- “There’s nothing [surer] for me that the downloadable hand histories and HUDs won’t be around in poker in three to four years’ time.”
- “It’s a social world now and I think online poker, unfortunately, has been left in the doldrums.”
- Partypoker is planning a Twitter-like verification “tick” at the tables, which will include face verification via webcam.
- Operator is planning a full switch to using real names, though it will be a phased roll-out.
Partypoker executives have defended their recent controversial changes to ban HUDs and remove downloadable hand histories and has promised dozens more changes in a bid to improve the cash game experience at its online poker room.
The comments came during a wide-ranging interview conducted by pokerfuse last week with Tom Waters, Head of partypoker, and Rob Yong, a partypoker partner overseeing the company’s ecology changes.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen really with this release,” said Waters. “It was a massive gamble to take away these hand histories.”
Last week, partypoker rolled out an update to its client that stopped saving hand histories to the hard drive. This prevents players from using a variety of third-party tools, including HUDs and tracking software.
It also forced players to change their screen name to effectively “wipe the slate clean,” nullifying any accumulated statistics on opponents’ playing style.
“Publicly the response from players has been good, numbers have been good, we’ve been happy with what we’ve seen so far. It’s early days, but it looks like it’s the right decision for us,” Waters said.
