Posts Tagged ‘heads up display’

In response to my recent The Poker Ethicist: HUDs post, Piefarmer left an interesting comment that got me thinking about a few more of the ethical dimensions surrounding HUDs and other technology that helps people play better poker:

Technology always pushes the boundaries, especially ethical boundaries. The primary way to think about these boundaries, I think, is the way Andrew presented them: Does everyone have the same understanding of what is allowed, and the same opportunity to use technologies which are allowed? If so, no ethical problem.

I think the conditions that he identifies are spot-on, and I want to delve a bit deeper into them. This time around I’ve got more questions than answers, so I’ll be very curious to hear your opinions on the subject.

The Right To Know

My claim is that use of any technology allowed by the rules of a casino or poker site is ethical, and that using anything disallowed is unethical. This is because, by choosing to play at a particular venue, players agree to both their host and their fellow players that they will follow the posted rules.  Read the complete post...

Thanks to everyone who sounded off on the special HUD edition of “What’s Your Play?”. As always your comments were thought-provoking, and I was actually led to conclude that the answer isn’t as open-and-shut as I thought.

I’ll start by giving you the results, and then I’ll let you know how and why I made the decision that I did and what my thinking is on the most relevant HUD statistics.
UTG ($1570)
MP ($1124)
Button ($2200)
Hero (SB) ($1000)
BB ($1017)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 7, K
3 folds, Hero bets $40, BB calls $30

Flop: ($80) 6, 8, 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $55, BB calls $55

Turn: ($190) K (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $150, Hero calls $150

River: ($490) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $772 (All-In), Hero calls $755 (All-In)

Total pot: $2000 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had 7, K (two pair, Kings and sixes).
BB had A, 10 (one pair, sixes).
Outcome: Hero won $1997

When I checked the river, it was with the intention of calling a reasonably sized bet. If Villain bets something in the neighborhood of $300, he can conceivably be value betting as wide as A8, and my K7 is an easy call. As many of you pointed out, the overbet almost certainly polarizes him to air or hands that are better than mine. I suppose he could be shoving a worse K, in which case we’d chop, but that’s not going to be a major consideration.  Read the complete post...

As “The Poker Philosopher”, and in honor of one of my favorite non-poker blogs, I occasionally consider the ethical dimensions of a high-profile controversy in the poker community. In this edition, I address a long-standing controversy in the online poker world, in response to a question about Heads-Up Displays (HUD’s) posed in a recent comment. Older editions of The Poker Ethicist are available in the archives.

In response to a recent post I made about using a HUD, commenter “Elmer Fudd” asked,

“I would like you to comment on the ethics of using a HUD in the first place. It most certainly gives you an edge over players that don’t use such software and provides you with stats that you couldn’t readily obtain during a live game. I guess I’m an old-fashioned poker purist, but anything that gives you a slight edge over other players is cheating. “

I would say anything that gives you an unfair edge is cheating. Sleeping and eating better than my opponents gives me an edge. Reading more books than they do gives me an edge. Using a second monitor gives me an edge over opponents attempting to multi-table on a single monitor. Yet none of these is unfair, because my opponents have equal opportunity to take advantage of them.  Read the complete post...