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Among all online gambling platforms, online poker is the favorite. The further growth of online poker has caused many gaming software developers to create programs that aid online poker players to play better. These online poker tools however raise several concerns starting from how evenhanded it will be for other players if one is advantageously assisted and what tools are considered acceptable or not.
There are several methods wherein a player can get better at an online poker game. He can read books on online poker or he can harness his skills by gaining more experience. Yes, that method can be so archaic yet this is the purest form to hone anyone's poker skills. On the other hand, there is colluding with other players or colluding with oneself; the latter considered to be an expert form of collusion and downright cheating.
In between these two extreme points are the online poker tools that make you a better online poker player without the need of waiting too long until you become considerably good. Generally, using online poker tools is okay as long as it doesn't give the player the full capacity to overthrow the game to his advantage. When it does, that's when it starts being unfair and too close to cheating.
There are basically three general tools that are regarded as admissible. Charts, services, and tools such as poker odds calculator, those that recommend a player's start hand, and etcetera, are acceptable since it only gives a possibility and is not directly advising what exact move to take. There are also tools that calculate the profiles of a player's opponents however the information used to fill its portfolio are the ones that have been accumulated with every online poker game played. This is also non-intrusive since the player don't get to fully dissect his opponent and his hand histories even before playing together in a game. Lastly are Macros and Hotkey programs that don't have any direct bearing on game play logic. Let's take for example creating hotkeys of innovative new style (*Key Combinations* and *Key Sequences*) for various tasks (open documents, run programs, play media, shut down computer, etc) and keyboard/mouse macros.
Now let's move on to what is by large considered as ill-favored online poker tools and too close to cheating. First are programs that let players conspire with each other and those that shares card hole data. Secondly is a tool or program that acts as a central database for online poker player profiles and hands played. This gives a player the unfair advantage of understanding his opponent's strategies through hand histories. The practice of observing games as a non-player for a long period so as to gather information regarding other players' hand histories is called datamining; and is our third practice that's deemed unacceptable. It is comparable to the central database however a manual process is used to collect the profiles. Fourth, is a program, a "bot", or an auto-folder that plays without the need of any human interference or reduces the need for one. This is prohibited basically since the player's opponents are playing against a "bot" while he barely exerts any effort to the present online poker game. Lastly the tools or programs that can be seriously considered as cheating are online poker coaching software or platforms that spoon-feed the appropriate action to take as a direct game advice. Now where is the fun in that?
The morality of an online poker player depends on his sportsmanship values. Now that we have discussed the tools that are generally accepted and those that are not, the choice is still dependent on how a player plays his online poker. Just remember when online poker operators discover that you are cheating, there is always a corresponding penalty.
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