PokerStars Gets Poker Table Ratings to Remove Player Data
PokerStars, one of the top online poker rooms in the world, has been facing a lot of difficulty while dealing with data mining sites – and with one site in particular, namely Poker Table Ratings.
In an effort to get the PTR or Poker Table Ratings site to stop taking data from PokerStars’ players, the site had sent out a “cease and desist” letter requesting the data mining site to stop its actions. Initially, the Poker Table Ratings site did not make any move either to acknowledge the letter or even to stop tracking data from PokerStars’ players. However, when PokerStars began to take strong legal action, Poker Table Ratings decided that they needed to back off and removed the player’s data from the site.
According to Lee Jones, a representative of PokerStars, the site had been having problems with Poker Table Ratings for many years. Eventually, they had reached their limit and had decided to take hard action with the PTR. “We believe that a poker player shouldn’t have information and data about his opponents except from hands he’s actually played. This is particularly important to protect new and/or weak players, who often don’t even know that they’re sitting in their opponents’ cross-hairs,” Jones said.
Finally getting success in their interaction with Poker Table Ratings, has made other poker rooms that are also victims of data mining sites happy with the news. Poker Table Ratings also records data from other poker rooms like the Merge Gaming Network, 888 Poker and so on. David ‘lildave’ Nicholson, a poker writer commented on his blog, ‘PokerStars victory against PTR here is a fantastic step forward for online poker and hopefully this will encourage other sites to follow suit, and then these sites that provide such harm to our industry will have no way to operate, and to profit. I sincerely hope this is the first nail in the coffin for data-mining sites and I urge the sites and the players to work together on this and we can all reap the benefits of a better online poker world.”
Poker Table Ratings has chosen to respond and remove data and has denied any wrong doing on its part as stated by PokerStars, when the site claimed that PTR had infringed on its privacy policy and was violating its terms and conditions and player rights. The Poker Table Ratings site posted a notice regarding this matter on its blog where it stated, “We will fully adhere to the cease and desist notice by Stars, though we do not believe that we are a disservice to the online poker community.”
Visitors to the Poker Table Ratings site have been advised not to search for players or members affiliated to the PokerStars site. Any PTR members who do search for information on PokerStars’ players will see this message: ‘Stars has requested that you not view your poker player profile on PokerStars’ players PokerTableRatings.com. Please contact Stars support if you would like to see your profile made public again on PTR.’
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