The war between the world’s largest online poker room and one of the internet’s most popular data mining sites is coming to a head. PokerStars, after years of trying to get PokerTableRatings.com (PTR) to stop recording hands on its tables, is now taking legal action against the website.
Lee Jones, PokerStars’ Head of Home Games, told readers of the Two Plus Two poker forum on Monday that Stars has sent “Cease and Desist” letters to PTR and its principals. “We have told them that they must immediately cease infringing our intellectual property rights and breaching the terms and conditions of our software,” he said. “This is not an idle threat; we’ve assembled a team of lawyers in multiple jurisdictions to follow up.”
PTR, as already mentioned, is a data mining site. The site records cash game and Sit-and-Go hand histories on several sites and networks, including PokerStars, the Merge Gaming Network, and PartyPoker, collecting them in a searchable database on its website. Visitors to PTR can search for players’ statistics a limited number of times each day for free, but can also pay a monthly fee for premium access and more searches. Customers can view exactly how much players have won or lost at various games and stakes, how they have played specific hands, and stats, like those found on PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager, that will help them get a better read on their opponents.
Visitors to the site can also purchase hand histories to import into their own poker analysis software. Hand history packages vary based on the game type, stakes, number of players, and poker room. For example, PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em $5/$10 short-handed cash game hand histories can be purchased in bundles ranging from 100,000 to 3,000,000, with prices starting at $25 for the 100,000 hand history package up to $200 for the 1,000,000 hand history package (the 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 hand history bundles have “Contact Us!” listed instead of a price). PokerTableRatings.com boasts that it collects over 18,000,000 hand histories per day.
While many dedicated players have found this useful, it is strictly against the Terms and Conditions at PokerStars. Section 5.5 of the T&C’s states, “PokerStars prohibits those External Player Assistance Programs (“EPA Programs”) which are designed to provide an “Unfair Advantage” to players. PokerStars defines “External” to mean computer software (other than the Software), and non-software-based databases or profiles (e.g. web sites and subscription services). PokerStars defines an “Unfair Advantage” as any instance in which a User accesses or compiles information on other players beyond that which the User has personally observed through the User’s own game play.”
The main problem PokerStars has with a site like PTR, aside from it aiding players in breaking the rules, is that it is a tool that gives strong “regulars” even more of an advantage over recreational players than they already have. Most recreational players end up losing the money they deposit and are the ones who end up reloading, whereas the strong pros and serious amateurs are the ones who take that money and withdraw it from the site. If the regulars are able to use PTR to extract money more quickly from the recreational players, those “fish” are more likely to get frustrated and stop playing.
And while casual players naturally have a reason to dislike data mining sites (once they learn of them), many skilled players dislike them, too, because as more people use them, more people will stop playing anyone besides the “fish” they find on PTR, making it harder to find a decent game.
Proponents of data mining sites point to their availability to all. Some of the services are offered for free, but even those that are not are accessible to anyone who wishes to pay for them, just like anything in life. Additionally, because so many hand histories are in the public domain, it is easier to catch cheaters, as there is a resource which can be used to investigate unusual play. In fact, a bot ring on PokerStars was detected in large part because hand histories were available on PTR.