PokerStars Makes Hole Cards Visible in All-in Situations

As a part of ongoing efforts to improve customer experience PokerStars recently announced it was making it mandatory to display hole cards during a game with all-in situations.

This was already in place in for PokerStars’s online tournament format but players in ring-games had had the option to hide their cards during live play.

This has now changed under the new rules.

This new move will bring the online game more in line with live poker events where cards are shown during all-in situations.

The change might be unpopular move for some players but hole cards have actually been always viewable from hand history files by which players can look over the cards or through the use of the PokerStars hand replayer. Similarly third-party poker tracking and hand analysing software’s like Hold’em Manager 2 also immediately display the cards in the hole after a hand is played. So the new rule is not a radical change.

On the positive side, the change will even out the playing field. Recreational players who weren’t using external software during their games will benefit from the transparency and it will make the game a lot more closer to the live poker tournament experience. Yet another advantage of the change is that players will now be able to see the odds of winning a hand along with the cards in the hole.

This again was viewable earlier, but only if the player had chosen to see the cards in the hole. With the default view now moving to having all cards visible, the information of the odds of winning the hand also is available to all players. This will further encourage recreational players since it will allow them to quickly see if their opponents are likely to go all-in without any more requirements. It will also be welcome in ring games particularly when the playing field is large where players can reload after losing a hand.

PokerStars has been introducing a number of new features and changes to its site in a bid to improve player experience especially for recreational players. The online poker giant which is the number one poker website in the world introduced a number of new measures in October 2015 aimed at restricting the usage of third-party software like HUDs, Game State Reporters or Hand or Situation Analysers. By the limiting the extent of their use, the site aimed to reduce the dependence of players on software and have them rely on their own abilities to win games.