PokerStars Sends Cease and Desist Letter to PokerTableRatings.com

[techdemo]

The fight over online poker player data took a legal turn for the first time on April 16 with popular online poker room PokerStars threatening to take data-mining website Poker Table Ratings (PTR) to the court. The threat, cited as not just an “idle” one, forced the PTR’s website to go offline temporarily, before it agreed to remove all PokerStars player profiles from its data service.

PokerStars, with its Cease and Desist letters to PTR, indicated that it did not approve the selling of statistical data on individual online poker players by PTR. Database applications like that of PTR allows opponents to search for a player’s name and their win or loss rate. It also provides information, for a fee, the playing style of poker players with graphs of lifetime winnings. They also sell hand histories to players in million-hand bulk purchases.

Now, with PokerStars inferring that it has “assembled a team of lawyers in multiple jurisdictions to follow up,” as quoted by the head of the online poker room’s home games Lee Jones, it’s a fair indication that online poker rooms are thinking seriously of policing their online poker rooms.

[RUPAM]

The legal encounter involving PokerStars and data-mining website PokerTableRatings.com has come to an end. On the 18th of April 2012, PokerTableRatings(PTR) had removed all profiles and statistics of PokerStars players following the notice that the world's largest poker site(PokerStars) had sent cease and desist letters on Monday(16th,April 2012).

Lee Jones of PokerStars stated that the letters were not "an idle threat" and that they had "assembled a team of lawyers in multiple jurisdictions to follow up". Data-mining site PTR did not wish to give a statement at that time, though an announcement on their blog on the 18th confirmed their fulfillment with PokerStars' demands.

"We will fully adhere to the cease and desist notice by Stars, though we do not believe that we are a disservice to the onlinepoker community," read the statement on the PTR blog. PokerStars player profiles are now unavailable, displaying only instead a message to "contact Stars support if you would like your profile made public".

The site has also removed the ability to purchase PokerStars hand histories in bulk, an act that is prohibited by the terms and conditions of most poker sites including PokerStars.

PTR used to sell statistical data on online poker players, allowing users to search for publicly-displayed screen names and win rates as well as bulk hand history sales. But, now all this has come to an end.