Poker Table Ratings is the most popular data mining service in the online poker industry. The company tracks millions of hands from the leading poker networks and sells the data to online poker players. Poker Table Ratings (PTR) sells bulk hand histories to poker players and they also provide a service where you can search individual players to find out about their playing style and stats on whether the player is profitable or not.
PTR just added 888 Poker to the list of networks that track hands for recently and they now track hands from all of the major online poker networks in the world. Poker Table Ratings is used by a lot of online poker players that play part-time or full-time, but many casual poker players don’t even know about these sites. This has always caused mix feelings about services like PTR and apparently PokerStars is finally going to try and take down the biggest data mining site.
PokerStars has announced that they have a team of lawyers in various countries right now working on a case against PTR. The company is claiming that Poker Table Ratings has breached the poker site’s terms plus infringed on intellectual property rights. There has already been several Cease & Desist letters sent to PTR apparently and it should be interesting to see how they respond to the threat of legal action.
According to PokerStars PTR was difficult to track down because the business is split-up into many companies making it harder to track down individuals associated with the website. PokerStars has stated that they’re close to tracking down the owners and they’re ready to go to court if they have to this time around they’ve said unless PTR stops tracking hands at PokerStars. I doubt it will come down to going to court in this case, but I think PTR will have to stop tracking PokerStars hands.
Data mining sites have been helpful in the poker industry and PTR claims that the site has been the main force is cracking some of the biggest scandals in online poker. There are reasons to support and not support data mining services in the online poker industry and it should be interesting to see what happens with this case.
Online Poker Movie in the Works
Apparently there is going to be a new poker movie coming out in the future called Runner, Runner. The script was written by the same two guys that wrote the Rounders script, so it should be a pretty good movie to check out. Rumours have it that both Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake will be starring in the new movie. Leonardo DiCaprio is going to help produce the film and he’ll have a producer credit on the film according to reports. Once the movie airs you will be able to find plot information and the trailer at our poker movies section.
