poker.com condones tracking software

recently, i discovered that players on poker.com are allowed to use third party poker tracking programs such as sharkscope. a player on their site, MrMannybuck used a program like that in a sit n go tourney. i know this because he told me in chat exactly how much money i had lost at their site, to the penny. when i informed poker.com, they replied to me with:

"That player is using a third party poker tracker site such as Sharkscope.
Those sites use only publicly available information to track tournament play, such as what hands you played, etc. and compile it.
While we do not condone the use of those sites, they are entirely legitimate, and they do not have access to /any/ sensitive private information.
Basically, how they work is exactly the same as if someone at a live poker game was sitting there writing down with pen and paper what occurs, who bet what, who won and lost what hands, etc., it simply does it faster and more efficiently.
What that player did, however, was a breach of ettiquette, by trying to disrupt your game by acting as if he did have sensitive information (which he does not). The player will recieve a warning about this, and if he is found doing it again, there will be disciplinary action taken."

This is in direct violation of poker.com's own terms and conditions:

6. Artificial Intelligence.

We are committed to detecting and preventing software programs which are designed to enable artificial intelligence (non-human) to play on our site. Such programs are often designed to send information about cards or players to an external program. Your are not permitted to, and you agree not to, cause any such program to access our site or any data on it and you are not permitted to access any such data and send it to any other parties. You consent to the Company taking measures to prevent and detect the use of such programs using methods including but not limited to screen capture or reading the list of currently running programs on any player's (including your) computer.

sites like sharkscope are clearly AI, so tell me how this is not in violation of the terms? poker.com patronized me with doublespeak by saying they do not condone these programs yet will not prevent people from using them. this software is tantamount to cheating. can you sit at a table in a poker room and use an odds calculator every hand? and though it is "exactly the same as if someone at a live poker game was sitting there writing down with pen and paper what occurs," you show me how somebody is going to sit with a pen and paper and track the plays of thousands of players. it is the ethical equivalent of insider trading on Wall Street, in my opinion.

Poker.com copped out. they allow people to cheat, in violation of their own terms of service. call me a fish if you like, i don't care. but cheating is cheating, and Poker.com clearly encourages cheating. it is disreputable business practices like these that fuel the fires of hatred against online gaming in the US.

I think perhaps you have missed the key bit of their T&C, which is:

In other words, like every poker site, they are completely opposed to bots or any kind of automated play.

Sharkscope is not that. As they have said, it only makes available information which was already publicly available in any case. It will not make you a winning player unless you yourself supply the intelligence to make use of that information.

I don`t personally approve of or use these kinds of information-sharing programs, but they don`t contravene this rule.

^^^^
ditto

PokerStars - it is impossible to read this title and not see the word condoms lol.

this has to be a joke thread, right?

So how exactly is someone knowing how much money you have lost cheating? That doesn't affect the game you are playing at all. Perhaps you are just bitter that anyone nad everyone can look up how bad you are at poker? Or maybe you are on eof the conspiracy theory people who believe the world of online poker is rigged against them?

I won't call you a fish, cause I've never seen you play..... but I will ask you to prove how this is cheating? My guess is that you can't prove it... because it isn't cheating!!!

If you are so against this form of "cheating" you can go to the site and remove yourself from the database. Also there is another way to skew the results so it doesn't show what type of player you really are.

i have a point to make to make about sharkscope

i don't think of it as cheating, but as 'none of your f****** business'

i think its a lack of respect from the poker sites to allow players' win / loss data to be collated and presented to others

to say that it's publicly available information as if collected by pen and paper is bs, no way could an individual achieve that

why do the poker sites allow it? lol, i wonder

anyway, ennuff of the moral highground, i, like most others i guess, have used sharkscope to have a 'snoop' at others

sometimes, a player appears as 'blocked' or 'unavailable' or something like that

so, how do you make yourself 'unavilable' at sharkscope? i guess you gotta have a subscription to switch yourself off

anyone know?

AD

just seen bbb's post above

how do ya do it bbb?

Go to contact us and click on the link to block yourself. Paid subscribers will still see limited information on you. As soon as I blocked myself in Sharkscope the pm and msn requests for money from CC newbies stopped.

debi do you go to contact us at sharkscope.com?

yes

are there any other things i should be hiding from?

SPACE ALIENS

lol. and all brits!!!!!!!

Noooo - don't hide from the Brits! They make great husbands over there. (Trust me on that one)

Guess this thread has officially been hijacked.

thx dak :-)

There's a lot of really experienced posters in this thread, who seemingly all fail to realize that the OP is an advertisement for SharkScope.

That would be your mind, dear lady.

I concur.

Possibly, or perhaps you`re getting paranoid, FP.

This is my opinion.
Cheat is way to strong a concept in this case. However, it does, and probably will cause a re-evaluation of things in the future. It does give a player an advantage, and one of the issues with legalizing the game completly will be creating the most even field possible for the game.

So, Poker.Com might consider which will be the best method, either they somehow disable all current 3rd party poker programs from doing this, OR they provide an equivalent via thier site at no charge.

They should perhaps also state clearly and up front that some tracking software does work and is working.

Is a memory enhancing program AI ? That a computer can do many things better than a person is undisputed.

With faster internet connections, my 2nd alternative seems very attractive. Have any site provide all the stats they can use.

I would like to have the last hand function include not only my last hands, but any hands played at any table I am at. Or perhaps show an individual players hands history for the current sitting be it tourney or ring game. More important in a tourney I think.

The concept of a tourney as I see it, is to provide the most level playing field possible. Live player games makes a great memory an invaluable asset. Computer games should bring all computer possibilities in to play, short of a bot.

Again, it is my opinion, and no one else's. Unless they choose.

sharkscope cannot be called cheating as it is available to every1 and not just certain players

Signing off on sharkscope is one way of making sure no one uses your info. But my personal favorite way is to play all freerolls and minimicro tourneys and games that I can and really donk off in them. That way your scored is really skewed as to being a total donkfish.
I will then use that to my advantage and take all their chippies.

LOL, I was gonna say the same thing when I got done reading the rest of these posts.....

i considered this, but i actually think he's being serious.

fp you are so cynical!

Do you remember what the link was called before JuiceeQ removed it? Wasn't it "Sharkscope - The Largest Online Poker Tournament Results Database" or something similar? It seems pretty odd to me that a Poker.Com representative would name his link that way (or even for that matter include a link to the website in his response to begin with). In fact, it seems odd to me that the OP managed to copy/paste Poker.Com's response and keep the link intact.

Wouldn't you say?

I may be a cynic, but this is a slam dunk. A clever ploy, I'll give him that, but a ploy nonetheless.