Got full hand histories, use them? If so, what to look for?

[The Velour Fog]

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start requesting HHs for every session. what site is this on?

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[xwillience]

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Is the following an applicable comparison?

"Is it ethical to study poker strategy on forums and in books when you know your opponents don't? Is it ethical to not tell your opponents you are a student of the game?"

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you and I both know that those are [censored] questions.

[Pokey]

There's something vaguely ironic about "ethical questions" in a game where we specifically seek out uninformed, stupid, and (ideally) drunken opponents to swindle out of monumental amounts of money. And yet, somehow, we make all these bizarre ethical rules for ourselves and stick to them as though they meant something. (Don't believe me? Ask grimstarr what happens to high-stakes angle-shooters who have the audacity to *gasp* LIE to their opponents in a game of deception.)

In a game of incomplete information, the person with the most information wins. Still, we make these categories about ways that we can gain information that are "legitimate" and "unethical."

If our opponent flips his hand face up in the middle of playing, none of us would be averse to using the extra information to play properly. If our opponent accidentally holds his cards in a way that makes it easy for us to see them, some of us would have a big ethical problem with looking at them. If we use a mirror or accomplice to spy on the hole cards of a player who is careful with his cards, almost all of us would call that unethical. The source of the information is often key in determining if its use is acceptable or not.

In this situation, I think the potential gain from abusing this information is really small -- a handful of opponents, a handful of games, and only past information. The "ethical" choice would probably be to alert your poker site about the error (just as if you were in a home game you would alert your friend to the fact that he had a mirror on the wall behind him and you could see his cards). Beyond that, the +EV from pouring over 1000 hands from a few random players is probably outweighed by the loss of table time. Even ignoring the ethical issues, the practical limitations mean that it's probably not worth the trouble to spend hours to squeeze some nickels out of a few players.

[SonOfWestwood]

Pokey, as usual, what you said makes a lot of sense. I'll go ahead and let the poker site know about their error.

[Worm75]

Personally, I think that you have to look at them, free info like that, and it is not like you went out of your way to get it maliciously. Thnk the poker gods and get to wrk.