wasn't it the player himself that suspected the cheating when potripper called him down with 8 high or something. It was only found out because UB accidentally sent the HH with all hole cards revealed which was then analysed.

The way the majority of bumhunters use PTR is to just take a quick look to see if the guy is a winning player or not, not to pay $, access his past 50,000 hands there and then and data mine him.

I agree it makes cheating harder to determine, but remember that people will still be recording hands against others that they are playing in their own PT/HEM's. The regs quickly build up an accurate picture of players win rates, if something anomolous was going on i would hope that it would be likely to surface in a community as active as this one.

So the question is what would be the best minimum length of time allowed between sn changes? how long does it take for the data to bring to light conclusively that someone is cheating? how much data is needed?

I already tried e-mailing them about that and got a bogus response from PTR. I think OPR allows you to opt out. Just goes to show what scumbags PTR webmasters are. FT could stop it if they really wanted to. Just stop table observing all together.

Don't need to ...FT raising min. BI's in mid-Jan 2010

ptr is gay

yeah f ptr, it rubs in downswings and losses, i hate it
i actually emailed stars that i want to make another account... they wouldnt allow it....grrrr

I'm not sure why allowing SN changes is the only solution.
Here are three steps that would really help games (and limit PTR's impact as well):
- Hole cards (including at showdown) are only visible to hand participants - this makes mining much, much less invasive/useful.
- Observers can only open only a certain amount of windows (maybe make exceptions for nosebleed games) - this should impact PTR's ability to datamine effectively.
- Actually enforce one open table per player (FTP tried this awhile ago but never really enforced this) - this will limit bumhunters' ability to grab all the fish and ignore other action.

i think the sn change thing is good for the online poker economy. i believe party and cake both do this?

+1 for allowing monthly or bi-weekly name changes.

PTR catering to PS/FTP players is about equal to me to FTP/PS letting US players play on their sites. It's against PS/FTP's ToC to datamine, but what do the makers of PTR care, they aren't playing there. It's against the U.S.'s "ToC" to allow US players to play poker on their sites, but what do PS/FTP owners care? If either party could stop it they would, but they can't.

Datamining should be allowed as long as it is public information, i.e. hand histories that can be observed by any player not just ones involved in the hand. If datamining sites start publishing hands that aren't available to observers, then I guess that would be a problem.

They posted your personal info online? Like your SS#? How are public poker results personal info?

The hands that you play are not "public". People who weren't involved in a hand shouldn't have access to it.

One solution would be to have tables that only seated players could open. You could see the players from the lobby and press a take a seat button and it would open. That way if you dont want to be datamined you could only play at those tables.

FPTR

PTR is very bad for poker, as such, it should be banned from all sites....

All other sites let you opt out, some are pretty fast and respectfull, as OPR and Sharkscope, others are pretty rude , thats the case of bluff magazine with their Pokerdb

Shut down PTR access sites!!! its in all our best interest

well i dont think people are suggesting that ptr should just be like whoops we are violating ToC, we should shut down. people are suggesting sites find a way to fight it. and SN changes seems like a simple and effective way that has worked for years on other sites and would be healthy for the economy. no more small ego regs quoting ptr to fish when they lose a hand and stuff like that.