Poker Calculator Report: Poker Stars Are About To Get Tougher On Bot-Like Software

Poker Stars, the dominant force and market share leader, is about to take even more steps to ensure that all of its players enjoy the fairest gaming environment on the Internet. Already with the strictest policy regarding third party support software, the Poker Stars security department has decided that they need to go further due to recent changes in the third party programming market.

The changes being referenced are an increasing number of third-party designers creating products that they blatantly market and claim to have a dishonest advantage to users when they use their software while playing real money online poker.

Last year, I was testing a product called Poker Edge for review when, during my testing, a window appeared on my poker table alerting me to stop using the software. I later received an email that if I continued to use Poker Edge or related products, my account and the funds in it would be confiscated by Poker Stars. I was testing for less than an hour when that happened.

I later got information from Poker Stars management as to why Poker Edge was not allowed and they clearly demonstrated to me their black hat programming that actually mines data through a user community. This data, which can show an opponent’s playing style and cash win/loss record, can be used by the user of the software to their advantage. The idea is that you can join a table of players unknown to you and sit down with a dossier of information and history of those players who have been tracked by others who have played with them before.

This crosses the line in regards to Poker Stars as an unfair advantage, and you can lose your account and funds for using Poker Edge and the like.

To push the fairness issue even further, previously accepted poker calculators such as Calculatem Pro WinHoldem and Poker Pro 2007, which offer “bot” recommendations such as bet, raise, check or fold, will also likely be banned, as those features are included in a new black sentence. -issue called “programmable profiles” which essentially refers to a software’s ability to offer advice to the user based on an opponent’s play style.

When you download software from a poker site with the intent to play online, you also agree to the terms during the download process. One of those implied terms is that the site, in this case Poker Stars, has the power to scan your hard drive whenever it sees fit. One could very well assume that this is random “scanning”, but the speed at which Stars knows it is using black hat software leads me to believe that it is much more frequent than random scans.

I think the Poker Stars think tank correctly realizes that it needs to set the standard on this issue as an integral part of helping to maintain its now dominant market share. Other sites like Full Tilt, Absolute, and Ultimate Bet should take note here. Ultimately, Poker Stars is correct in believing that this problem will be an underlying motivation to play on any poker website.