Full Tilt Ban OfficialPokerRankings !!!

Logged on this morning, to register for a SnG, and to my horror checking over my opponents, found this message!

"Full Tilt Poker (FTP) has demanded us to remove all FTP tournaments and player statistics from Official Poker Rankings (OPR) because they suddenly decided that OPR "gives players an unfair advantage" and works "very similar to how a shared hand history database works".

We don't believe OPR gives players an unfair advantage. OPR is a free site available to all players and in our opinion any player should be allowed to use OPR to follow their progress, for stacking, collusion detection, community discussions, competitions and to see how they are doing in comparison to other poker players.

All the data we collect is publicly viewable at the end of each tournament in the tournament lobby. We do not collect hand histories nor do we provide access to any hand history information. OPR has nothing to do with a shared hand history database.

We have proposed Full Tilt Poker different solutions to keep FTP tournaments on OPR and we hope they will reverse their decision and help us clear this misunderstanding soon. But for now we have decided to follow their demands to remove all FTP tournaments on OPR.

Your opinion matters.
We strongly encourage you to forward your opinion about this to support@fulltiltpoker.com

We would also like to hear your comments and feedback. Please forward to ftpfeedback@officialpokerrankings.com
- Please forward a link if you are posting about this on an open forum / message board. Thank you.

We apologize for the inconvenience.
Official Poker Rankings "

Fair enough imo, personally I feel that sites like this should'nt be allowed anyway. IF, players that use it can keep their mouths shut and stop letting the fish know that there is databases on their losses then it would be ok, but they can't.

Gonna send full tilt an email supporting their stance.

i agree its about time they did this...every time i enter a table or tourney its seems like at least 1 out of every 5 somebody at the table says somebody is a fish and shows proof by givin the OPR site with their name.


good for them

I agree that they are not good for the game!
I think FT has made the right call.



Snow

I would be nice if a player could continue to monitor his own progress and his only. I use OPR to look at my own numbers and my own ranking overall does interest me.

But I agree that certain jerkheads like to abuse the privilege and use bad stats to taunt people. A shame, imo.

I saw this posted today in regards to Fulltilt poker demanding that all Fulltilt Player & Tournament statistics be removed from OPR (OfficialPokerRankings).

This was a letter put out by OPR. Hopefully if it receives enough support and Fulltilt hears enough from it's disgruntled customers, maybe something will change?? I would hazard to guess that the 'majority' of Fulltilt players would vote to see OPR keeping the statistic database for Fulltilt tournaments. IMO this really sucks!!

.........
Full Tilt Poker on OPR

June 2009




Full Tilt Poker (FTP) has demanded us to remove all FTP tournaments and player statistics from Official Poker Rankings (OPR) because they suddenly decided that OPR "gives players an unfair advantage" and works "very similar to how a shared hand history database works".

We don't believe OPR gives players an unfair advantage. OPR is a free site available to all players and in our opinion any player should be allowed to use OPR to follow their progress, for stacking, collusion detection, community discussions, competitions and to see how they are doing in comparison to other poker players.

All the data we collect is publicly viewable at the end of each tournament in the tournament lobby. We do not collect hand histories nor do we provide access to any hand history information. OPR has nothing to do with a shared hand history database.

We have proposed Full Tilt Poker different solutions to keep FTP tournaments on OPR and we hope they will reverse their decision and help us clear this misunderstanding soon. But for now we have decided to follow their demands to remove all FTP tournaments on OPR.

Your opinion matters.
We strongly encourage you to forward your opinion about this to support@fulltiltpoker.com

We would also like to hear your comments and feedback. Please forward to ftpfeedback@officialpokerrankings.com - Please forward a link if you are posting about this on an open forum / message board. Thank you.

We apologize for the inconvenience.
Official Poker Rankings

I am personally disappointed with this (unlike the first few replies), I do see it gives an advantage, and the information is available to everyone but it tells you nothing of their style etc.

I got this reply from Full Tilt Support

Thank you for contacting Full Tilt Poker Support.
>
> We are currently working with all of our affiliates to ensure their
> business practices are consistent with our goal of providing the best
> online poker experience. In particular, we are ensuring they adhere to our
> very high standards of game integrity and do not support the use of
> prohibited or restricted software.
>
> Official Poker Rankings provides a great service to its customers, and as
> poker players ourselves, we fully appreciate the value of the information
> they provide. Unfortunately, some of the information currently available
> may allow players to obtain an unfair advantage at the tables.
>
> We are currently in communication with Official Poker Rankings to
> establish a set of guidelines that is in the mutual interest of all
> parties, including our valued players. We hope to have the matter resolved
> as soon as possible and appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Personaly I like to see my stats. I havnt used it to track oponents, just myself and a few friends. But I really dont see where the unfair advantage is. Even if someones stats shows them as a fish, their play at the table is probably going to show this soon anyway right?
I look at OPR as a pit boss. They know all the regular players in their cardrooms, and if you get to know them they will tell you whos who. OPR is just a really freindly boss that will talk to everyone who wants to. IMO.

Hopefully they will go all the way and complete the job by banning ALL forms of tracker software. Or is that a fair advantage???? NOT

Ok, so Sun Poker has a coach for their "Fearsome Foursome" who during live tournaments CAPT, EPT etc watches the opponents and gathers information about them both current play and historical performance. During the breaks the coach shares the information with the players. There was a recent article about this in Poker Pro Magazine.

Isn't this the same thing?

Besides, sports teams watch reels of their opponents past performances. Sales people learn the pros and cons of their rivals products. All that OPR does is supply us with a little more information that what we can get at first glance.

Perhaps FT should also ban us from taking notes, this gives us an unfair advantage next time we sit down with the same player

Fine with me so long as they also ban the live databases, like for instance The Hendon Mob, like that would ever happen. It's the same thing really. It's hypocritical if you ask me. Does it give an advantage? I suppose so or else I wouldn't use it as much as I do. An unfair one? No, how could it be unfair if the same information is available to everyone. Seems to me that the problem is that some people just don't want anyone to know how bad they suck. Well, if that's the case they can just block their own tournament results. Funny, I would have figured Stars for a move like this, not Full Tilt.

What about PokerTableRating site. They have hand history you can view and buy? Thats bad. I don't have trouble with OPR as they only do tourney results and not hand historys. You can get live tourney results so why shouldn't you get online tourney results? Didn't pokerstars do this a while back and reverse their decision?

They should ban all the datamining sites from all online poker sites. All these sites do is use up the poker sites bandwidth and they poker sites get nothing in return.

I used OPR to track my own results and also to see who the successful high stakes players were. Then I would go rail them to get an idea of how they played. Too bad.

This is not data mining. It tells you nothing about how anyone plays. No hand histories are involved. No playing style can be derived. It is simply a ranking based on success or lack there of in tournaments. It is no different than web sites that track the success of live players. I do use it in almost every tournament In play to determine if an opponent might be likely to make good or bad decisions based on their record of wins and losses which should be a matter of public record.

I agree with this.

I didn't use OPR until I'd heard of it, and it makes those suckouts more gut wrenching these past few days (which may have been avoided), in reality, the players of which I find it most useful (the donkeys), I am gathering notes to the equivalent of within 20 hands say in SnG's, that I know they are complete fish.

I suppose ok if you ban OPR, ban EVERYTHING, Sharkscope, HEM, Poker Tracker, Poker Edge, Table Ratings. To my knowledge all the software/sites I have listed arguably give more information than OPR to the user, but Full Tilt hasn't banned all of them. So what's the reasoning here? I'd say the sites probably have interest in some of this software, and maybe Full Tilt/OPR are trying to drive a harder bargain with one another, it will be interesting if Full Tilt stats do indeed reappear in the coming weeks.

I'm about to pay for my trial copy of HEM, and I was grinding a profit without the use of aids like HEM and OPR, but if the poker sites don't ban it, what can you do? If you can't beat em join em.

That said I had my stats blocked on Sharkscope... hypocritical I know, but I fear in tournament and sng play at times I could be shown too much respect (my stats aren't really *that* flattering, but I'm aware it could still be a negative factor for me in someone elses decision)

For example before HEM I was always (probably more than your 'average' online player) pretty handy using notes, scouring over every showdow HH. But if I'm honest I see that as an unfair advantage, it picks up little things or things I might have missed, and I do find it useful, and it is an unfair advantage, even just using your own hand histories.

Surely with so much software, sites that charge for information, and the sites that allow these to run, surely they ARE taking cuts from it? They have to be?! Simple business sense?

Seems logical.

Thats a poor call from FTP imo, these sites give a breakdown of overall winnings, ROI and how often you finish 1st, 2nd, 3rd... and so on. It's not really giving you a huge advantage the way i see it. You don't see previous hands or a pattern on how they play. Maybe FTP plans on setting up their own version of it and want to take out the competition

100% fully support this stance by FT (and by any other company that follows suit on this or other sites like Sharkscope, etc). Well played.

Nah. Just make an "opt out" option like Sharkscope has and the problem will be solved. I for one want to see my rankings and I don't mind others seeing them. Many people have used the Sharkscope "opt out" option and that seems to work well.

I would support an opt out option as well, but in no way will I condemn FT for blocking this or any of the other sites. Maybe they opted to block it entirely because they don't feel that most players were either know about the sites or that they wouldn't know they could opt out. So it could be that in FT's eyes they are serving the greater good by blocking.

There already is an opt out option. However, if you select it you shouldn't be allowed to see anyone elses stats. That IS an unfair advantage.

Yes, this is true.

Go read their FAQ, it lists what you can do to be invisible there.

To the best of my knowledge, once you request for your info/stats to be invisible, you can't view anyone's either.

Oh really? I didn't know that. My stats on Full Tilt now show Hidden as if I had opted out but I can still see stats from other players at Stars.

This is true - if you opt out they will not let you view other's stats.

I'm with this well presented argument.

OPR does not data mine, like they said, they record results from the lobbies which is available to all.

This is just like the big standings charts published in any decent paper from a golf game, or all the golf games in any certain period, or football (either version), or any competition where prior results are important.

If Full Tilt, or any site, wants to truly produce an anonymous game, they need to assign some random avatar and nonsensical name at the beginning of each session to each player and eliminate all chat.

I think FT is wrong here.

See, that supports my guess as to why FT maybe decided to "protect" everyone by simply disallowing them. Of course I'm talking larger scale than just OPR. I'm talking about supporting opt out (or better yet opt in) for ALL such data mining sites. And while I'd support opt out everywhere, I guess deep down inside I'd prefer they were all simply banned.

EDIT: And to dj's point, sites do not condone HH datamining, so why should these results be allowed to be data mined?

DJ said that the results are available in the lobby to all. No "datamining" needed. OPR simply "reports" those same widely-available results in a better format on a wider scale covering all results for humans to browse easier.

"Datamining" would apply to HH's since they are NOT available to all.

BTW, do people really get an edge if they see the recent tourney results of an opponent? Does a negative ROI% show how often an opponent chases a flush draw? Does a negative Profit stat show how much an opponent steals from the button? I don't see the big deal. Make the "opt out" option available and be sure to advertise it. Again, problem solved.

Yeah Stick, I think it does. If I see SO with 1000+ tournaments under their belt and a pos ROI I can be pretty sure this is SO who makes good decisions at the table. Conversly, SO with an OPR of 20% who only finishes late 4% is probably not the best player at the table. When I get moved to a new table I may not have the luxory of waiting around for 20 or 30 hands to see how SO plays before I have to act. Sometimes this is all the information I have. Like all information it's most advantageous to those who know how to use it.

The main problem is'nt about having big edges. OK its handy when your on the bubble of the sunday million and see that the 2 on your right are $3 qualifiers without a big cash to their names.

Its people berating the fish, someone dosnt like being told that they have lost $5k playing $11 sit and go's, it makes them have a look at themselves and re-evaluate withir they should actually be playing this game.

Semantics does not an argument make. Pulling HHs and pulling tourney results are both datamining by definition. You may pull HHs from your table (on most sites) and you're entitled to log those tourney results. Third party poker observers are not allowed to legally harvest HHs from tables to compile a massive database on everyone that plays the game, so why should they be allowed to compile a massive database on everyones' results? There is no logical leap there; either third party poker datamining is allowed or it isn't. And yes HHs are available to these dataminers as well. All they need to do is open a table just like they do a lobby and screen scrape.

And yes, I am going to renege on my previous statement a bit. After thinking through this more, I've come to the conclusion that they should all simply be banned IMO.

Oh, and fwiw I blocked my stats at OPR and sharkscope a while back, yet I can still see stats on others (at least as much as a non-subscriber can see).

Well ok. Many different views and angles on his subject. I guess if we were pros, we wouldn't need to worry about this crap. (Although there are pros like Annie Duke and Phil Helmuth who are rumored to have terrible online tourney stats.)

All I know is that I LOVE it when my opponents see my stats and think I suck. Being underestimated "stokes the fire in my soul and makes me thirsty for blood".

I agree with MDTed, ban em all, and sent an email saying that

I'm with JD (and not DJ) on this one ...

Of course OPR (and similar others) datamine. Collecting data from sources they were not a part of IN ANY MANNER and compiling it for publication is datamining, imo. It's NOT the same as a golf, baseball, football, bowling (etc) rag/mag. Those mags do not cover the world's players. They follow the pros and semi-pros. Can you imagine the telephone book size of a mag if the results of every golf tourney worldwide was published in one source on a 'comparative' format?

Tracking golf scores is nothing similar to poker results. You have one golf ball and 36 holes to play with a designated 'par'. There are no bluff strokes, c-bet holes, early,mp,late or blinds strategy to play. No sitting out, no limping, no folds and no raises, re-raises or all-ins. You tee off and aim for the hole. How close a golf player gets to par is the guage.

If poker were to be compared to games like golf, or bowling, then wouldn't it be appropriate to give the lesser players a handicap? ...