Not sure which forum to post this.

Why is there tourney stats readily available for anyone to see but not for cash games, where it's classed as "data mining" and illegal (or so I've been told) ?

Tournament results can be harvested from the information available in the lobby. Sites like sharkscope gather results from the lobby about who finishes where in the tournaments.

You cannot get cash game results from the lobby. You have to actually watch every hand. There is a maximum number of tables you can observe and at most limits you won't be able to capture every hand ever, thus cash game results from datamining will not be complete (like sharkscope tournament results).

Datamining (recording hand histories for hands you did not play) is allowed at most poker sites, but some (like pokerstars) only allow you to record hand histories for hands you played in. I believe pokerstars also dis-allows sharing hand history databases, so players cannot ("legally") get more data by sharing the hands they played in with their friends or downloading random hands from websites, etc.

Thank you