Been seeing more chatter lately about rooms and sites getting stricter around solver use, real-time tools, all that caper, and I reckon it was bound to happen. Game was starting to feel a bit cooked when every second bloke had the same sterile lines, same tiny bets, same auto-pilot decisions like they were copying homework instead of actually playing cards.
My hot take: people have gone way too far worshipping charts. Studying is fine, obviously. If you want to learn spots properly, good on ya. But heaps of players took the wrong lesson from all this software stuff and ended up trying to play like robots in games that are nothing like theory land. Live low stakes especially... mate, half the table is limping, calling too wide, overvaluing rubbish, and then someone tries to run some fancy balanced line into them for no reason. Just punish the mistakes and take the money. Doesn’t need to be bloody art.
The news side of it that interests me is whether these crackdowns actually change how people prepare. Do more players go back to note taking, population reads, hand reviews, old school discussion with mates? Or do they just hide the tools better and keep doing the same thing? That’s the bit I’m curious about, because banning one thing doesn’t magically make people think for themselves again.
I’m still keen on learning solid fundamentals, don’t get me wrong, but I’d rather face someone who understands why a play works than another copy-paste wizard glued to a chart. Feels better for the game if there’s a bit more judgement and a bit less pretending every $1/$2 table is the WSOP final. What are you lot seeing lately — more exploitative play coming back, or is everyone still married to solver-approved lines?