PokerTableRatings recently received a cease and desist order from PokerStars, relating to their data mining and hand tracking activities of PokerStars’ hand histories. This was followed by GoDaddy.com (a web hosting service) dropping www.pokertableratings.com temporarily only to bring PTR back online shortly after. PokerStars claimed it had given PTR many opportunities to stop tracking all of the PokerStars players and allow instead an opt in service, in the way Sharkscope has an opt in function for sit-n-go tracking, but to no avail as it seems PTR has ignored those opportunities.
PokerStars made it very clear that the cease and desist was not an empty legal threat and shortly after PokerTableRatings complied and removed all PokerStars players from their tracking with a message on their site saying “Stars has requested that you not view your poker player profile on PokerTableRatings.com”. Poker players on various forms of social media, including twitter and forums such as twoplustwo, have called this a great move by PokerStars saying it protects players and the integrity of the games. It remains to be seen if the other major sites such as PartyPoker or sites on the Ipoker network will follow in the steps of PokerStars by demanding that data mining sites such as PokerTableRatings stop tracking their respective player bases.