Did you read the post? It mentions getting assigned a random name when you sit on a table which infers that your name changes every time you sit on a new table.

Whilst I prefer HUD, it is at least 'reasonable' and transparent.

What I am then curious about is

a) whether this will be the same for zoom type games (if any);
b) how will this affect players that play tournaments?
c) will we still have country flags

man, there is no use for huds in a anon zoom table. you cant do anything about it

4-Star, did you read the entirety of the post? I talked at length about why we believe we can implement this policy effectively despite the risk of custom software.

We're obviously not going to change this policy for launch, but we will always be investigating whether or not what we're doing works. If it turns out that something we've decided on isn't doing what we'd hoped, we will definitely be open to changing things down the line. A big part of figuring out what works will be keeping in touch with players like you.

omni_present and Lagasaurus HUDs are available for Bovada and Unibet which implemented, more or less, a same strategy. Obv even basics stats should required some time to converge, but it doesn't really matter, you can spot a fish in 10 hands maybe 20. So if you have a HUD with session stats you will have a great advantage, no matter what.

Phil Galfond I've read it obv, while I know your team have some great ideas, how do you plan to detect custom software running on another machine? Namely, RIO poker running inside a VM, with a custom software grabbing hands outside of it.
No chance you can detect that, no chance and that's unfortunate. If all the players would know some basics of computers/programming, the HUD debate wound't have existed, because they would understand there's no point in make a rule that is easily breakable.

Thank you, omni_present - your questions are good ones, but I'm afraid my answers will leave something to be desired for now.

What I am then curious about is

a) whether this will be the same for zoom type games (if any);
b) how will this affect players that play tournaments?
c) will we still have country flags

a) I'm going to address this in a future post.
b) I'm going to address this one once we are closer to launching tournaments
c) No country flags. We've been very careful with our policies to keep every player's Table Aliases equally intact.

4-Star_General while I'm certainly no developer, I do know the capabilities of 3rd party software in the poker industry. We know that we won't catch everyone, but we believe we've eliminated the overwhelming majority of the advantage one would gain by operating an 'illegal' HUD.

you can spot a fish in 10 hands maybe 20

This is true without a HUD given our Dynamic Avatars.

So if you have a HUD with session stats you will have a great advantage, no matter what.

If you're using 'session stats' to mean what PT4/HM call session stats, these won't be available on RIO because a player's Table Alias will be different on each table.

Phil Galfond

If you're using 'session stats' to mean what PT4/HM call session stats, these won't be available on RIO because a player's Table Alias will be different on each table.

Session stats are still available even if the players are totally different. If a fish play 2 tables, ofc trackers can't realize it's the same player, but show VPIP 40 and PFR 30 or something among the lines should be more than fine to hound that player

show VPIP 40 and PFR 30 or something

With Dynamic Avatars, you'll be able to spot players like this without using any additional software.

Hey Mancuso !

I agree with you that segregating the player pool between HUD and non-HUD tables would be bad, especially for a new site trying striving for good liquidity.

Hey nekochan0214! What you'll see on your screen is your selected avatar and screen name, for each table. Your opponents will see a randomized name and avatar.

So, you can see yourself with a female name and avatar if you choose to, but your identity (and gender) will be randomized from the perspective of others.

You can achieve the exact same thing using a VM, but if a site ban VMs, for some reason, your method is 100% undetectable

AI assistance continues to get more advanced, so poker sites will have to try and keep up. We've designed a number of our features to combat bots, but we know that it's impossible to definitively stop them all.

One of the features I'm most excited about, which won't be in until our Phase 2 launch, is a very powerful anti-bot measure. That said, I do believe we'll start in a pretty good place, too.

Thats awesome. I am rooting for you guys. Hopefully one day we (in the USA) can play on your site.

Thanks, Alex W.! We've worked very hard on this so it means a lot, not just to me but to the rest of the team as well, to read comments like yours.

I’m prepared to take you at your word when you say you can effectively ban huds, and contingent on that, I think you have some fantastic ideas here.

To be clear, so that I'm not overpromising here, catching everyone is virtually impossible. What we believe is that by decimating the advantage of using a HUD, taking some preventative measures, and catching and punishing a number of HUD users, we make breaking our rules a risk not worth taking (-EV).

Thanks 7n7! I really appreciate you sticking with me through the post and I'm glad to hear you like what we're doing!

One place I was slightly confused: Will the hud stats accumulated by the site and represented as different avatars be forgotten with every changing screen name? Or if I sit a table with Jason S on Saturday and he plays agro, will the avatar remain if I (unknowingly) sit him a few days later?

Good question - I wasn't as clear as I should've been. The stats that our avatars' emotions will be based on will be reset with every new alias. Identities (and stats) do persist if a player leaves and comes back within a certain time frame, but in those cases, the player will return with the same name, avatar, notes, and color code.

Hey Matt Gilbert! I agree that tracker study is extremely important for players who want to improve, and as a training site pro I believe very much in the quest for improvement!

Yes, you'll have access to your Hand Histories 24 hours after playing (including all opponent hole cards), so while you won't have immediate tracking, you can still do all the studying you'd like.

Hey, axel2307! You're going to be able to use your tracker to import and review all hands played over 24 hours ago, but I can't tell if that gives you what you're looking for.

If you meant that you need to see those results in real-time, I agree that some sort of in-client mini-tracker would be a great feature. It's something we've talked about, but we're considering it much lower priority than most of our other features.

Once we have finished building tournaments, SNGs and our distinct nosebleed offering, this is one of the ideas I want to get back to.

I was thinking I'd save the answer for a later post, but it just occurred to me that I probably should just make people wait for this one until they play their first hand.

Hey. I was the first one who asked this on the first RIO poker announcement thread. Where’s my prize? :P

I'm sure some recs will prefer anonymous and some may dislike it. I think that if the recs who try us out enjoy playing and are protected, it will lead to more longevity.

I would say more important questions are going to be how is RIO going to attract new players to site,and not just ones from the RIO training site.Rake structure also
very important.What about idea of rakefree play for 30 days or something in order to attract large number of new players?I

We've got some things in the works to attract players, a couple of which I'll discuss in future posts. we've even discussed more or less the exact idea you suggested. There's one important feature which may or may not be ready in time for launch and will impact our exact method, but we do plan to reward our early users in one way or another.

I am looking forward to hear more about strategies and general policies in next articles.

I'm looking forward to sharing them with you! Thanks for the feedback and ideas, Boris288

I always smile when I see RIO OG's like you in the forums, Aleksandra. Thanks for your support, as always. <3

<3 :)

Very good post, gargamel_fk - thank you. This is exactly the type of feedback I hope to keep getting.

The idea of de-anonymized HHs is one of the policies that we struggled most to agree on.

You presented the 'for' argument very well, so I don't think I need to say more. The 'against' argument was my own. It relates to potential software advances and is perhaps a bit out there. It goes something like this:

If one had a large hand sample, especially a shared one, a developer could hypothetically build a tracker that analyzed playstyle and playing habits as they relate to stakes, time of day, and play frequency. He could build software to record timing tells and later link those to the 'true' identity of the player. With all of this, he could potentially build a predictive algorithm, looking at all of this data and comparing it to the players you are actively playing against, taking into account the number of tables running and presence of similar players on multiple tables, and provide a small group of players that each opponent is likely to be - perhaps it could even predict with high accuracy who a certain player is with enough information. Even if it can only narrow each player to a small group, the database could provide cumulative stats, weighted by the likelihood of it being each player, that would still be very valuable.

It's less of a concern, but this also opens the door for some type of tracking site that does the same thing, and all it takes is finding one hand someone streamed or tweeted about to link them to an ID and share their results.

We ended up going with 'against' - probably because the boss presented the argument :) but this is a policy that we were very on the fence about (myself included). As you can tell, the integrity of our Table Alias system is a priority for us, but the protection of players from bots is certainly no less important, and the poker community's ability to uncover bots that have slipped past the radars of poker operators is undeniable.

We plan to keep an eye on how things are going. If the concerns you bring up begin to outweigh our concerns on the other side, we'll give serious thought to changing our policy, though likely not in the very near term due to all of the development tasks that lie ahead.

We will, of course, have our own database with true player IDs, so I'd imagine that if we wanted to change our policy and even to retroactively provide users with a set of updated hand histories, it may not be too difficult.

Hey Phil If you don't mind I believe that your thought process might be not consinstent here.
Basically from your 2nd post I learned that one of the goals of your entire team is make cheating -EV by having strong policies against it.
Lets be honest here bots at this point are the strongest players at most stakes both for Holdem and PLO thats just the truth.
So here is the problem. For basically every poker room EV of creating bot>>>>>>EV of creating sophisticated HUD for someone who tries to break the rules.

At the time you will start you will not have good enough traffic for anyone to bother to make the pattern based HUD as it would be not super reliable and very expensive to make and EV would be terrible (small possible market,nosebleeds will have HUDs allowed anyway). But creating a bot might still have value even if just for the sake of it.

Secondly as every start up you need to be cost effective so lets be honest your security team won't be huge and won't include as many people as you would like to.

So a lot more logical solution would be to start with deanonymized hand history and switch to anonymized hand histories when you feel your business reached critical mass when creating such a sophisticated HUD will become viable option for someone .And it will take a long time for you to get to this point with your business.

I mean creating the "potential" HUD is so -----EV you can't expect anyone to make one in a foresable future. Like it would cost a lot of money and be at best somewhat better than chance but not better than observant player seating at a table with all the limitations you already incorporated. So it would probably costXXXK$ to make and the market to sell it would be very small and people wouldn't be that interested in buying it for obvious reasons. (Risk of being caught and how unreliable it would be)

In the meantime it would make everyone feel a lot more secure if we have always this option to check the players and send you info about suspected accounts.

gargamel_fk posts are so spot on and I was about asking deanon HHs too.
Phil Galfond Sre you aware how are BOT-infested site, like Bovada, that provides anon tables? BOTs can be caught using database queries and comparing stats but for finding some huge cheating, probably players need to police their games. All the major scandals were found by players, for a reason

If one had a large hand sample, especially a shared one, a developer could hypothetically build a tracker that analyzed playstyle and playing habits as they relate to stakes, time of day, and play frequency. He could build software to record timing tells and later link those to the 'true' identity of the player. With all of this, he could potentially build a predictive algorithm, looking at all of this data and comparing it to the players you are actively playing against, taking into account the number of tables running and presence of similar players on multiple tables, and provide a small group of players that each opponent is likely to be - perhaps it could even predict with high accuracy who a certain player is with enough information. Even if it can only narrow each player to a small group, the database could provide cumulative stats, weighted by the likelihood of it being each player, that would still be very valuable.

This sounds way more unlikely than running a bot to be honest.

Thanks, gargamel_fk, for another well thought out response.

I want to make clear that we, as poker players, have had bots in mind throughout the process of designing RIO Poker, and there will be some things I'll discuss in future posts that should curb (but certainly not eliminate) botting on our site.

You'll get no disagreement from us about the importance of this topic. Creatively solving botting issues will be an ongoing mission of the highest priority, as preserving the future of online poker is essentially why Run It Once Poker was started. As I mentioned when answering another question, we've even got a large feature in the works for Phase 2 that was created specifically for this purpose.

I'll speak a little bit more about the risks I mentioned above, but I'm not arguing with you - just trying to discuss and explore, as I'll talk about in a minute.

With a shared database and de-anon screen names, a group of players could watch how someone played every hand. All it would take is a single HH posted, screenshot taken, or hand streamed to tie their identity to one in the large shared database. So, if Ben Sulsky wants to play on RIO Poker and share a Hand in our forums or record a training video of RIO Poker live play, or if he wanted to stream or share hands elsewhere, post a screenshot of a bad beat on Facebook, even if he talked about having a +40 buy-in session yesterday or losing AA to KK 3 times in 15 minutes, etc - this group could sell "50k hands played by Sauce - hole cards showing" to anyone.

I doubt Ben would like people paying other people to learn from his hands, but the bigger risk is that Ben's opponents will definitely spend the $500 to get access and gain a huge informational advantage over him on other sites, where his SN is Sauce123.

While Sauce hands would sell for more money, the data could be gathered on players of all stakes - the risk exists for all types of players.

As I mentioned, I'm making counterpoints, which may be the definition of arguing, but I'm not trying to argue with you - I just think you've represented the risks on one side very well and nobody else is presenting the other side so that we can have a productive discussion and find a solution together.

I can't promise a change, and I can't promise a change will be quick if we want to make one, but I can promise to continue listening and considering and discussing with the RIO team.

We have always planned for our open dialogue with the community to play a role in bot detection, including engaging with certain members of the community to consult on these specific issues. This discussion makes me think we should consider something more formalized for selecting and working with community game integrity consultants...

How would you feel about us asking select members of the community to become 'community game integrity consultants'? We could give them restricted access to statistics, in a way that the data remains secure, and they could run their own analysis.

Do you have any other ideas along those lines? Something to leverage the expertise of the community to enhance our bot detection, and doing so in a way that is visible to the community, so that they can have more peace of mind.

We'll keep talking and reviewing our policies, but I would really like it if we could find a way to address this without scaring and punishing players who want to share anything about their Run It Once Poker experience.

Phil Galfond It is hard to disagree with you when you word it like this. I mean it reminds me of fellow crushers that had uniqe playstyle and got crushed by people analzying and exploiting their game (Dr. Giggy, Andrian Milroy, probably both you and Sauce lost a lot of EV by people firstly watching your vids and datamining your hand histories and just taking a lot of EV from all of you).

At the same time what you could do is send player deanonymized hand histories but without hole cards avaliable (well except for hero hole cards and cards that went to showdown). That way people would be still able to do statistical analysis but the value would decrease a lot.
So it could work in a way that there would be donwloadable hand history that would be deanonymized but no hole cards avaliable but people would be able to check the hole card history in the poker room client after 24h but say with some limits to avoid angles with screen srapping etc . (Like checking max 10 hands during the 24 hours and downloading impossible)
And to avoid people combining databases etc. you could make it so that every players get different players IDs (they would be randomly assigned when creating hand history for a player.)

Just not sure how viable this solution is in real life and how costly it would be but I guess it could worth just fine.

I hope you really have something special against bots that will make it impossible for them to play or hardly viable option. Because again bots>>>>>humans at the current state of the games. So when you weight options you need to take it into consideration. Like you have to be really sure that your other solutions are very very good to take the de anonymized hand history from players (and I would say it has to be of a magnitude better than any other sites offer)

Especially that some sophisitcated stuff was discovered only by players and not sites themselves (most of what we reffer now as "bots" are in game aids/solvers that tell players what to do).

There were several cases of such bot rings where it required creative ideas from players to uncover them. Because there was human input that was distorting the data.

Thanks for understanding and keeping the ideas coming

At the same time what you could do is send player deanonymized hand histories but without hole cards avaliable (well except for hero hole cards and cards that went to showdown).

This is something I'd prefer over deanonymizing and sharing with hole cards. It still puts players who share their RIO experience at a disadvantage, but not one that could hurt them as badly.

I think people used to feel more secure with the option we're going with, but perhaps now the majority feels more secure with what you're suggesting. I will give this some serious thought and talk it over with the team. I don't expect that we'd make a change before launch, but I would be much more comfortable pivoting to this than to hole cards revealed + deanonymized screen names if we do change course.

I don't think that this solution could be mixed with hole cards revealed HHs, even if the screen names didn't match. A group of players would still be able to gather a lot of hole cards up hands on players they could identify.

Phil Galfond in all honesty I already like a lot what you are doing (and that your entire team tries to innovate the poker product in a smart way instead of just "innovating" by turning poker into another casion game like Pokerstars desperately tries too do).

This is a problem where all possible solutions have their own flaws one way or another.

I mean a very big problem in the poker world is that many of the pokersites are bot friendly because bots generate a lot off rake,never complain etc. At the same time bulding solid anitbot team and solutions costs a lot of money. So the problem is that for the most poker rooms it is like "Why would we spend a lot of money to generate less rake? Makes completely no sense!!!" So they simply don't do it and only ban bots where there is a huge backlash from players.
This is the reason why many,myself included are sceptical.

At the same time we have terrible example of sites like Party Poker where they just anonymized hand histories without any security in place. So the end scenario is either you cheat like other regs at their cash games (buying illegal converter or botting) or you just quit.

So what I hope for is that it is just a piece of a bigger puzzle and you have a lot more elements in the system that will make it a lot more secure. I believe we all have high hopes for the RunItOnce Poker Room. We all desperately need a place where we can just play poker and not to worry about every possible angle and exploits that people and bots can use against us.

Great points and questions, necromadx!

As a player who dont really use hud but Notes. Do I understand it correctly that when I note a player the note will just dissapear for next session?

This is correct. I like taking and saving notes, too, but there isn't a way to have notes persist without undermining anonymity. I could tag a player with a made up screen name and now I'll always know who he is (as will my tracker).

Since tables are anonymous, how are you going to fight collusions? Like sharing cards etc..

Some of the more blatant collusion will be evident in the hole-cards-revealed HHs you receive after 24 hours. We'll encourage players to report anything that feels off, and we can analyze the rest of those players' hands to get to the bottom of it.

We have one anti-collusion measure that I'll be announcing in a future post, but detecting collusion will still be an important task that will in large part fall on our shoulders.

Your opinion is welcome, Panthea, but I'm going to have to disagree with you here.

Take the comparison of live poker to online poker, for example. I've been asked at least a dozen times, "but if you can't see the guy, isn't it all just guessing? Doesn't that take the skill out of the game?"

We all know that to be untrue. Online poker is the same game as live poker, minus the information you get while looking at your opponent. There's still good and bad strategy, pot odds, board coverage, range considerations etc.

Anonymous poker is online poker without the ability to carry reads over from session to session. It's still a skill game, just with a little less bit less information.

-It is not only my opinion, it is science. Of course there are players who play really bad and will still lose money.
-I don't think that Live play is the same as live poker. Online players are more skilled and have to deal with lots of players at the same time (Multi Tabling).
-I don't mind not having a hud but at least a good note taking system on players
-I love the fight with regs and the counter adjustments and this is on your site terminated
-Anonymous sites are like playing a pc game. I hate playing pc games. It is not personal. It is not a battle of minds and nerves. It is cold.

I agree with this. Can the crushers not be anonymous?

For instance, what if the Durr challenge continues on Run It Once poker, we need to see their screen names.

High stakes should not be anonymous imo.

Thanks for both the feedback and the concerns PocketAces!

As I mentioned in Post #1, Tournaments and Nosebleed cash games will be coming in Phase 2 and will not necessarily have the same structure as our Phase 1 cash games.

You bring up an important point that I want to make again:

Also why exactly is having huds a bad thing

I believe allowing HUDs is not a bad thing. There are pros and cons to each side of every decision we could possibly make, and we chose the direction that we did for a number of reasons, but we wouldn't have been "wrong" to go the other way with it.

We're trying to offer a product that isn't the same as the other options out there, and one that we've planned with the longevity of online poker in mind.

I'll be really excited when I can share more on our Phase 2 plans, but I should probably stop saying that because it's not coming just around the corner and we know what happened the first time I talked about software on the way!

Ideas and suggestions on tournaments and other Phase 2 offerings are more than welcome, but just know that I won't be able to engage in much conversation on our plans there yet.

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking but, copied from my 1st thread:

As of today, residents of the following countries are not allowed to create an account on RIO Poker: Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany (State of Schleswig-Holstein), Greece, Guyana, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Syria, Uganda, United States of America, Vanuatu, Yemen.

Residents of other countries are not allowed to play while physically being located in any of these countries.

Gaming regulations and restrictions change frequently. While the above is accurate as of today, an up-to-date list of restrictions will be available in our Terms&Conditions at launch.

We have licenses from MGA and UKGC, and we won't be applying for any others before launch.

Applying for licenses for smaller regulated markets will always be on our radar, but it's dependent on many things, including how we do once we launch and the data that comes along with that. To be clear, I don't expect it to happen very quickly, but we'll have to wait and see.

Thank you Cheehc! Recreational players are underrepresented here in the RIO forums, and you are the type of player we need feedback from most (I talk to pros constantly and have been doing so for over a decade).

It makes me really happy to hear that these features felt the way we wanted them to for you. Are there any other things in the post that stood out to you?

I remember you already did a great job of sharing your feelings and ideas in the other thread, but please let me know if you've got more! They don't have to be new ideas - just likes/dislikes about other poker sites are helpful.

Thanks, lenalennart, and I totally understand your perspective.

I don't disagree that there are some great things that come along with consistent screen names. Some more people are talking about the screen name decision in a similar way. To avoid double posting, I'm going to reply to a similar post below and @ you so you see it.

Anyway you have my support and I will try out RIO poker with an open mind regardless, just wanted to give my opinion on this.

Thank you very much for your support and your opinions are always welcome! I also really appreciate that you'll give us a try with an open mind. I think most players would agree that something needs to change to help poker survive and thrive online, so I'm hopeful that others will share your open-mindedness to policies they didn't expect and be willing to give it a try.

I'm sorry you're not liking the decisions we made, nwnw . I spoke some more about bots above, but I wanted to address this...

I just cant remmember a single case where massive bot use was detected by poker room.

because 4-Star_General said something similar above...

All the major scandals were found by players

so I assume some others are thinking the same thing.

This is almost surely false. I say "almost surely" because I haven't explicitly asked team members or consultants who have worked in other fraud departments if their previous team ever caught a bot ring, but they certainly talk about bot detection like they've done it before.

Scandals are always found by players because a bot ring that is quickly detected and shut down by a poker site doesn't turn into a scandal.

I'm not taking anything away from the community's amazing work in catching bots, and I know that sites (some more than others) need to do more to fight bots, but I wanted to be clear on this because it's scary for less informed people when they read and believe that the sites are doing nothing (which would mean the sites don't care).

Poker sites have fraud & game integrity departments. full of people they've interviewed and hired for that department. who each work 250+ days a year. Do you really think it's possible that none of them ever catch bot rings (and keep their jobs)?

I don't want to ignore or hide problems facing the industry - we should talk about them and keep the sites (us included) honest and working hard towards solutions - and I want your opinions, even if they are angry ones :), but I think it's important to point out when things stated or implied as fact aren't true and could do some damage.

Phil Galfond

Poker sites have fraud & game integrity departments. full of people they've interviewed and hired for that department. who each work 250+ days a year. Do you really think it's possible that none of them ever catch bot rings (and keep their jobs)?

After the PLO bot ring that played over 14M hands on the major poker site, without getting caughted, yes

Thanks for the kind words and the (very polite) questions, UTGSurgeon . I'll start with the easiest one!

You mention intentionally wanting your avatar to be the crazy guy, how would this be possible without seeing our own avatar?

You'll be able to see your own avatar, and it will have the expression based on all hands you've played at that table (since you have been at the table for all of those hands).

Other players may see you differently based on the hands they've been at the table for.

you describe in your post how HUD's track only hands played between villain and hero but thats not entirely true. I can sit back and fold every hand while collecting vpip and pfr and any other stat I want on a player as long as i'm sitting at the table.

I think my wording didn't make clear what the plan is. I shouldn't have said that it keeps track of hands you've played against that opponent, but rather, it keeps track of hands where you've been dealt in together at that table.

This is the same way that a HUD would work on other sites (with some small exceptions).

All of this is to say that I really like your avatar idea I just believe that the avatar should be the same for all players at the table.

I'm glad you like the idea! I discussed in the article about why we didn't choose to keep the avatars consistent for each player, which is something we considered as an option. I'll quote the relevant paragraph:

This was more complicated to build than simply displaying the same information to everyone (based on all play since joining that table), but we didn’t want to create an informational imbalance, disadvantaging players who’d already been playing when a new player shows up. That would cause annoying, edge-seeking table hopping and it would punish the players who stuck around and put in more hands.

Also, will you ever be able to offer both anonymous and non-anonymous tables? Or do you think that sort of pointless

For me, as long as games are reasonably beatable idc BUT i think that dynamic you have with someone is an important and enoyable part of the online poker experience

Thanks, KatonBond :)

I love seeing people excited like this about what I've been excited about for a long time!

Im curious, will we still be able to track our hands and see our results in PT4 or HM2?

Yes, but not immediately. You'll get HHs 24 hours after playing, so you can track everything you can on other sites (plus hole cards for all opponents), but not in real-time.

Also, Will there be any rakeback programs in the initial launch or do we need to wait for phase 2?

There will be!

We've actually got a few different elements to our rewards plan, and they are the last big features we're working on adding before launch. One will definitely (95%) be in for launch and another probably will, with the third likely coming in Phase 2.

Don't worry though! Until we've got every piece in place, we'll crank up the rewards systems we have so that we give out the same total amount of rakeback we will be giving once all methods are in.

If somehow we don't get anything in place, which seems very unlikely, we'll figure something out so - probably something like giving out the same amount in a boring :( manual way until they are ready.

Forgot about your next question, sorry!

Also, will you ever be able to offer both anonymous and non-anonymous tables? Or do you think that sort of pointless

I don't think it would be pointless, but as a new, growing site, it's risky to split our player pools because having enough players to keep games running consistently is so important to the user experience.

We don't have plans for doing something like this in the foreseeable future, but we will keep an open mind and we'll pay attention to the games and the community. If we think it's a good idea down the road, we'll probably do it.

Thanks for the thoughout response Phil!!! I wish you luck man and I cant wait to play!!

Thanks ZeroCloo .

I mentioned above some more about my concerns of sharing HHs with consistent screen names, which I assume would be required for this idea to work well, too.

I like the idea of offering bounties - thank you for that! Please check out what I wrote above regarding the HHs and please share some comments and ideas if you have any.

Thanks for the support and for giving us a great unofficial slogan :)

so hopefully i will be able to play from where i live (schleswig-holstein, germany)

I really enjoyed your post so I'm especially sad to deliver the bad news, but we're not able to take players from Schleswig-Holstein :(

I posted a list of regions we'll be in above, along with the disclaimer that things change quickly and we'll keep our Terms & Conditions updated as they do.

I really hope we'll be able to offer RIO Poker to you someday. It sounds like what you're looking for in a poker site matches very closely with our goals in building it.

Thanks, matthmit, and good question. The short answer is that you'll be okay to play on Stars with a HUD while playing on RIO without one.

The medium length answers is that I suspect there could be edge cases where, for example, HM starts supporting live HUDs on RIO Poker (which I very much don't expect to happen) or if you have some custom software that Stars approved but we don't know about. I would need to check on some technical things that are over my head, but essentially, if you're doing something reasonable there should be no issue. We'll aim to be firm but fair.

also imagine back in the day isildur1 had a different name every day he played. there would be SO much less hype about certain palyers and this hype also attracted a ton of players to join. thi completely deletes the change for creation of legends and endboss palyers people look up to and see as a rolemodel.

I agree that it is unfortunate that the community aspect is diminished but at the same time look at what has happened to games where SNs are revealed. Datamining, insane HUDs, seat scripts, all sorts of bumhunting nonsense. So while it is cool that you can go head to head with villains you played yesterday and try to beat them it also leads to problems where players are targeted and regs sit out against eachother.

Sounds like nosebleed games are going to be different so perhaps theres still a chance to rail big games with all your favorite players as well.

Like Phil said there is no perfect solution. Just compromises that takes everything into account to make a better playing experience for everyone.

Sorry for the nuthugging that's coming here, but it's so obnoxious to say things like "you've totally missed" a point that's incredibly obvious to the smartest person registered on this forum who's been consumed by all such points now for years.

I feel you about the value of community; the 'good years' of the game where poker really did feel like a tightknit community are where most of my long-lasting fond memories of the game, as well as friendships, have come from. Regrettably the game has changed... Phil lays out in the article major problems associated with fixed screen names and I'm 100% behind any measure that protects game integrity as a top priority. I can't comment on what this means for bots since I have no understanding there, but I loved this release and found myself thinking "hell yeah" throughout.

Just as a background... I'm finding it incredibly difficult to think back and come up with the name of one player who was crushing nosebleeds over 10 years ago who stayed in the game to now at HS whilst playing under the same SN the entire time (probably Sauce actually!). I could list 20+ such players instantly who were known to play on multiple accounts. Phil bucked every trend.. he never held back info in videos and accepted that most action he got came against opponents who'd forensically analysed his game. He battled and thrived in an unfair environment, but he knows most others who'd have had to would not have been able to. I think someone should just point this out about who he is, as most here would be newer to the game.

My point is, as this release suggests, I think we can be guaranteed that where relevant, all of the site's policies will come with fairness as the #1 priority. I'd say that's worth remembering (and celebrating), and I think we can also be sure that if a suggestion does get made by a member that could potentially help improve game safety, Phil's going to think on it long and hard without needing to ram it down his throat - hence all of these threads. I'm glad I'm not making this post on 2+2 :D

I can't comment on what this means for bots since I have no
understanding there, but I loved this release and found myself
thinking "hell yeah" throughout.

Sry, but if you don't know what it would mean for bots, you can't see the whole picture and you cannot judge properly.
I know Phil is very smart, but this doesn't mean he's right 100% of the times, only time will tell

James Obst oviously talking about his post and not about him ignoring it in general

He, lenalennart (who posted similar concerns above) and derbegott,

I completely understand how you feel, and I agree that there are some really nice things that come along with consistent screen names.

WM2K did a great job saying, very concisely, what I'll ramble on about here... (thanks WM2K )

When selecting policies for a poker site, especially the topics where the community is split, there aren't any perfect decisions. You're basically just picking one set of pros and cons over the other set, and that means you've got to deal with the cons. With each decision, you impact other decisions.

We wanted to do something different - both to be a unique offering in the marketplace and to try and solve some of the problems facing online poker.

I am not against normal screen names whatsoever, but if we choose to allow them, then we have to allow HUDs, and now there's not much use for Dynamic Avatars, and now we're just like everyone else.

<3 James Obst

Thanks Marius Satzkowski!

We'll be launching with the most played games (NLHE and PLO). We will definitely add mixed games in the future, but likely as part of Phase 2, along with SNGs and MTTs.

Hey 4-Star,

Good questions...

May I ask you whether you have solid plans to attract recs?

I'll be sharing some of our marketing plans in a future post, but the short answer is that we definitely have plans. As you mentioned, we aren't a huge company, so:

Do I like our plans? Yes.

Are they so revolutionary that they will attract as many players as Stars does with their huge marketing spend? Definitely not.

Because if you want to protect fishes from being hunted, these types of players should the vast majority on the site.

I'm not sure whether you mean that more recs protect other recs or that if we're so worried about the experience of recreational players, we'd better expect to have a lot of them.

I don't feel I could make a guess as to a pro:rec ratio with any kind of confidence, especially since it's difficult to bucket players into one or the other.

Regardless of how many recreational players come play on Run It Once Poker, improving their experience leads to them sticking around and playing more. The makeup of our player pools will depend on how many new players (in each category) we can attract over time compared to how many existing players stay with us, so improving the experience and extending the lifetime of recreational players is a very important piece of the puzzle no matter what our initial marketing efforts accomplish.

Have you got any evidence about the fish being scared by HUDs?

Anecdotally, quite a bit. I hear about it often in live poker games and some friends have told me about having the same experience. Beyond that and what you can also see on forums and social media, we don't have any comprehensive studies done, no.

Even if this is a smaller effect than I think, it doesn't mean that improving their experience is a bad thing

I find kida curious that your have the best training site out there

Thank you :)

My question is, when a rec will see a video and find out about HUDs, don't you think he will think the pros are cheating in some ways why he can't do the same?

Very good question. It's going to be our responsibility to create messaging that lets players know that we've protected them from certain things and how we've done so.

Just a quick note regarding catching BOTs, have you heard about russian BOT ring which basically, there were no BOTs involved just an in-game aid. Players were employers work for X hours per day, like a clockwork.

Yes, and I expect this will become the norm for sophisticated bot rings so long as it stays cost-effective. Certain traditional methods won't detect them, but as you mentioned, bot rings like this can still be caught with statistical analysis, among other things.

Phil Galfond

I'm not sure whether you mean that more recs protect other recs or
that if we're so worried about the experience of recreational players,
we'd better expect to have a lot of them.

The latter.
Regarding HUDs, I'm 100% that if things got ugly ie BOTs, underground tools etc you will act properly, so I think, in the end, whats truly counts is that you are open minded and open to take suggestions. Thumbs up
Ty for the replies I cannot say anything else beside a big gl

Regarding HUDs, I'm 100% that if things got ugly ie BOTs, underground tools etc you will act properly, so I think, in the end, whats truly counts is that you are open minded and open to take suggestions. Thumbs up
Ty for the replies I cannot say anything else beside a big gl

:) thank you very much, 4-Star_General .

I know and completely understand why our decisions aren't what you'd have chosen, so I really appreciate you having an open mind. I promise to keep an open mind and open dialogue with the community. Like you said, if the evidence piles up, I'm prepared to be wrong and to change course.

Many of us enjoy chatting at the tables sometimes esp at final tables and funplayers do enjoy it even more.
And no. Funplayers dont care about rake at all. They often dont even know what rake is.

Rake and Rewards will be touched on in one or two of my final pre-launch posts. I'm hoping you'll both like what we've come up with!

What does this even mean:
because more money is changing hands

"Everything you’ve read so far is just a preview to this, the main event! Anonymous tables are much, much juicier than regular tables:

There are more called bets in each hand
More money is bet and called in each hand
The average size of each called bet is larger
The average pot size is larger
Essentially, more money changes hands in anonymous games, per hand dealt. This is the case at every stake, but is especially prominent in micro stakes, where the average amount bet and called per hand is a whopping 20% higher at Anonymous Tables than at regular tables, and the average bet size is 19% higher. Rake per hand is also higher at anonymous tables, which is expected given the larger pot sizes."

I hadn't read this, blindkitty1 . Great article - thank you for sharing it!

It seems the gist of what he's saying that there is more action and more variance at anonymous tables. I'd be careful taking "Observation 6" out of context.

Win and loss-rates shouldn't be judged without comparison to the size of the game and variance, which he explains quite well in "Observation 7:"

So even though on average, winners win more and losers lose more at Anonymous Tables, a player who is a long-term loser has a better chance of winning in the short term.

By the way, if you ever wondered why some operators like to push Omaha and other non-Hold’em games, this is a key reason – long term losers have a better chance to have a good experience in the short term, because variance is higher.

It's an oversimplification, but what 6+7 actually translates to in practical terms is, "The game is effectively bigger but the losers lose less at anonymous tables compared to the size of the game."

Another bit from the article that is in line with things I've heard about other sites:

97% of the Game Integrity cases we investigate are proactively generated, and just 3% are reported by players or operators.

theproksa - Thank you. I'm really glad you're so pumped on the Dynamic Avatars idea. We are too!

We have some plans that should partially address your concerns, but the highest stakes offering won't be coming out in Phase 1. Trust me, we want to find the best of both worlds wherever possible, and part of that is treating our highest stakes differently from the rest.

Thanks, Andy! It's very nice to see the excited comments like yours in between addressing all the serious concerns - although every question and concern is welcome :)

One question - you mentioned when someone leaves and return you'll still have any notes you made - how long does this last for?

The time frame isn't yet finalized. It's currently set at a few hours, but we're looking for feedback during testing, from the community, and even post launch, to find the best time frame.

Though I very much expected HUDs to be allowed I don't think Phil is doing a bad thing with the whole interactive approach. What I absolutely hate are anonymous high stakes. I want people to know who is the best and to have poker fans someone to look up to. I really don't like the fact Negreanu and Hellmuth are being considered the best among most non-serious players. It is somewhat offensive to me that the players who are truly the best will never get the recognition they deserve.

Thanks for your support, Everyday .

anyway, looking forward to further updates regarding rake structure, rakeback models, software options (simplicity options like hot keys, converting $ to BB) ect.

This will all be included in future updates, but to set your expectations accordingly: I'm quite happy about what we've put together for rake and rakeback, and I'm not thrilled with how far we'll be able to get by launch with software options. We are very much aware of what options are important to players, but we'll never reach launch if we wait to get everything in. We'll continue to add options over time, both during Phase 1 and once Phase 2 comes along, but this is an area that will be lagging a bit behind in at launch, unfortunately. We'll get there!

Quido :

What I absolutely hate are anonymous high stakes. I want people to know who is the best and to have poker fans someone to look up to.

I don't want to talk too much about a product that is further away but please keep in mind that I haven't said anything about our policies in our separate high stakes offering yet!

but to set your expectations accordingly: I'm quite happy about what we've put together for rake and rakeback

cheers Phil, sounds promising.. really looking forward to the next update!

We are very much aware of what options are important to players

absolutely no doubt about that!

Great idea and well explained, blindkitty1 - we've talked about this a lot. We probably won't get to it during Phase 1, but something along these lines is on our wishlist.

You mad brah?

Good points, AcefromSpace - we discussed this back during the conception of Dynamic Avatars. There's a post below with more critiques on the same topic. I'll explain our system and thoughts in more detail there, but you didn't misunderstand - players will see their own avatars. I hope you'll agree it's not a problem when I explain further, but if not, let's see if we can find a better solution together.

a little sneak peek how the "God Mode" expression might look like :D

We're launching with eight: one that represents a new player who's played under 10 hands, and the other seven representing different preflop stat ranges.

Adding to or altering the images and stat ranges isn't difficult, so let us know if you think eight is a bad number!

Everyday how did you know!?

To be honest, we first copied a name list from some website just because the software needed a list. We gave a little more care to whittling down a list recently, but I think we need to do a bit more. We'll keep an eye on diversity!

I understand, ibey33 . Some others have had similar feelings and I've talked about all of these things above in more detail, but to sum up:

• We want to be different and progressive, so we are trying to at least alter the wheel
• We can't split our player pool into 4 segments at launch when liquidity is so important. We'd be open to more options one day, but it's not a focus right now.

I explained everything as best I can in the post so that people understand where the decisions are coming from, but I know we won't win everybody over. I hope you'll give us a try, but I don't blame you if you want to stick with what you're used to.

Hey again Cheehc :)

Thank you for the ideas and feedback, as always. I'll hold off on commenting about rewards until I reach that post, but I can clear up one thing:

I purpose that you allow a user to set their own fixed avatar and their own screen name/login so that they always see that avatar when they play on a table.

I didn't explain this well in my post, but this is the system we are going with. From your perspective, you'll have the same screen name and avatar (which you select) at all times.

Awesome, Thanks for clarifying Phil :)
Can’t wait to hear about the reward structures!

I would love to bring back traditional screen names while banning HUDs, but I don't believe it's possible to do effectively. There would be far too much value in breaking the rules and some people would figure out a way to do it.

I understand security & fairness are most important. I am fine with whatever decision you will make on the end, because I am aware you (and your team) are making those decisions carefully with a lot of effort & time put in. My post was not ment to be critic in any way. Quite opposite, I salute to RIO and my post is written just to induce some new ideas, if possible:)

Thanks, ChipTracker :)

Comments and ideas are always welcome. I hope I didn't come across as upset by your feedback. If I get a little short in responding sometimes, it's likely because I've been at it all day and I'm trying hard to get a reply to everyone before going to bed or heading into meetings.

No worries:) It is amazing that you answer on all those posts, I hardly manage to just read them as many as I can. You can save some time by not replying on this one:)

I enjoyed this one too much not to reply :)

Thanks so much ItsPokaBruv! This is the type of comment I like seeing most because it's always been my hope that if we are transparent and explain our reasoning behind everything, the majority of the poker community would get behind us. It's why I had to share our HUD policy decision along with revealing two of our bigger features instead of spreading them out, and it's why I get frustrated when I can tell that someone hasn't read what I wrote but disagrees anyways :)

I think there will definitely be an adjustment period as you get used to playing without a HUD and start learning to quickly identify what the different expressions mean (and translate it into numbers you are used to or start thinking in expressions - I'm not sure), but I think/hope it'll feel natural after a little while.

Thanks for giving this a lot of thought, auskid89 .

Could it be an option that anonymity be a setting that can be turned off and on? Default is set to on but if I want to have a proper username, communicate with table mates I regularly play with or whatever it may be then I'm able to turn it on at my own risk? Back to HUD's, possibly this could tie in with that as well. If I turn anonymity off then people can use a HUD vs me and I vs them if they also turn it off.

I actually threw out an idea like this back in our earliest brainstorming days, but we decided against it because one player could act as the 'spy' for a group of players - he keeps himself identifiable and collects stats on other identifiable players and then shares those stats with friends and points out who is who on certain tables. It's not quite as bad as that sounds because the spy would need to be at the same table as his friend, but it's still a big edge to be had.

I get why you are sending out HH's 24 hours after but I must say, it's going to be very annoying manually entering thousands of HH's on a daily basis. Is it at all possible to allow a HUD for your own stats only during play?

We're going to include the option to automatically download the HH files after 24hrs, so you shouldn't have to manually import them (I haven't tested this personally so I'm not 100% sure it's in).

Is it at all possible to allow a HUD for your own stats only during play?

We've discussed something to help with this in Phase 2, but I don't think we can allow partial live tracking without being sure the software isn't doing more.

ahh, the good old days!

Thanks for saying that, and I'm glad you're liking what we're doing.

I don't need a HUD or to know each person I'm playing with. But I do want a sustainable environment where recs feel comfortable.

Well said. I wish I wrote that.

It would be nice if there was a high stakes table that was not anonymous, in case some pros wanted to recreate the RailHeaven days of old.

We've talked about this. RailHeaven - the other good old days! Our highest stakes games won't come until Phase 2, but we are going to make them a bit different than our regular cash games. I don't want to say much more for now.

And it would be great if you found a lawyer who would convince you to offer Bitcoin service to those of us in the U.S. :)

We'd probably be really successful right up until my arrest :)

Thanks, Andreas.

I understand the idea, and while I don't know whether or not it could work, it goes against what we plan to offer. Had we chosen to go ahead with HUDs on our site, we'd have explored ways to make it as fair as possible, and this type of suggestion would be discussed, but we decided on no HUDs for the reasons I went over in the post.

by the attitude in that post, its so obvious that this came from 2p2.
anyway, if i understood Phil correct, then your own avatar will always look static to yourself. so the fun player won´t realize via expression that he/she is playing like a maniac or a tiltmonkey. he/she will only see the expressions/playstyle from his competition.

Everyday I really hope that you are correct about that, as that would make it a moot point. Also I realize I've been posting nothing but criticism in this thread so far, so just to clarify my position: I am super hyped for RIO Poker and really want it to succeed.

It is a good point, id make the Hero's static.
It's basically session stats that are presented in a visual way, if there would not be such system the EV of getting an illegal session hud would be much greater.

I agree completely that we want players to not feel embarrassed or shamed into playing a certain way. If you guys feel our selected emotions do that, let's talk about which ones you think are problematic and see if we can make changes everyone is happy with.

Before that, let me explain the system in more detail...

The Hero sees their own Dynamic Avatar change just like everyone else's, based on the hands that they've played at that table. I believe that not changing the Hero's avatar would be a big mistake in terms of user experience, but I see some of you might disagree.

We won't be changing you from one character to another based on your play. You choose your own avatar and you'll see that character's range of expressions.

Some Designs

Here are all eight expressions for one avatar character put together. Everyone's will match something roughly like this (we are currently tweaking designs based on feedback from testers).

I separated these two because they are different from the rest:

• The top left avatar is what you would look like for your first 9 hands at a table. We wanted to find the right balance of not constantly changing everyone's expression, which might make people ignore their meaning, and not forcing people to wait too long before seeing an expression, which would be less fun and would make people miss their HUDs more. We settled on waiting for 10 hands before showing emotions.

• The bottom left sleeping avatar, which you've already seen, is used to represent the tightest category of player.

The Other Six

• The top row contains varying degrees of what I'd call anger. These are 'aggressive' expressions.
• The bottom row contains varying degrees of what I'd call happiness or fun. These are 'passive' expressions.

They lie on a spectrum:

• the leftmost expression represents tighter play
• the rightmost expressions represents looser play.

We did things this way because we didn't want to force you to memorize the meaning of 8 distinct looks. I know firsthand that if you're used to processing information with numbers on your screen and you need to switch to a system like this, it takes time before it becomes automatic.

Will Players Feel Judged?

There are a number of reasons I don't expect this system to cause many problems:

• You will see the expression that your avatar is showing represented in other players' avatars often (you won't feel singled out).

Anyone who's played with a HUD has seen 10, 20, and 50 hand samples and knows that a 60/45 can easily end up being a 22/14. Your own Dynamic Avatar will be constantly changing.

Even if you play an 11-hour session, and your expression more-or-less stops changing at some point, other players will be cycling in and out and showing all types of expressions.

• There isn't a single category, or even two categories, that all pros will fall into, even over a large sample.

Even if someone is the only rec at the table, and he plays a very long session and everyone else does too, he will very rarely be showing one expression with the other 5 players sharing a different expression.

• In the company of other expressions, I don't believe anything stands out as offensive.

With the exception of the 'New Player' expression and the 'Tight-Passive' expression, this is essentially just a collection of silly faces. If you're really mad, and the lady next to you is a little bit mad, and the guy across the table is 2/3rds as mad as you are... is that embarrassing?

Will Players Get Better?

I'll try to be brief here because this is too long:

1. It's not as bad for the games as people think if recs improve their preflop play. It can in some cases be good for the games.
2. Adjusting your game to reach a "pro expression" by using "bad expressions" to tell you which way to adjust will likely lead to as many extra mistakes as improvements.

Some recreational players want to improve and are going to seek knowledge in one way or another. Making incremental improvements is rewarding for them, and it makes the game much more fun. Many would quit if they felt hopeless in the games and like they weren't progressing.

Some players don't care about learning and they want to have fun. If sitting at a table that fills 2 seconds later followed by a waitlist of 15 players then seeing the table break as soon as they sit out doesn't deter them from playing, I don't think a really big smile will either.

Have you played with these avatars personally and felt what the user experience will be like? If so, did you like it?

user_name Great question that I don't have a great answer to (but at least it's honest!). I've played with them a lot, but until a relatively recent update the expressions weren't tied to the proper stats, so I'm very used to not looking at them for information.

I think they look nice and fun, but I need to dedicate some time to playing "for real" and processing the stat information. Currently, our testing sessions are very goal oriented - we have a number of reported bugs that developers have pushed fixes for that we need to test extensively and confirm that they're fixed, and we're not actually trying to play real poker - we're on a call saying "here, 3bet me and I'll close the table" and stuff like that. I've been extra busy lately with other work for the site (including writing posts and replying!) so I've bowed out of most test sessions over the last few weeks.

As mentioned, we're tweaking some designs now. The designs above are new, based on feedback from our first testers that the expressions weren't distinct enough to quickly identify, and they aren't in our current test build yet. We've told some of our early testers not to focus on looking for bugs and just to give us feedback about the experience for now. I think their feedback will be the best way for me to learn how good it feels. Once we get the new avatar designs in, they can let me know, but I'll also get in there and try it out.

Phil Galfond I would change the "@" symbols used for eye's, I associate this look with being crazy/wacky, and might be a bit too much judging. People can view aggro or loose passive as playing well/exploiting well and just playing there style etc. But when it feel's judged as crazy/wacky meaning definitely bad style people might not enjoy that qualification given to them.

The sleepy guy is a bit on the edge for me as judging, feels a bit like it's saying: "stop sleeping play more/faster" but I'm not sure how to change that one.

These are just my personal views

Thank you for being open minded and looking at different perspectives on everything. Good luck!

Hey, Phil Galfond
I really like these dymanic avatars. The design looks good and really fun.
If I was a new player to online poker I would love this idea. Even if a player does not understand these basics concepts of thigh/loose passive/aggressive, I'm pretty sure he will like it.

To serious players, would be good info on how villains are players.
To rec players, would be a fun thing, joking around vs other players, etc.
To those who are new and trying to learn is also a good idea to understand how they are playing and how they should adjust themselves.

Not to mention they are regulated by MGA, an organization notorious for stealing player's funds.
http://www.runitonce.com/chatter/malta-stole-our-poker-money/

Actually, since GTO bots play GTO, they will not be winning at a faster rate than exploitative play used by regs with HUDs.

There is only one type of mistake versus a GTO opponent and that is a pure strategy mistake. But since most options in poker are mixed strategies, it is harder to make mistakes versus a GTO player than an exploitative player because a good exploitative player will see errors in frequencies and adjust to exploit the fact that your mixing is incorrect.

Therefore, your theory is flawed.

galfondcabronn If you read through my post and the thread here, you'll see that I'm making every effort to engage with the community. In some cases, explaining (or you could say defending) our decisions, and in others seeking advice. In all cases, I keep an open mind and would be happy to learn from the experience.

You are welcome to feel however you'd like, and I'd be happy to discuss concerns you have, but if you're not going to put the effort in to work towards something productive, nothing would come of our discussion.

If you'll check the start of the thread, 4-Star_General came in with a very negative opinion of our decisions, and while I know he still disagrees with me, we've had a productive conversation and reached an understanding because he explained his opinions and was willing to listen to mine.

So, if you'd like to make a real post, I'm happy to talk. Until then I can say that I respectfully disagree with your opinions, other than that I'm doing a very good impression of a politician right now.

MALTASTOLEOURPOKERMONEY

Yikes, two of these replies in a row.

Let me know if you have a question, but please stop posting the same thing in multiple threads.

Yes I did read your reply but I found it rather insufficient. It basically was a political correct statement for "It's none of our business and frankly we don't care", which of course is indeed somewhat true, but the elephant in the room remains, which is the fact you are affiliated with people who steal money from poker players. A lot of us really needed that money and in my case it was the majority of my bankroll.

I understand you are upset over me tarnishing your good name, but you indeed do work with those, who live off of the stolen money of us, poker players.

Thanks very much, Thats_a_Bingo!

I'm happy you're seeing the same benefits that we saw by going this route.

We'll still have some improvements to make, which will come with a little time and user feedback, but overall I feel good about where we'll be at for launch in terms of the expressions working well.

Thanks soundofsilence!

You're right, of course, that if we want to directly mirror the analogy we would do it the way you meantioned.

As I quoted above:

This was more complicated to build than simply displaying the same information to everyone (based on all play since joining that table), but we didn’t want to create an informational imbalance, disadvantaging players who’d already been playing when a new player shows up. That would cause annoying, edge-seeking table hopping and it would punish the players who stuck around and put in more hands.

I guess a better way to put it is that Dynamic Avatars are a combination, attempting to represent the information you're used to online with the feel of live play.

Hey, all. I've got to get back to work, which will soon be interrupted again so that I can prepare my next post, which will lead to more discussion like this.

It took more time than expected to keep up with the thread here, and I'll still come in and address things when I can, but I can't promise to reply to every post like I was.

Thank you all for the great feedback and well thought out ideas. Please keep them coming.

Damn that's bold support of RIO poker.

Why? They will never know who you are, they can't study your folding range because they will never know against who they are playing...

I have the exact same feeling for mid/high stakes. This is completely non-sense. I don't understand why nosebleed would be different.

The no-hud is fair but this just hurt those that play a superior strategy. I don't understand why people are not more vocal about it.

'No way to ban huds'
1) ROI is taking away the need to use HUDs by not giving hand histories in real time, having dynamic avatars as a ‘hybrid HUD’ and giving people aliases so you can’t use Hand histories on previous sessions against someone because they have different usernames each session..

'Huds are a skill'
2) Sure, it is a skill. But to me it’s a different game of poker. ROI are choosing to be different and not allow that type of online poker game and offering a different option. If you want online poker with HUDs, you can play that version with those who enjoy that version.

'You are taking away the skill aspect and making it more luck'
3) Well you need less skill to win if ROI has lower rake than the other sites. So maybe that balances it out for you?.. if ROI have lower rake that is..

'Why no hybrid HUD and you can't enforce a Hud Ban anyway'
4) Dynamic Avatars is a hybrid of a HUD. And as Phil explained that they will still enforce it but they have worked more on prevention by how they have designed the policy’s - aliases, avatars, delayed hand histories - all so you can’t bumhunt me :p .

I don t know enough about software to know if the no HUD policy is truly enforceable but Phil said that he s aware that some will still try to make one and therefore is nullifying their value through the avatars. Interesting idea for sure and only time will tell if this is really the best way forward. Sounds like RIO is open to changing their policies if its not working out.

Secondly to all those worried about the lack of HUD killing your edge. I am sorry but you are just wrong. Some of the more famously soft games lately have run without a HUD or very limited ones due to anon screen names etc. I play anon or close to anon games all the time and there is definitely plenty of edge to be had. Yes you need to pay attention, learn to read the showdowns, use your "feel" HUD to get an idea who is who but the information is there. Just gotta listen a little closer. It will make mass tabling less profitable which is a good thing imo.

Creating an environnment where casual players feel more comfortable and welcome is a good thing. For your avg dude who just wants to play some cards and gamble a little money the online environment atm is not welcoming at all. The policies are not about taking the skill and edge out of the game. They are about making every player comfortable and welcome, not hunted and unfairly exploited. Put yourself in the shoes of a person working a normal 9-5 job, wants to chill and play a fun competitive game for a bit of money. You put your 100$ on the table, then the seats fill faster then you can buy in (seat scripts). Then guys seem to know your every move despite never having played against you (datamining). Then you read about HUDs are see walls of numbers beside everyones name. Very quickly this becomes a very unwelcoming environment for someone who just wants to casually play some cards. Probably just move on to playing Hearthstone instead.

The game must be fun and welcoming for casual players. Otherwise the game is doomed.

I read his whole post Cheehc, so I'm aware of this "plans". That's the baffling part and why I posted. They make no sense.

1) Having hand histories or not is irrelevant. Ignition doesn't provide HH's in real time and there are HUDs. And again, trust me here, there's ZERO way to enforce someone having a HUD. There's tons of methods to hide processes and decrypt data.
2) You're right, it's a different game of poker. It's online poker. The entire point is that you're going to give bigger advantages to regs over casual players and even some regs over other regs because HUDs will be available in the black market. Some of the biggest games at the time (back in the day) on pokerstars had underground real time data mining HUDs, that even top regs didn't know about, and they were expensive and word of mouth. Like $1k - $5/mo.
3) No.
4) The better approach is just allow the inevitable on HUDs, but do an approved and limited HUD. Some of this data is just way over the top. I think Pokerstars took the most intelligent approach in this area, but unfortunately they messed up other parts of their business model. If we could find a site that could do both (and I was hoping ROI would be that), we'd have a long term hit w/ all the regs and recs.

I just won't be playing here or encouraging others too. There are plenty of sites out there.

WM2k.. not having a HUD isn't about a lack of an edge. I think the same people who think this tend to not want to do the work at poker. Having a HUD is about using more complex data sets and knowing how to use that data appropriately. You dumb down this game when you make it about HUDs and avatars. The skill part about online poker, and the PRIMARY reason this game has move forward the way it has is because of HUDs, data collection, and analysis of that data. I've been playing online and live for over 15 years now. I've seen many stages of this game. I was part of teams that started looking at balanced ranges way back in the day, and that revelation came about after looking at poker track 1 data that was collected and thinking about the game on a deeper/ math based level.

As far as your anonymous site comments, I play on those as well. And the sites I'm sure you're talking about, aren't that way because they are anonymous. They are that way because they built their business on being a sportsbook first, and a poker site second. Those sites were always fishy, even before they were anonymous.

This is just one man's opinion. Despite the narrative Phil is laying out, this isn't something that will be good for the game. It might be good for his bottom line, and he's smart in selling everyone on this integrity edge stuff. That's great, but let's find a balance. If Phil himself understand live and online poker, then let's see it.

Online poker is not live poker. Let's not pretend it is, or dumb it down to where it's not as much of a challenge. It's a pointless endeavor imho.

How are they gonna know that your strategy is superior? Concerning about sharing a superior strategy is just absurd because currently you have the OTB_Redbaron's strategy way more exposed than you would have it on those RIO tables.

Airborne

Don't want to sound patronizing but you definitely not battling decent stakes ie 3/6-10/20 to talk like this. If I am battling some guys thousands of hands/day I don't want them to know my hole cards because they will get a good grasp of how I play.

It is not like the player pool in mid/high stakes is huge enough to say "hey I don't know who that guy is". Even in anonym setup I kind of know quite fast who is playing.

Finally about the whole OTB thing, I think you are talking about Educa. The comparison is irrelevant. Do you realize that playing a guy 20k hand in a 6max setup where he vpip 30% and where 30% of hands played go at showdown is the same than having the whole 20k hand sample ? Then you gonna say but screenname change etc. but again player pool is quite small in mid/high stakes as far as people that battle.

I know my voice is nothing here but I do have a very very large experience playing the 2/4-10/20 game and I can't imagine how those things can be right for the player.

I agree on this one, I believe mucked cards should be mucked forever for everyone in all circumstances & environments!

can as well add some famous movie characters/actors (james bond, indiana jones, and so on).

Live webcams imo

Yes, I agree (even if Samu is joking:P), webcam poker games would be the best, much more fun to play and many many problems would be "automaticaly" solved...of course, some other problems would occur but those problems would not be so much poker related and/or would more strike a less honest entities:P:)

With webcams comes another problem. Nobody wants to see punch of random dudes in their boxers and shirts off playing poker.

But there is an upside of that too, babes with&without shorts, panties, bras, etc. I am willing to take a risk:P:)

" Fish wont se the avatar expression that is not shark like and be offended or realise they need to improve, they will see the avatar they chose, only the other players will see the dynamic avatar based on his playing style. ( Non issue) "

That's actually not the case. Phil confirmed that players will be able to see their avatar's expression change, it's just that the avatar itself will always be the one you selected.

This is only real issue I have with the polices announced in this post. The software shouldn't be telling fish that there's something strange with their play by giving their avatar a goofy expression, imo.

I would not be surprised if that's RIO's goal, educate the fish, everyone a TAG, more money passing around (rake!), like that the site need less new deposit if the fish spew less. That and of course RIO will make money educating the fish, as a training site. It's a win-win for RIO.

if the certain rec/weak player will be assigned to some avatar,it would defeat the purpose of anonymous..everyone can see/target specific player if theres an indicator like avatar for weak/noob player based on stats

Good points, Apokerlypse.

Few of them raised me some questions too, so I will share them here:

Avatars. I like the idea, I am quite sure they would bring more fun and more social feel to the game. However, I too don't understand having dynamic expression on players own avatar. If you play in a live setting, you yourself get to judge your own play (and sometimes get random comments from other players present at the table) but your plan to do is kind of strategy feedback from 3rd party (poker room). You don't get that in a live setting. Well, one could argue you don't get instant reads on a strategy of others too, and to be honest I am not sure how to respond to that argument.
What happens if average weak player quicker realises he is a weaker player than his villains?
What I can think of is:
1) They will be more likely to start table selecting themselves
2) They will be more likely to be discouraged to play since they realise they don't have that much chance to win
3) They will more likely to start thinking improving their strategy
What are the implications of that?

Regarding bots, I think there would be no big difference how good they would be on this site compared to other sites, except maybe they could adjust slightly faster. So regarding bots I think what is more important is how good will they be in coping with them in general.

However, there definitely will be a market for hhs and private hh sharing rings so people and bot runners could perform player pool analysis. I am really interested what Phil Galfond thinks about that.

" The reality is most stats aren't useful until you have a massive sample size, which you will only get playing online. Online poker always has, and should, be different than live poker. I thought RIO was going to embrace this. Phil originally posted about starting a poker site whose goal was to ensure that the dream of being a professional was still alive and I don't see how anon tables factor into that dream at all. "

Yes online and live are different. Yes you need giant samples to get relevant data past VPIP/PFR/3b stats. Making games anon does not kill the professional dream.

The goal of the anon games and countering HUDs is to make the game more approachable to the avg casual player. Think of it this way. How much better would games be if even half the players who put a few hundred dollars per year into hearthstone, MTG, and similar card games put that money into playing online poker instead? Thats the group of people who alienated the most from online poker these days. They are the 9-5ers who just want to relax and click some buttons at an engaging game. They don t have time to learn how to use 150 stats. The reason for avatars over just numbers is to make that demographic more comfortable. When that demographic is more willing to spend their money on poker over hearthstone then we all win. Games are better so its good for the pro, the site wins as theres more games that run. They are the backbone of the industry.

You touched upon it already, but a human validation system, similar to the ones used by big software related companies would be a sure fire way to make botting a pain in the fucking ass, assuming it does work for the likes of Google. They could pop up at random intervals. I guess you have to consider the annoyance it would cause to honest players, but the upside in peace of mind would be enormous. Please strongly consider this possibilty.

Ye, some kind of random "captcha" for human validation during the game would be helpful and good option. And not really too much annoying if used smart (no need to pop up every 5 minutes)...

Also I'd appreciate if the Rake was higher with more rakeback % rather than lower Rake with lower rakeback!

I guess we found Negreanu's alt account.

Man o man, it lives! No wonder why we are so easily manipulated, btw I would prefer no rake and high rakeback:P:)

Nonono guys I'm talking about psychology. I'd prefer 5% Rake with 80% Rakeback than 2% Rake with 50% Rakeback. Both equals 1% effective Rake but the first one feels much more rewarding.

Phil Galfond, I'd appreciate it if there were more non-human avatars like animals and aliens and stuff like that. xD

I hope someone reads this..

I get what you mean, still achieving a high rakeback generally requires a lot of volume, which is something most would not like.

Yeah, I would like to have rake as low as possible, actually so low that there would be no room for rakeback anyomore!

I am one of those guys :)

However I do like to find reads on regs over multipe sessions, study their game and make counter strategies. That dynamic largely gets removed with anon tables but seeing hole cards face up should allow for another approach of doing that. I think the trade-offs are more than worth it overall.

tr00 tr00, I am against showing hole cards and I am not much fan of anontables but you are right, seeing hole cards later in combination with anontables will "compensate things" a bit and bring some new approaches and learnings to a game, hm ok...I ll have a Bud now:P:)

+1 here :)

I think rio training web site won't have anything to do with poker site. Would like to hear Phil insight on it

If I understand it correctly he is going to be a maniac.

Assessing confidence intervals in your reads is one of the more important skills in poker. Obv early in a session you take any statistical information you have on villains in the game with a grain of salt until you see showdowns, more hands etc to give you greater confidence in villains strategy. The exact same thing is done with HUDs. If you take a 20 hand sample on a villain then you need to take all the stats with a low confidence.

yes my friend, Russians are welcome.