PokerStars has taken their next step in a long-standing battle with infamous data-mining site Poker Table Ratings (PTR). They’ve sent a cease and desist to the site and have a team of lawyers ready to take legal action on the order if necessary.
Poker Table Ratings is a site that collects hand histories on the majority of all hands played on various sites, including PokerStars, and collates the information for the use of subscribers. Information is made public on every player, which can be found using a search function—information as basic as career winnings or as specific as how often they fold to river raises (depending on what subscription a user has). This information is available on all players with no consent necessary.
This ongoing battle with PTR has been extremely controversial, with many varying opinions on the ethics of the site itself and the viability of PokerStars trying to curb their efforts.
PokerStars has wholly unambiguous feelings on the matter. They state that PTR violates their Terms and Conditions and infringes on players’ privacy. “Furthermore,” adds Lee Jones, PokerStars’ Head of Home Games, “A small — but noticeable — boorish crowd routinely tells weaker players at their table how bad they are, based on these data-mined statistics.” And as everyone knows, tapping the tank is bad for everyone in the game.
The player population is more split on the issue, though. Many casual players regard PTR as a realization of their worst fears about their opponents having unfair advantages on them.
And then there are those who support PTR, or at the very least, are against PokerStars shutting them down. Those who rely on the site obviously are not keen on the site being shutdown and find mining to simply be part of the game online. Also, there’s an interesting stance that holds that banning the site will only exacerbate unequal play. Essentially, there are those who believe that fighting against data-mining is a helpless battle. Taking away PTR, then—an obvious avenue for data that’s available to anyone who’s heard of it—will only make it so that the more persistent and more dubious players will have the remaining advantage that’s unavailable to everyone else.
Regardless of the controversy, though, PokerStars is using everything in their arsenal to protect their players and their Terms. PokerStars had recently taken steps to this end by serving PTR’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) with a cease and desist. Since the ISP didn’t have a dog in the fight, so to say, they were willing to drop PTR to avoid incurring any risk. PTR found a new ISP provider, though, and PokerStars is currently on the hunt to find this new mystery provider, so they can serve them papers as well.
For now the largest poker site in the world is trying to bypass the middle man, and deal with Poker Table Ratings directly. PTR obviously has far more to lose by changing their operations than their ISP did, so this will likely be a tougher fought battle. But we will see how the company responds and if the courts will need to step in to decide the fight.