The Poker Hound-- www.thepokerhound.com

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What I meant is why should people feel comfortable providing you with data that you will store in your mysql database, without knowing specifically whether you will use it for your own purposes. I'm not saying you will, but programs like PT and PO allow me to maintain control over my data, rather than submitting it somewhere that might be collecting data to parse my (and my opponents) particular playing profiles.

My question was more towards giving you an opportunity to clearly state your intentions so people might feel more comfortable submitting their HHs.

Ok, I see. That's a good question. My intentions are to provide personal stats and community stats. I'm really interested in being able to analyze what you might call a collective player, where you combine data from all users to determine general tendencies etc. While you do get this to an extent with a personal DB, a community DB would be more accurate.

But, this still does not fully answer your question. Here's the Bottom line: right now, the poker hound lets you analyze your own stats and compare those stats to anonymous aggregate models. It also lets you analyze data about other players if you have posted that data. It does not let you access aggregate models of specific players. So, when you upload your hand histories, only you have acess to the data in them (although the data is added anonymously to collevite models)

all of this is taken pretty much verbatim from the terms on the website. also in the terms is a guarantee that anyone associated with the poker hound, namely me, is not allowed priveleged access to stats and may only access stats as any other user would. This is a binding contract; i would be breaking the law if i did not abide by it.

nevetherless, i can understand why folks would be reluctant to upload all their hand histories. so, i'm working on an option that will let people upload a limited number of their own hand histories and still give them access to the anonymous aggregate stats. that way, there won't be a large enough sample size to profile users, but there'll still be an accummulated aggregate pool of data, which is where i think some of the most interesting information lies.

i'm really not trying to do what poker prophecy does or poker tracker or poker ace (which seems like a pretty badass piece of software). but i do think we're just scratching the surface of the data models and statistics that can be culled from hand histories. so, i'm throwing my software in the mix.

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Thanks for the clarification. Best of luck with it.