PTR was unable to track run it twice hands on FTP. I found that interesting.

The fix for this couldn't have been that complicated.

I'm sure the lack of importing RIT hands was simply due to laziness of PTR, rather than their inability to deal with the problem. Due to the low % of hands that would be affected (All in hands where both players have RIT checked), I don't really blame them for not bothering.

If you can observe the games, that observation can be converted into data. That data can then be categorized. There are different things that sites can do to make this more or less difficult, but there is no changing the reality of the situation.

If you accept that as a fact then you have a few different ways of dealing with the issue.

A)You can make that data irrelevant by allowing screen name changes. There are pros and cons to this method which have been rehashed countless times so I won't go into detail. IMO it is very unlikely for stars to implement this for a variety of reasons.

B)Limit the ability to observe the tables. This is the most viable option IMO, however it must be done in a way that does not impact the game experience for the average player. I think this should be the focus of our discussion.

The solution will have to go at least one step farther than simply limiting the number of tables observable without logging in as I would assume it is fairly trivial to just scale up the number of virtual machines being used to datamine.

+1 to ^

I think the issue is that stopping tracking sites is at the bottom of a very, very long list of issues that Stars deals with on a regular basis. I agree wholeheartedly that the length of time this has gone on is absurd.

+1 to the rest of the stuff you said, but I think it should be made clear that if Stars actually does something about PTR, everyone should get a one time account name change. While stopping tracking would be great itself, the fact that all the previous data would still be available would still be problematic.

IMO the ideal solution involves stopping the tracking, giving everyone a fresh start so to speak and being more diligent to not let things get so far out of hand in the future.

I just want to point out that screenname changes are relatively worthless to prevent bumhunting. It might, however, encourage more action in reg vs reg arenas (mid stakes+?)

They're better than nothing for preventing extreme game selection. A huge problem with PTR right now is people can instantly see you've played hundreds of thousands of hands (or millions even) and refuse your action. People will instantly sit out or not join and 0 hands are played. At the very least if sites like Stars aren't going to do anything about tracking, name changes can create a slightly more even playing field. By no means are they the best solution, but they sure as hell are better than doing absolutely nothing. Which is currently exactly what is happening.

Afaik large scale datamining is done by having tons of virtual machines running per system so each of them can have it's own Stars installation and observe the max amount of tables. Lowering the limit you can view without logging in won't have any effect. Allowing unregistered accounts to only view a selection of tables, being the same tables for every unregistered account, would. This would force them to log in, making tracking them almost trivial. The only downside to preventing datamining is that it becomes much harder to spot collusion/botting etc, and you'd have to trust the sites own securety department to be competent enough to deal with this.

How about showing anonymous tables / players unless you are seated. Friends who are being sweated can find people by seat location/number.

That would work if they don't use screen scraping to build HHs. I am not sure if they do that or import the actual HH created by PS? Also, it might be an issue for PS since a lot of people love to rail the HS games.

Add a button to every table called something like 'sweat ID' If someone playing at a table wants to have someone sweat then they click the button and it produces a random 4 digit number. Player then tells his friend the sweat id and the lobby can have a feature that allows you to enter a sweat id and the table pops up.

players that play more than X amount of hands a month are exempt from this and can sweat what ever table they want

problem solved

Wow, just looked at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/prohibited/ and noticed highstakes db listed under I guess this is slightly less awkward than, "allowed if you're not currently playing", but in general I'm against rules like this that are completely unenforceable. This is something that only punishes the righteous.

Before FTP died, they snuffed out PTR somehow.

i think it's atrocious that pokerstars has let this go on for so long, they've actually been sending out that copy paste email for three years now and every time i email them and get that same email back i get this picture in my head



if a company as disfunctional as fulltilt can stop ptr i see no reason why pokerstars can't, a bank would not let someone hack their system and print everyones financial transactions on the internet and i don't see why pokerstars is ok with this.

i'd love for pokerstars steve to make a comment in this thread and tell us what they're doing/make some sort of commitment to do something but i doubt he has the guts too.

i think the players at pokerstars should express their outrage vehemently until something is done, maybe someone can write up a copy paste email of our own and we can all just send that once a day everyday until something is done.

rant/

+1000000000000000 really seems like stars couldn't care less about PTR. so annoying.