April 18 2012, Brett Collson

For years, PokerStars has clashed with data-mining websites, claiming infringement of intellectual property rights and breaching of the terms and conditions of the site.

One of the biggest antagonists has been Poker Table Ratings (PTR), a service that records millions of hands per day across every game and limit imaginable. PTR reveals statistics and win rates for each player, information that can greatly influence the action at a table. The site also sells hand histories and offers a premium service that allows additional searches of players.

Services of these types are strictly prohibited in PokerStars’ Terms of Service. However, despite years of resistance from poker rooms, Poker Table Ratings has stayed in business. Not only that, but the site has added a number of online poker rooms to its database over the years. PTR tracks hands at PartyPoker, the Merge Network, 888poker, and many others.

This week, Lee Jones, Head of Home Games at PokerStars, shed some light on the latest developments in the ongoing feud. Jones said PokerStars has sent a “cease and desist” letter to PTR and has assembled a team of lawyers in various jurisdictions to follow up on the matter.

“We believe that a poker player shouldn’t have information and data about his opponents except from hands he’s actually played,” Jones told PokerNews in an exclusive interview. “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.

“Furthermore, a small – but noticeable – boorish crowd routinely tells weaker players at their table how bad they are, based on these data-mined statistics. This creates an unpleasant environment and is bad for the players, bad for the game, bad for everybody. We have a responsibility as the leading enterprise in this industry to stop that kind of abuse.”

PokerStars has taken a number of technical steps to thwart data-mining operations. However, the most effective technical steps also reduce the transparency of the games. Disallowing players to observe other tables would take away from the enjoyable atmosphere PokerStars has staged for more than a decade.

PokerStars has also attempted to negotiate with PTR to provide its service on an “opt-in” basis, a system used by many data-mining sites. PTR declined.

“They’ve basically countered every technique we’ve used, and again, we’re reluctant to take more drastic steps, which would affect the legitimate player’s experience,” Jones said.

Now, the world’s leading poker room has turned to legal action against PTR. Jones says PTR has not replied to any emails or letters asking it to halt its practices. As a result, PokerStars’ attorneys have taken another avenue to prevent the business from operating.

PokerStars recently won a battle against PTR when the Internet Service Provider (ISP) that hosted PTR agreed to suspend its service. The ISP agreed with PokerStars’ legal team that PTR was infringing on property rights.

“Our players have consistently expressed their concern about third-parties accessing and making public individual player data without explicit player permission,” PokerStars’ Chief Legal Counsel Paul Telford told PokerNews this week. “The Internet Service Provider currently used by Poker Table Ratings, the largest supplier of such data, complied with our cease and desist request and is no longer hosting the PTR site.”

But again, PTR has not gone down without a fight. The company recently resurfaced using a new ISP. Business is back up and running.

PokerStars’ attorneys are once again working on tracking down PTR’s new ISP. The war rages on.

“We’ve been at this for two or three years – this is not a new effort,” Jones said. “We will have their new ISP take them down again. The bottom line: we, as poker players, and the poker community at large agree that uncontrolled distribution of online poker player results is bad business and a violation of our terms of service. We will take whatever steps are necessary – both technical and legal – to prevent it from continuing.

“We will make it extremely difficult for them to do business.”

Follow PokerNews on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.

Follow Brett Collson on

December 30 2011, Brett Collson

When the U.S. Department of Justice seized domain names of the three major online poker rooms on April 15, 2011, the future of sites like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker was left hanging. Industry leaders were accused of deceiving banks so that they processed billions of dollars in online poker transactions, and 11 men were indicted for their alleged involvement in the illegal activity.

What we learned in the ensuing months was that PokerStars had a game plan for any roadblock. Unlike its main competitors, PokerStars survived Black Friday while keeping its stellar reputation intact. And, based on the recent records set by the poker site during its 10th Anniversary celebration, you could even argue that PokerStars is bigger and better than ever.

Before anything else, the world’s leading online poker room worked diligently to make sure all of its U.S. players were able to recoup their funds. Less than a month after striking a deal with the Department of Justice, PokerStars announced that it had returned more than $100 million to players in the United States. Meanwhile, in December, players at Full Tilt Poker and the CEREUS Network were still left wondering whether they’d ever see their funds.

Since then, it has been business as usual at PokerStars. Naturally, the poker room has seen a decline in traffic with the loss of its big U.S. market, but PokerStars also took control over the worldwide market. As of Dec. 19, PokerStars (including PokerStars.fr and PokerStars.it) accounted for nearly 50 percent of real-money cash-game traffic, according to PokerScout.com.

Possibly the best evidence of PokerStars’ sturdiness came during the 2011 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). PokerStars stamped more than $30 million in guarantees across 62 events in September. That mark was shattered as more than $47 million was handed out during the month, including a $1.2 million payday to Danish pro Thomas “Kallllle” Pedersen for his victory in the WCOOP Main Event. In 2009, when online poker was alive and well in the U.S., PokerStars awarded $52 million during the WCOOP. The prize pools increased to $63 million in 2010, but the drop was barely noticeable in 2011.

In December, PokerStars not only set a record for the biggest Sunday Million in its 10-year history, but it trampled its own Guinness World Record for players in a single tournament. On Dec. 4, an amazing 200,000 people took part in a $1 buy-in, no-limit hold’em tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $250,000. Gaz Deaves, Guinness World Record Adjudicator, certified the record, and many Team PokerStars Pros were celebrating the event at the Hilton Hotel before the PokerStars European Poker Tour stop in Prague.

In addition to achieving impressive tournament records since Black Friday, PokerStars implemented a new Player Protection Plan to ensure that the Full Tilt Poker and UB mismanagement never happens again. In December, PokerStars engaged a third-party independent trustee to oversee player accounts in France, and said it was working closely with regulators in other European markets such as Spain, Italy and Belgium.

“The security of player accounts and the integrity of online poker play are fundamental to the ongoing and future success of the industry,” said PokerStars CEO Gabi Campos. “We are pleased to partner with the thought-leaders in European regulation to establish an industry-wide standard for ensuring player funds are protected.”

When it comes to professionalism in the online poker industry, PokerStars is in a class of its own. For the way it handled adversity surrounding Black Friday and its ability to continue growing since, there’s no question that PokerStars deserves to be mentioned as one of the biggest stories of 2011.

Follow PokerNews on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.

Follow Brett Collson on Twitter – @brettcollson