Hand histories on Unibet: Time for a change?

[MoreTBC]

Today community members I would like to put forward the case for having downloadable hand histories on Unibet. I know it sounds crazy, everyone wants to live in a HUD free, even playing field and I'm fine with that. This is not about allowing HUDs, it's about being able to review your play after your session and track your own progress. I believe that by not being able to do this we are all collectively worse players than we should be.

If you were to take two identical players with identical skill sets and knowledge and put one on a site with hand histories available and one here on Unibet then after x months the player on the other site would be better. They would have access to more information and history to help analyse their weaknesses and fix leaks in their game that the Unibet player does not have. Everyone's learning and progression as a player (including my own) is being stunted by not having the ability to review play in a manner that is simple to obtain. The current solution of fixed text histories in the client is just not good enough when it comes to studying.

The possible solution?

- Hand histories available to download after x amount of time. 

This could be 24 hours, a week, a month. It doesn't really matter how long after (although the sooner the better as you want the hands fresh in your mind) but the ability to see your previous hands is the best way for you to learn when not playing. This delay in being able to view the histories also makes HUDs useless as they require instant information to function properly. 

- Anonymous hand histories.

The hand history would only contain the position of other players and their chips, no aliases. This way you cannot build up a database of opponents because the imported hands would only ever have the players marked as UTG or CO. In theory you could manually mark players in your tracking software but with the data being a day or more behind you couldn't do it in real time and would have to manually write down everyone's name as you play them and then remember where they sat each hand. This plus the ability to change aliases seems like a big enough deterrent for most players IMO.

 

I believe a combination of these two things would allow for players to get access to more information about their own play while still protecting the entire player base from HUDs and other predatory tools.

Do you agree or disagree? Have an alternative solution? Do you want hand histories at all?

The floor is open :)

[Sweeedeeen]

I disagree :)

[WuDu]

 

tenor

 

 

 

[KrustyTheClown]

The thing is funplayers won't have the time nor motivation to do this kind off studying.
As a result the skillgap will get even bigger :)

[ChapInAChair]

I completely agree with this. I'm happy not to have a HUD but it's infuriating how clunky the current hand histories are. The better players are still going to use 'proper' hand histories for study purposes but they'll just have games from other sites. I'd just settle for something very basic that can be copied and pasted into HRC or ICMizer rather than written laboriously every time.

 

[Rushbie]

Disagree @MoreTBC, and definite no to this idea. This whole UB idea is based to one thing, that you can play with your own brains against others, in your underwear. Just like in live games. If you want to use computers to do your memory job, go anywhere else.

 

[MoreTBC]

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@RushB wrote:

Disagree @MoreTBC, and definite no to this idea. This whole UB idea is based to one thing, that you can play with your own brains against others, in your underwear. Just like in live games. If you want to use computers to do your memory job, go anywhere else.

 

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I don't see that as being the ethos of Unibet at all. If that were the case they would be watching your desktop to make sure you don't have push/fold charts open and they wouldn't have multiple streamers giving you advice on how to play better. Live players also play a fraction of the hands  per hour/day so it's a lot easier for them to remember hand histories. The good live players are using tools to study those spots too.

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@KrustyTheClown wrote:

The thing is funplayers won't have the time nor motivation to do this kind off studying. As a result the skillgap will get even bigger

As players improve they move up stakes and they are met with players already at their skill level. All that happens is that this process is sped up if people can do work off the tables. The players that don't want to stay in the same pool at the bottom.

 

To the other people that just said 'No', what reasons do you have for not wanting histories?

[WuDu]

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@MoreTBC wrote:

If you were to take two identical players with identical skill sets and knowledge and put one on a site with hand histories available and one here on Unibet then after x months the player on the other site would be better. They would have access to more information and history to help analyse their weaknesses and fix leaks in their game that the Unibet player does not have. Everyone's learning and progression as a player (including my own) is being stunted by not having the ability to review play in a manner that is simple to obtain.

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So? I understand, you want to get better so you win more, that's OK. However one thing that makes Unibet great is that it protects recreational players. You might want to study your hands and run them through HEM or PT but the 55 year old house-wife from Leeds that decided to try poker in her free-time while her husband is watching football surely does not.

Unibet is a unique site with unique rules and a unique surrounding, that's why I and many other players (including you) play here and not at shartypoker, 666 or jokerstars. Being unique however also means that sometimes you have to compromise and this is one of those cases... 

[MoreTBC]

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@WuDu wrote:

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@MoreTBC wrote:

If you were to take two identical players with identical skill sets and knowledge and put one on a site with hand histories available and one here on Unibet then after x months the player on the other site would be better. They would have access to more information and history to help analyse their weaknesses and fix leaks in their game that the Unibet player does not have. Everyone's learning and progression as a player (including my own) is being stunted by not having the ability to review play in a manner that is simple to obtain.

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So? I understand, you want to get better so you win more, that's OK. However one thing that makes Unibet great is that it protects recreational players. You might want to study your hands and run them through HEM or PT but the 55 year old house-wife from Leeds that decided to try poker in her free-time while her husband is watching football surely does not.

Unibet is a unique site with unique rules and a unique surrounding, that's why I and many other players (including you) play here and not at shartypoker, 666 or jokerstars. Being unique however also means that sometimes you have to compromise and this is one of those cases... 

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I see no problem in the house-wife not studying. Those types of players can continue to play €1 MTT/SNGs and NL4 (or whatever stakes they're happy to play at). Players that do study and work off the tables move out of those stakes into more competitive levels.

Unibet already provide the information I'm asking for, I'd just like it in an easier format to process. Not providing downloadable hand histories is not a USP, it's a safety measure against predatory behavior. If the histories are anonymous and delayed then you can't bum hunt or collect information on opponents, only your own play.

[ChapInAChair]

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I see no problem in the house-wife not studying. Those types of players can continue to play €1 MTT/SNGs and NL4 (or whatever stakes they're happy to play at). Players that do study and work off the tables move out of those stakes into more competitive levels.

Unibet already provide the information I'm asking for, I'd just like it in an easier format to process. Not providing downloadable hand histories is not a USP, it's a safety measure against predatory behavior. If the histories are anonymous and delayed then you can't bum hunt or collect information on opponents, only your own play.

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This.

[monkeyheaven]

I'd benefit more than most from this proposal; I'm in the no camp.  

I agree completely that your growth as a player is stunted at unibet, partly because of the limitations on third party software and partly because the player pool is so weak. If you genuinely are motivated to be the best player you can be, the answer is to play on Stars.  You'll find the toughest games there, be forced to improve and have all the tools available for you to do so.  

I think unibets policy is to do all it can to provide a level playing field for recreational players. Couple of points you mentioned;

1.that it won't harm rec players who don't study because they will stay at the bottom with the other weak non-studying players.  This isn't true, recreational players don't view poker as a ladder to be climbed, they play stakes they want and can (hopefully) afford. This proposal would make an unlevel playing field for all recreational players.  

2.You are only asking for your own hh, other players in the hand would be anonymised therefore it's not predatory.  I disagree, ok it's not as predatory as HUD's, but it would enable me to use my db to construct a strategy that maximally exploits the player pool as a whole. At the moment I make adjustments versus the players I have reads on, but the random recreational players I have a fixed strategy; is it profitable in a sng for me to reshove K6s for 15bb from bb vs random btn open?  Probably, but it certainly would be nice for me to have 500k hands to analyse so I can see for sure if I'm profiting vs this player pool.  

I agree it's annoying not having hh, but this is the compromise to create a fairer environment for rec players. 

[Balonas]

If you want to study so much, why don't you just record your sessions and review all the spots that you think are interesting, all the big pots and so on. Just my 2 cents... :)

I want to play poker without any software help, no stats, no nothing, just pure ❤️♥️❤️ poker.

[FeelsBadMan]

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@monkeyheaven wrote:

I'd benefit more than most from this proposal; I'm in the no camp.  

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I agree with pretty much all you said but I wonder about this statement. I'm sure that you would be more effective that almost anyone on unibet in using those stats to improve your game, but, as a player that refined his game on other sites using those stats already and has a lot of experience and knowledge, doesn't a no answer benefit you the most since the actual improvement in your ROI won't be massive? While a yes answer would masively benefit any unibet exclusive regs that maybe aren't able to get to the next stage, like from the 4's to the 10's or from 10's to 25's without being break even or losing, or just the regs or more tech savy recs that would use software, or spreadsheets or whatever. While their study might not be as efficient and effective I think they would have the most to benefit from this, helping them move up and to increase their ROI masively. Also if the regs want to improve their game (using stats) they have to go play on other sites, therefore making the games even softer than they are already for the players that already have the knowledge brought from other sites / coaching / etc.

[Pike_Haxton]

Completely agree. This would not give anyone an unfair advantage at the tables but it would help Unibet players to improve as a collective and therefore strengthen then community. 

[Pike_Haxton]

Surely, If the player pool at Unibet is a level playing-field of fun playing recs, The sharks from other sites will gravitate here anyway as the games will become ludicrously soft over time...

[MoreTBC]

@monkeyheaven

You raise a few good points. I'm not sure how it would make it unfair for all recreational players though. If I for example am an NL4 player and I start studying my HH, start winning more and move up to NL10 I am then not in the NL4 pool anymore (where you expect the majority of the recs to be). If there are recs that play NL10 then I'm just another player playing at the NL10 stake with an NL10 skillset which the recs already play with every day. It might make the higher stake games a little tougher as more people move up but the lower end of the games should remain as they are now or possibly get even softer. 

I agree with your second point to a degree but I think you're putting too much value on tendencies in a player pool that is so varied. After 500k hands you may be able to work out if K6s -was- a profitable shove over a button open but is you knowing what happened in the past games really harming a recreational/new player? How many of those 500k hands are actually going to be that exact situation? A couple hundred or so? That doesn't seem like a huge edge to be gaining when you can't tie the decision down to a player, only a position. Yes that's just one scenario out of hundreds of thousands and if you start adding them together the edge increases but eventually you hit a point where you make enough to move stakes and you're back to square one in regards to hand histories and whether you K6s shove is profitable.

I'm maybe missing something really obvious but I can't see the whole pool becoming tougher because there are hand histories available for review. Not only will everyone not use them, of the players that do not all of them will use the information correctly and actually improve. The players that do will just move further up the stake levels and further away from the stakes I imagine the majority of the recreationals play.

 

@Balonas

You're absolutely right. I could record every session and manually review hands that way just like I can use the client based hand histories. What I can't do is find out if I'm losing chips in the small blind over an entire session or find out how often I got it all in with a flush draw and lost. Neither of those bits of information harm any other player but are valuable to me.

I completely agree that there should be no software help or stats while you play, nobody is disputing that. Getting information tomorrow about what hands I've played today does not affect that. Real-time HUD stats and historical hand information are two different things. I do not want the first one, just the option for easier access to the second one for everyone.

 

[monkeyheaven]

@MoreTBC, I'm just going on what I've seen unibet reps say in the last, which is that they want to create a positive environment for new and rec players that is a level playing field for them.  I'm not passionately for or against this approach, I played for years on stars and used every piece of software that would give me an edge, I'm happy either way.  My interpretation, and a Unibet-rep has said this to me before when I had a request, is that they're not going to do things that primarily benefit regs/pros at the expense of recs.  hh will be used mainly by regs/pros to improve faster, poker is zero sum, this improvement will come at the expense of recs.

@FeelsBadMan, yeah, you might be right, there's others that would improve more if there were decent hh available, I prob put in more than double the volume of the next highest volume reg though so I can push any extra edges I gain pretty hard.  You're right, regs that put in the work with hh would benefit and improve faster, but isnt this precisely what Unibet is trying to prevent?

@Pike_Haxton, yeah I don't think having better hh would be unfair exactly, but it would only be ever be used by regs to get better, it's kinda similar to the old HUD argument, there's nothing unfair about them either,  but a lot of recs don't like it, I tend to be in favour of doing things that recs like, for the long term future of the game.

Your why don't all the sharks play on Unibet question is one I ask myself a lot.  One reason is because of lack of decent hh.  A lot of regs are backed/staked, and this usually involves coaching and hh review to help the stakee improve and to ensure the backer isn't actually bankrolling a fish.  Very difficult to do this on Unibet.  Do you want to make it easier for stables of regs to play on the site?

Careful what you wish for.

[ArtyMcFly]

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@monkeyheaven wrote:

Your why don't all the sharks play on Unibet question is one I ask myself a lot.  One reason is because of lack of decent hh.  A lot of regs are backed/staked, and this usually involves coaching and hh review to help the stakee improve and to ensure the backer isn't actually bankrolling a fish.  Very difficult to do this on Unibet.  Do you want to make it easier for stables of regs to play on the site?

Careful what you wish for.

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This is a good point. One reason some staking/training groups don't even allow their members to play on Unibet is that there are no hand histories. If it was easy to collate hand histories for tracking purposes, I suspect a few more pros would be hitting the tables.

Personally, I'd love to have anonymous hand histories just so I could chuck them in ICMizer to find out how much of a lemming I am (instead of doing it manually), but I don't see any major benefits to the site as a whole by programming some functionality that really only benefits a small number of players, especially considering those players are likely to be net withdrawers rather than depositors.

[KrustyTheClown]

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@monkeyheaven wrote:

 

Your why don't all the sharks play on Unibet question is one I ask myself a lot.  One reason is because of lack of decent hh.  A lot of regs are backed/staked, and this usually involves coaching and hh review to help the stakee improve and to ensure the backer isn't actually bankrolling a fish.  Very difficult to do this on Unibet.  Do you want to make it easier for stables of regs to play on the site?

Careful what you wish for.

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+1 🆗

[Pike_Haxton]

I'm not really too bothered either way. I'm glad to have a site that isn't exactly like all the others, though I do like to go over hands occasionaly and try to improve. I think lack of HUDs puts the sharks off more than lack of Hand Histories but the majority of opinion here seems to be to keep the site history free and I'm cool with that. I'll agree to disagree but it won't stop me playing here.

Btw, I wasn't asking why sharks don't come here, I was saying they will eventually, regardless. 

[WuDu]

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@monkeyheaven wrote:

 

Your why don't all the sharks play on Unibet question is one I ask myself a lot.  One reason is because of lack of decent hh.  A lot of regs are backed/staked, and this usually involves coaching and hh review to help the stakee improve and to ensure the backer isn't actually bankrolling a fish.  Very difficult to do this on Unibet.  Do you want to make it easier for stables of regs to play on the site?

Careful what you wish for.

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Underrated comment! Whether it's true or not nobody can say, but that really makes sense!