Software needed

Derek in NYC · #1 07-12-2005, 08:35 PM

I have been thinking about the hand history wars that are being hashed out these days, and what technology is coming.

My hope is that programs like PokerEdge manage to survive, either by convincing Party that they do not violate the TOS, or by becoming undetectible to Party. If PokerEdge is somehow stopped, I expect datamining to also be stopped (possibly by going back to the days before observed hand histories were available, e.g., what UB has done).

If these events come to pass, there will be great demand to share PT databases among high volume players. One of the obvious hazards of sharing such data is of course that you will be giving the opposition tens of thousands of hands about your own play. Such a problem is not a big deal when you are sharing PT files with your trusted friends, but it becomes less desirable to do when you are sharing with random strangers.

Let me cut to the chase: we need an application to be written that anonymizes hand histories. Specifically, software that goes through a dB and strips out all reference to your identity and replaces it with some random garbage. For example, instead of saying "Joe_Smith", the HHF could be converted to say "dsfdsfdsapo".

Can such a program be written?

illunious · #2 07-12-2005, 09:43 PM

Pretty easily... notepad could do this.

But with the hand history number, you would just have to request one of the histories, get the real name and re-replace.

bobdibble · #3 07-12-2005, 11:08 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Pretty easily... notepad could do this.

But with the hand history number, you would just have to request one of the histories, get the real name and re-replace.

[/ QUOTE ]

You could easily replace the hand history number in such a way that it would still be unique. (Using a one way hash, for example... e.g. SHA, MD5, etc)

However, the real problem that would arise is if you receive hands from two different people that have the same hand history. It would be pretty easy to match them up and figure out who the obsfucated player was in each case.

Derek in NYC · #4 07-13-2005, 12:04 AM

Even if you could identify 1 hand history as coming from a particular player, that wouldnt matter. The real concern is that people wouldn't be able to share dBs out of fear that they are giving a massive data dump about their own playing style, to every TAG in the universe.

pokergrader · #5 07-13-2005, 03:33 AM

The new version of PGC will offer this exact feature, allowing you to mass save your files in either compressed or uncompressed format. The current version will only either anonymized all of the names or none of them, but I've already been working on this for the next version.

Sadly im working full-time now during the week, but once I get some time on the weekend I can finalize the new version and release it.

pokergrader · #6 07-13-2005, 03:38 AM

And just a side-note: The real issue here is that each person sharing hand histories files is just not going to cut it.

Somebody needs to make a trusted centralized server that will process the hand histories and create a massive free database for everybody to use. The one I was thinking of would require registration to upload HH files (and recieve statistics), and upon registration the user would be allowed to blacklist 1-4 names from the database, so that their statistics would not be available if they did not want them to be.

SamIAm · #7 07-13-2005, 01:40 PM

[ QUOTE ]
upon registration the user would be allowed to blacklist 1-4 names from the database, so that their statistics would not be available if they did not want them to be.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is exactly what sent 2+2 into an uproar about PokerEdge. Because PE didn't want to force subscribers to reveal their entire game (by sending every hand they played), PE blocked that users stats. This was interpreted as "extortion", and we get 15-page threads and emails to Party.
-Sam

MrMoo · #8 07-13-2005, 03:06 PM

This is easy to do. Especially now that Poker Tracker supports PostgreSQL. Problem I see is that Party will just ban Pokertracker. Or at least make it so that you can't have ptrack.exe running while Party is running.

I still plan on setting something like this up. But it won't be public. My intention would be to do it all through word of mouth.

SamIAm · #9 07-13-2005, 03:42 PM

[ QUOTE ]
My intention would be to do it all through word of mouth.

[/ QUOTE ]Does this count? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
-Sam

sk8erboy1 · #10 07-13-2005, 03:54 PM

You guys are really stupid. Both Party and Stars have expressed their concerns about datamining and datafarms (such as PokerEdge), but have also stated that pokeroffice and PT are valid tools to use. Keep going in the directions you are discussing and soon you will have PT banned as well. Stats are fun, please don't destroy it for me.