I didn't see another thread about this, but maybe my search-fu failed me.

Pokerscout, if you're not aware, was a pretty good, pretty comprehensive, and as far as I can tell, pretty unbiased site that was sort of an almanac of online poker sites with traffic figures, what sites share what networks, unusual games (e.g., Telesina) spread, and most important for me, which sites allow US players.

I check it out today, and the interface is completely different. There's still a list of sites, but not that familiar green checkmark (US OK) or red X (US not OK).

I notice there is a dropdown for countries, and if you click on the US, it doesn't give you a list of sites (like ACR and Merge and whatever) like it used to.

Now, it tells you that the only place you can play online as an American outside of DE, NV, and NJ is ****ing Global Poker.

I clicked on a non-US site. It gave the traffic info and that's it. No sites sharing the skin, no unusual games spread, no user reviews. It's just another affiliate site masquerading as something barely more useful now, indistinguishable from a zillion similar sites.

This blows so much. I don't know any other site that tracks all the sites from the giants to those with 10 players a day, but if you know of a good replacement, please give a shout.

That is incredibly disappointing. Thanks for sharing. I wonder what happened or who purchased them?

Whois Lookup for domain shows new domain owner being Catena Operations Ltd - https://www.catenamedia.com
Some lead generation company in the iGaming industry

This is terrible. The old site was a great resource but seems like the new version is a huge step back.

Am I looking in the wrong place or can we only look back for 1 weeks worth of traffic? If it's only a week, whats the point?

Yeah. Catena Media purchased them in November of 2017. Catena is gobbling up a lot of affiliate sites and have been for a few years now.

They are a big company and practice "big company" ways.

That is because Catena has been gobbling up domains for regulated poker sites in the US. They are a publicly traded company and won't be giving any love to offshore sites.

Well, that is not entirely accurate. They gave my site the top story for over a week... it was a story about Grand Poker going offline. A story which supported their narrative of "anti-offshore" poker.


No such site exists. Pscout outlasted all of its competitors and was the sole source of deep data in the market.

Pscout is an aff site now, but its data is still provided by, as far as I can tell, the original owner of Pscout. Purchasing that data stream would be, for most outfits, prohibitively expensive.

RIP PokerScout.

--
Kahn

yikes

Thanks for the info krabis and Khan!

Made me a little sad to be honest. Went to check it today and it's just a horrible shill site now.

It always felt like a 'home' on the internet for poker as it had been around so long.

Yeah, it's a shame. I checked it out regularly for years. As far along as technology has come since pokerscout started I bet someone could do it better and more accurately these days, but does anyone really want to take on that project at this point? I doubt the costs, time and effort are worth the return.

LOL the new site looks like doggy poo. Ah well, time to delete a link that's been on my browser for a decade or so. RIP

The old site was the bee knees!! This one is a turd....

I really miss the old Pokerscout, this new one sucks. There was a site that predated Pokerscout that went defunct around 2002. I can't think of the name of it, but I used to visit it all the time.

+1

Pokerscout shows the traffic at different sites; where you see it sucks? An important site to see what sites there are and how much traffic and at what times.

IDN has just a couple of low-mid limit PLO tables running and the play is 20bb+ deep, but all in all, they have the player numbers and NLH runs strong and higher. The other games are probably not counted in.

Overall, the trackings look correct and more or less real-time. One can click some links to get more info; e.g. https://www.pokerscout.com/games/

It still provides a unique and valuable service. I think most people who are disparaging it are remembering when it was a cleaner site that provided more data and less advertising. But I always wondered how profitable it was then; the change wasn't surprising from that perspective.

+1 to what Bobo said.

As a US resident the site makes it appear that your only options are playing at Global Poker or at the regulated sites if you're in a regulated state. We all know that's complete bullshit.

It also provides significantly less information about each individual network and site than it used to. I think they even used to have a section for site reviews.

Other than the actual list of how sites are ranked I don't have any other reason to look at the new site instead of other poker news sites and forums where I can find more accurate and detailed information about the different rooms.

True, but this may actually be an improvement to the site, as it was the worst collection of riggie rants I think I've ever seen.

That said, agree with your whole post.

LOL That might be true. I think that's just par for the course for any site that allows you to post a review about an online casino or poker room. You really think they had a worse collection than our own dedicated riggie thread, or threads if you include the Global Poker one?

Well, we have a pretty impressive collection; it would be hard to match that. What made it the worst collection for me was that they basically filled the review section for several of the sites, making them pretty much worthless. Unless I'm mistaken, I think they averaged the ratings people gave them like Google, TripAdvisor, etc. do for all sorts of things, and the results were absurdities like Stars having super-low ratings in their heyday when practically everyone loved them.

I can appreciate what PokerScout was attempting to do - allowing an unfiltered public rating system. But the results weren't very useful.

You certainly make some good points. Thanks for expounding!