Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Sharkscope Punted from Stars' Good Graces, Part the Second

Before I decided to acquire a nasty late-summer virus that still has my decrepit body in a weakened state, I began a bit of a tale about the expulsion of SNG (sit-'n'-go) results database Sharkscope from the good graces of PokerStars. The listing of SS in Stars' list of programa non grata was the culmination of an effort on Stars' part to rein in the overly public publication of its customers' profit/loss data.

One of the questions I left for the followup was this: Why was Sharkscope singled out when it is not the only site to offer such information? One need look no further than the site at officialpokerrankings.com to see another example of ROI (Return on Investment) numbers being publicized for Stars players, this in open contradiction of Stars' publicized plan to force these sites to curtail the practice.

Regardless of exactly how Stars plans to enforce the ban (a still undetermined but crucial fact at this point), it's odd to see that Sharkscope appears on Stars' banned list but OPR does not. I can't for the life of me figure that one out. Perhaps it's because Sharkscope's president, Steve, was openly defiant toward Stars in several posts made on poker forums following the Stars announcement. Perhaps not. But it seems to me that if Stars is serious about making such a change, it has to do so in a uniform, across-the-board manner.

Or is it already? It seems that a lot of Stars tournaments are no longer being included in the OPR database. My own player profile on that site includes nothing played after September 10th, and my search of random player names turns up nothing after the 13th for those I've checked to date. It seems that Stars may well have turned off the results spigot here as well, even if it's been a bit less publicized. OPR does not appear on the banned program list at Stars; nor, however, does it appear on the approved one.

Perhaps most cryptic is this line, which appears in the data at OPR any time a search is done on a Stars player: "PokerStars tournaments are currently delayed. Missing tournaments will be added ASAP."

As soon as possible sounds expedient, of course, even if it is indeterminate.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it is because SharkScope never responded to PokerStars request, so they had to put them on the prohibited list. Perhaps OPR responded by saying that they would not cover 'Stars any more. StarTracker and OPR are not on the prohibited list or the OK list. StarTracker told 'Stars we would comply with their rules.

Thanks for staying on top of this. I think they will start enforcing the rules soon.

Klopzi said...

Although I understand PokerStars reasoning behind banning the use of sites like SharkScope, I question the usefulness of these sites.

Poker is a game where short-term variance can easily hide the true abilities of its players. How many tournaments or sit-n-gos does it take before you can classify someone as a good or bad player? 10 SNGs? 50? 100? 10,000?

And how long before the really good players leave for the higher stakes SNGs and torunaments? How long before the losing players find themselves broke and moving back to the Play Money tables?

I could see myself using a service such as SharkScope once I've started playing the $200+ buy-in sit-n-gos. At the lower buy-ins, I think there are too many people playing with smaller samples of results data.

I should also mention that SharkScope lists me as an Tilty Fish which may be biasing my opinion a bit...