My comments on WSEX's latest update and the missing names in the HH's

[WSEX GM]

My fellow Posters,

The two features that were added in the latest release were Hand Histories to Hard Drives and the ability to play four tables at a time. When I posted a couple of months ago asking for suggestions, there were three items the posters here felt were the most important, HH to hard drives, the ability to play more than three tables at a time, and 6-Max. We have delivered on the first two items and for the time being are offering 5-Max instead of 6-Max.

There were no changes to the way rake is calculated or the way rake back is distributed.

Everything else that has been suggested is being considered and the vast majority of it will be added in time. Connectivity is still an issue for some more than others. We will continue to work on improving it until there are no complaints. Disconnect protection has been rewritten and will be released in an intermediate update within the next couple of weeks if all tests well.

The lack of player names in the hand histories has been the subject of some passionate debate here on 2 + 2. I’ve personally read every post on the topic. There were some who suggested this format in my suggestion thread. I would expect the sentiment for including names to be stronger here than anywhere else, yet in an informal poll on this site less than 50% of the respondents wanted the player names. But this is not about polls, this is not a democracy, this is a poker room, a rake free poker room.

A few years ago I went on a fishing trip with a friend. He took me down below and showed me all of this computer hardware that allowed him to track the big fish below, have the boat stay on course with the fish, and even adjust its speed accordingly. I looked at him and said, “This isn’t fishing, it’s hunting.”

It’s not much different here. WSEX wants to offer its customers a rake free poker room, not a platform for professionals to data mine and target weaker players with the assistance of automated software. We are trying to offer a level playing field for people who want to play poker, not treat our poker room like a strip mining operation.

We provide players hand histories to hard drives to study their own play, that’s why many of you claimed you needed it. (As well as for our Wednesday Aces promotion) All of a sudden it is clear who wants it to study their own play and who wants it to profile other players. Big difference!

I’m comfortable with my decision at this point. Many of you have praised it as innovative and forward thinking. If I had gone the other way I am sure some would have complained as well. If there are less multi-tabling professionals at the tables and the recreational players last longer that’s fine with me. I’m not saying all professional multi-tablers never place a sports or casino bet, and that all recreational poker players do at some point, but the bulk of each class is certainly more likely to behave in that fashion than not.

Nothing is set in stone. We will constantly evaluate all of these decisions. We will also continue to repair and enhance the software until everyone agrees it is the best platform available. We will do more advertising in the future, as soon as we overcome a few more issues. In the meantime I hope you all enjoy the millions of dollars in rake back that we have paid to the poker community every Monday. Yes, it’s really in the millions.

Fred Balfour
General Manager
WSEX.com

[iH8poker]

Kuddos!!

[lotus guardian]

Gotta love WSEX!!

[William]

Very, very nice. Congrats!
Let party keep the robots.....

[APerfect10]

[ QUOTE ]

The lack of player names in the hand histories has been the subject of some passionate debate here on 2 + 2. I’ve personally read every post on the topic. There were some who suggested this format in my suggestion thread. I would expect the sentiment for including names to be stronger here than anywhere else, yet in an informal poll on this site less than 50% of the respondents wanted the player names. But this is not about polls, this is not a democracy, this is a poker room, a rake free poker room.

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In reality this is a business where you should be trying to attract as many players as you can. Removing names in the hand histories is a decision that will ultimately limit your customer base. The fact is, there are players (like myself) who will never play at your site as long as there are not player names in the HH. Vice versa, I can not imagine players flocking to your site (regardless of what others might claim) for the simple fact that there are no names in the HH.

[ QUOTE ]

It’s not much different here. WSEX wants to offer its customers a rake free poker room, not a platform for professionals to data mine and target weaker players with the assistance of automated software. We are trying to offer a level playing field for people who want to play poker, not treat our poker room like a strip mining operation.

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I'm not sure what you mean by assitance of "automated software". To me that means bots and obviously no one wants bots. HUD's are not automated software. They are informative. That is a HUGE difference.

If your goal was to eliminate HUD's then you failed miserably. Removing names from the hand history is a cheap fix that could easily be worked around. The same goes with datamining. There are several other methods you could have taken to ensure that neither HUD's or datamining take place on WPEX. Btw, playing in a hand and collecting information about that hand is not data mining...

This decision comes across to me as a decision made by an 'emotional' thinking poker player. Not a business exec who is trying to expand his companies business...

I guess there really are downfalls to a no rake room especially when they have ulterior motives...

[2/325Falcon]

Great [censored] post!

Edit: Will WSEX be getting World Backgammon Exchange back up and running?

[iH8poker]

That may be why the $5k tourny is overfunded by $2500, with 10 minutes to go. Thank you guys!

[mjkidd]

Great decision. I love playing at WPEX, and I can't be more pleased about this choice. With rakeback and the Aces promotion on Wed, you're easily the most generous poker room on the web.

One of these days, I'm going to bet a football game. Seriously.

[NDHand]

If datamining is such a concern, why not do like Pokerstars? Allow names to be shown in hand history but make datamining a bannable offense. This way we can have our database + HUDs keeping track of people we play against without WSEX becoming a "stripmining operation". IMO, this explanation sounds very shady and is only done because, most probably, WSEX simply doesnt want to allocate additional ressources to the system writing hand histories locally and decided it would be cheaper to throw in some PR-friendly 'explanation' to satisfy the players.

[StellarWind]

Your comments are very well-reasoned. You seem to have a vision for your business and you have been kind enough to share it with us. That makes you twice unusual in an industry that abhors being honest with its customers.

Thank you very much!

[ QUOTE ]
All of a sudden it is clear who wants it to study their own play and who wants it to profile other players.

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Now I will be honest--I want to study my own play, I want to datamine, but I don't want anyone else to be able to datamine [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img].

Of course I can't have what I want but I really appreciate what you have done. I'd still be stuck in the microlimits if I couldn't study my play. That's the truth and it makes hand histories essential and storing them to hard drive instead of email makes the game much nicer to play.

No datamining is good for the game and good for your business. It's got all the apple pie virtues that have been discussed. Your site should be fun for the fish and profitable for good players. Can't ask for better than that.

I have one very serious concern. Software workarounds may be developed to allow names to be associated with hand histories. Or someone may develop a tool for datamining directly from the screen/client without using your hand histories. I'm sure a dozen bright people around the world are already working on it.

That would be totally unacceptable. I won't play on a site where some people datamine and use HUDs but I can't. Unfair and intolerable. You have to ensure that your new playing field remains level.