poker room has put online poker players in a tricky situation, whereby they can legally use the software on other sites, but risk being banned if they accidentally run it while playing on GG. Some players may have already been warned if, for example, they had ICMIZER on while playing on GGPoker, if only for study purposes.
Data mining
Tracking software, but especially HUDS, have a PR problem - for recreational players this sounds scary. In recent years, when we hear about bulk data analysis, a lot of experienced poker players are also concerned. However, it's undeniable that tracking software and data mining have helped uncover some of the biggest cheating scandals in online poker, such as the ACR poker bot farm. HUDs actually highlight unrealistic winrates and also allow for the study of given hands.
Choosing between sites that allow the software
The most interesting thing about this rule change is that it may force users to choose between playing on sites that allow or prohibit tracking software. Many players play several sites at once, and now they may have to choose between all the sites that allow tracking or vice versa.
One of the reasons that the GTO style of play evolved online was because tracking software was disabled on some sites. The inability to use the HUD for exploitative poker was the best option for multi-tabling. We could see a difference where sites with tracking software were playing more exploitatively and sites without HUDs were closer to GTO.
We think online poker in general needs some third-party data collection options for security reasons, and we hope GG will be lenient with people who use tracking software on another site. But what do you guys think about this issue? Let us know in the comments on our social networks.
Source - Hand2Hand, PS, PokerStrategy, Reddit