PokerTracker 4, Holdem Manager 3, Hand2Note, Jurojin and StarsCaption all have to be closed before the GGPoker client opens, under a ban on all third-party poker software and automation tools that GGPoker announced on 15 October 2026.

The ban is one of five measures in a GGPoker blog post the same day. The others: four optional client security features, a system GGPoker calls Win-Rate Anomaly Detection, the end of Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and macOS Big Sur support in 2027, and a section on the victims.

GGPoker never allowed an external HUD; its feature guide lists the Smart HUD as the only permitted overlay, so a HUD was never at stake.

What changed is the tools GGPoker says it used to permit because they did not affect gameplay: trackers and table managers running alongside the client. In practice that is software left open for another room.

The post lands two weeks after Jurojin confirmed that the Mesh Agent malware hidden in two poker tools had reached its users through tampered update packages. The policy applies from publication.

What the GGPoker Third-Party Software Ban Covers

The post names five products and then closes the door on everything else with a catch-all line for other third-party poker software and automation tools. The reason given is a single one: anything running alongside the client may access game data, interact with tables or automate actions on the computer.

VIP-Grinders is a GGPoker affiliate partner.

Two of the five names are table managers rather than trackers. Jurojin and StarsCaption do nothing with hole cards or statistics; they arrange windows and map hotkeys. Their presence tells a multi-room grinder the ban is about what runs on the machine, not what it reads.

The post does not say what happens to an account found running one of them. There is no penalty scale, no warning period and no appeal route in the text, only the instruction to close the software first.

The Four Client Security Features

A new Client Security section sits in Game Settings with four tools in it. The post summarises them as ways to keep private information private and to detect suspicious connections or network activity, and says each one is optional and runs only while the client is open.

The post adds its own caveat: the four features do not replace antivirus software and do not protect the whole computer. They cover the session, not the machine.

That split matters for the attack that prompted all this. A remote-access agent that already lives on a PC can read anything on screen, and a client-side guard only changes what one application shows it.

Win-Rate Anomaly Detection Targets the Account, Not the Tool

The one measure aimed at the attack pattern rather than the tools is WAD. The post describes it as a system that analyses decisions to find players making unusually accurate plays, the kind of accuracy that could indicate access to opponents’ hole cards.

That is detection after the fact. It catches the account profiting from a compromised opponent, the only part of a leak a room can see from its side. The Winning Poker Network took the other route with ACR Poker’s ScreenShield answer to the attack, which hides tables from capture software.

Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 Lose Support in 2027

Support for Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1, and macOS 11 Big Sur or earlier ends in 2027. No month or day is given, and the reason stated is that those systems no longer receive security patches from their makers.

The vendor dates are from Microsoft’s own lifecycle pages. By the time the client stops running on it, a Windows 7 machine will have gone close to seven years unpatched. For anyone still grinding on an old laptop, the deadline is a hardware decision, not a settings change.

What GGPoker Says About the Incident

The fifth section of the post deals with the victims and the community. It does not name the incident, the account or the players involved. It lists four actions.

Until the post there was no GGPoker statement on the attack for players to read. In September, high-stakes coach Howard of Mobius Poker filed the Paul Gregg account report GGPoker received after unusual losses. The new post names no account, so that report sits where it was.

Jurojin’s Objection

Jurojin Poker, one of the two tools the attacker tampered with, answered the ban on X the same day. Its statement draws a line between addressing a security threat and treating the whole ecosystem of third-party software as the threat, and argues a safer game is built by working together.

The room’s reason sits on the other side of that line: any tool running alongside the client may access game data, whatever it was built for. It matches GGPoker’s earlier game integrity commitments after the Ren Lin coaching case, when it said poker depends on trust and equal conditions.

Players made the proportionality argument in replies on X: a targeted attack on a small group of high-stakes accounts has produced a rule for every account on the site.

What the post does not carry is an enforcement record. By comparison, how WPT Global detects and bans poker bots comes with a running total of confiscated funds. GGPoker has set out a policy, not yet a result.

Jurojin Poker statement on the GGPoker ban

What This Changes for Your Sessions

For a player who only ever opens GGPoker, almost nothing. The Smart HUD and PokerCraft are GGPoker’s own tools and are not on the list, and the four Client Security features are opt-in.

For a multi-room grinder the change is a routine one. Everything in the table above, and anything that fits the catch-all, has to be shut before the client opens, so a GGPoker session can no longer share a desktop with a tracked session elsewhere.

Enforcement is the open question, and until a penalty is published the ban rests on players reading the policy and acting on it.

Whether PokerTracker, Holdem Manager or Hand2Note follow Jurojin with a statement is the next thing to watch, and any response will be covered in the latest online poker news.