Hand Histories Are For Player Protection
Hand histories allow players to …
- Identify and report patterns of play that are indicators of potential cheating or bot accounts.
- Hold poker sites accountable for internal threats to game security.
- Review and verify the integrity of card distributions across large samples of their hand histories.
Effective June 17, 2019, partypoker has eliminated hand histories that protect your safety and security while playing on their site. Hand histories are the single most important tool for online poker transparency and your online poker playing security. Without hand histories, partypoker players have lost the only tool for them to help identify possible cheating, bots and collusion. Without hand histories, partypoker players can no longer effectively review and audit their playing history. Without hand histories, partypoker is now much less accountable to their players.
Players on partypoker are effectively now being asked to "Trust Us But Don't Verify".
Hand histories help uncover $20 million cheating scandal
According to the Washington Post in 2007 and 2008: "The scandals at Absolute Poker and UltimateBet only erupted after several frustrated players began investigating the cheating on their own."
Hand histories were the starting point for the investigations initiated by some of the players. While these cheating scandals did not involve partypoker, there is no reason for an online poker player to subject himself to the heightened risk associated with a site not providing hand histories. The player's ability to help police the integrity of the games starts and stops with hand histories which the site should provide to every player in every hand.
Police no longer need citizen reports
In April 2019, partypoker reported 39 account closures during the month, and that 38.5% (15) were directly attributed to reports submitted by players.
This was possible to report because, at the time, partypoker players had access to hand histories. Now they do not. It is the analysis of hand histories that is integral to a player's ability to detect certain patterns of play that are key indicators of cheating and bots.
Would anyone really feel more protected if their local law enforcement said we no longer need the community to file citizen reports of crimes?
partypoker seriously said this?
“I am absolutely like 100% sure that partypoker will eradicate all bots, collusion, and cheating …”
That is a quote from Rob Yong who is the self-proclaimed decision maker for the elimination of hand histories at partypoker.
Would you trust an antivirus software that claims “we will eliminate 100% of all current and future viruses and you will never again be the victim of an attack of any kind”.
No benefits to removing hand histories
REMOVING HAND HISTORIES UNLEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD
The removal of hand histories by partypoker did not prevent illegal software from being used on partypoker . . . it just ensures that now only a small percentage of players that are willing to violate the rules will have them.
This video is published with the permission of the 3rd party developer that was able to create a hand history even after partypoker quit providing them to their players:
Are Now Only Available To Those
That Don't Play By The Rules
A Few Good Detectives
Hand histories protect ALL players. Even those that don't use them.
A bot or cheating ring doesn't just cheat a single player. By the time they are detected, the account may have played against 1000's of opponents. Your fellow player that used hand histories to identify and report the account is, in actuality, reporting on behalf of all of the opponents that might have been cheated.
There are no good bots!
According to Rob Yong, "A loss making bot must be the best thing for a site but obviously it doesn’t matter you can’t have bots playing poker.”
Once again, Rob Yong is the self-proclaimed decision maker for the elimination of hand histories at partypoker.
Should the management of a major online poker site consider bots to be good for their site under any circumstances? If a bot is able to beat players of a certain skill level but overall is a losing bot because of more highly skilled players, is that “the best thing for a site”? The less skilled players that are unable to beat the bot might be of a different opinion.
What can I do?
The most important thing you can do is communicate to other players and to partypoker the importance of hand histories to protecting the integrity of online poker.
- Make other players aware of this significant threat by sharing ProtectOnlinePokerPlayers.com via tweets, blogs and forum posts. This website explains the magnitude of the risk to players from partypoker’s actions and also discusses the complete lack of any credible argument to support removing hand histories.
- Tell partypoker your concerns about the increased risk to game security and game integrity that has resulted from removing hand histories.
- Contact each of the following gaming commissions and express your concerns about the risk to partypoker game integrity that has resulted from the elimination of hand histories:
- Vote with your rake! Only support poker sites that provide their players with hand histories.