Question re. Pokerdata.com

Has anyone heard of this site? It offers stats on players (mostly PP players). They charge $7.95 a month. Anyone a member? Worthwhile? Complete waste of $?

It looks dodgy. The fact that they are posting stats from certain players and demanding that those players register, i.e pay, to be removed is blackmail, plain and simple.

Strategic Business Developers

Bryan Howe

1012 NW Wall St #40

end, OR 97701 US

Phone: 541-322-9083

Fax..: 520-395-8943

Email: bryan@sbdevelopers.com


Registrar Name....: Register.com

Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com

Registrar Homepage: http://www.register.com


Domain Name: POKERDATA.COM


Created on..............: Mon, Sep 24, 2001

Expires on..............: Tue, Sep 24, 2002

Record last updated on..: Wed, Sep 26, 2001


Administrative Contact:

Strategic Business Developers

Bryan Howe

1012 NW Wall St #40

Bend, OR 97701 US

Phone: 541-322-9083

Fax..: 520-395-8943

Email: bryan@sbdevelopers.com

Thank you for your inquiry into this developing site. I would like to give you some information for the public to understand as to avoid the confusion itchyball has regarding motive for making the site a registration-based portal.


First, I have been playing online poker for about 2 years starting at Poker.com and later moving to Paradise. I have never really felt I was good enough to make a living at it although I squeeked a decent little income from online play. I was an avid poster to the various forums and usually got ridiculed when I stated I was a profitable player at Paradise.


I designed Pokerdata.com not to cause anomosity between member/ non member player, but to be a portal of information regarding all aspects of the online game. The player tracking feature you speek of is hardly anything a non-member should be concerned about. The limited information in the section on players played against is enough to curve your table selection, but not to give you any real advantage over the player. It tells you things like % of flops seen, %raise pre-flop, and their *estimated* hourly rate as a player. Basically it will tell you if a table of winners, losers, passive, aggressives. Obviously every session that player has will not be logged so it is more of trend. For instance, they may have data gathered from their 20-40 game showing them as a big loser, but not from their 3-6 play where they constantly beat the game.


As for cost, there were many issues we had to consider. One has to consider the information gathered could be potentially harming to the sites themselves. We use all hand histories to see what the distribution of cards are in the pocket, on the board, as well as the distribution of starting hands. Over a large sample, this should show a true random distribution, but if it doesnt...?


This is a portal where players can come, see how they rate against other online players, and check to see if the deal is infact real. In short, its what the internet was designed for, sharing and pooling information unlike ever before.


With that, we had to make a decision as to whether or not we should be membership driven or advertising driven. Advertising driven would line us up to look like we are funded by the sites themselves. We decided against this as we want remain loyal to the membership, not the advertisers. As well, there will be those "net kooks" who believe we are just The Evil Empire trying to justify our freakish swings in our games. As well, without registration, it would be possible for people to simply doctor histories to show a lot of AA AKs being dealt and mess up the stats. At least with membership, they have to pay to do it, and we know who they are.


Last, if anyone is interested in trying it out and giving us feedback, I will set you up with a free ID to demo the site. Please contact me at bryan@pokerdata.com


Hope this helps everyone be more informed.


Best Regards,

Bryan

First of all, you need a p.a. to proof read your writings. Withstanding that, on your website you have a link to "check out stats of players that aren't members". On that linked page is the statement" once you register your name will be removed from the list." If I was on that list I'd be pretty pissed off if every non-paying member was able to see "basic" statistics. I'd be even more pissed off that I have to register with something I don't want to register with to remove my name. To repeat myself, this is blackmail.


have a nice day

Where is this "check out the stats link"? Did they take it off? I don't see it.


Thanks,


Glenn

After consideration, we removed the link from the front of the site for now to consider the implications of such a feature to the general public. I still contend the information is unusable to predict an opponents strategy, but we do not like the idea of people feeling "blackmailed" into joining either.


Does the audience feel that way? Or is itchyball alone in his feeling of being blackmailed? Would it make a difference if registration to remove yourself was free, however the stats engine and parsers would still have a smaller (than 7.95) cost?


Thanks for your input as we roll out this new service.


Warm Regards,

Bryan

The statistics you apparently provide about opponents would be more than sufficient to allow a good player to increase his edge against weak opponents whose play he would not otherwise be familiar with (provided the statistics are based on a sufficient sample size).


It would make a big difference "if registration to remove yourself was free;" this would eliminate the blackmail aspect of your enterprise IMO.