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You don't think that someone that gathers info on 2,400+ hands per day has an unfair advantage over someone that can only gather info on 600 hands per day?

As long as it is within the rules of the game? Obviously not.

The info on PTR also helped the community to discover cheating rings. Hope the ban of one form of cheating isn't supplying other forms of cheating. In my mind stars should make even more efforts now to detect cheating. I would also like some public reports/ prove that they are working effectively.

As for sweating I don't see it's against the rules. Ethically it's perfectly fine for me as the EV of a team is generally lower than both players playing alone for the same amount of time. The learning process is the main goal and not to team up in order to rip someone- However you could make an argument for unethical behaviour when ballers team up at the nosebleeds

You seem to have not read the question. But anyway there is not much point going into a debate over it. Was just providing an objective look on the matter as things are never as black and white in things like that.

You don't think that someone that gathers info on 2,400+ hands per day has an unfair advantage over someone that can only gather info on 600 hands per day?

They both gather the same amount of hands vs each other, therefore have the same access to information on each other.

Yes that is a good point okay I can see how that would be cheating now.

The info on PTR also helped the community to discover cheating rings.

That's what I wanted to say: PTR are good when they discover bots and cheaters, but in rest of the cases it's cheating and let's ban PTR. Which leads me to the question: if we systematically disallow PTR to track hands, how the hell can they find cheaters and bots? E-mailing them and asking them directly?

Sounds like a double standard to me.

I think a more +EV idea is for PokerStars to contact PTR and to tell them something like this:

You discovered cheaters, bots and security flaws in the past. So we want to collaborate with you. We will give you full access to the hands on our site and you, through your mathematical and statistical methods, help us in making PokerStars a safer and fairer environment. And under no circumstance can you use, lend, sell or do anything else with them, except for finding cheaters.

That's what I wanted to say: PTR are good when they discover bots and cheaters, but in rest of the cases it's cheating and let's ban PTR. Which leads me to the question: if we systematically disallow PTR to track hands, how the hell can they find cheaters and bots? E-mailing them and asking them directly?

Sounds like a double standard to me.

I think a more +EV idea is for PokerStars to contact PTR and to tell them something like this:

You discovered cheaters, bots and security flaws in the past. So we want to collaborate with you. We will give you full access to the hands on our site and you, through your mathematical and statistical methods, help us in making PokerStars a safer and fairer environment. And under no circumstance can you use, lend, sell or do anything else with them, except for finding cheaters.

Why not hire people who would actually be good at stuff like that?

I wish ptr was shut down because when I log and see the icicles around my gross low score it tilts me sooo much. I don't find there numbers particularly accurate all the time either.

Why not hire people who would actually be good at stuff like that?

PTR proved to be good at that

PTR proved to be good at that

I disagree...They made from a professional point of view some close to trivial observations.

Why not hire people who would actually be good at stuff like that?

To what extent do we trust sites and the industry regulators to be self policing?

On some level I think having information in the public domain really helps the transparency of the games and the sites themselves. At this point I think we've all seen enough scandals in the industry to know that it is pretty murky out there. I don't think internet poker is rigged but there is certainly enough evidence out there that no one really has a close control on anything and any future scandals are not going to be uncovered by a site or it's regulator coming forward and telling us they caught something.

If there was an alternate site to PTR that didn't sell hands or display screen names maybe that would help?

PTR wouldn't exist if it's only function was to police the games; that's not how they are making money, and why they get visitors. It's just a byproduct.

I do like looking people up to see the ups and downs of people, mainly top pros to see how they are doing and what stakes they play and what stakes they played 12 months ago. Not bothered about data mined hands although I always wondered where they got them from

This is so awesome. I like making money from poker, so that's why I like that PTR is gone. I know many regfish would prefer that PTR still existed but it's overall just better for the health of the games that it's gone. Even the regfish probably end up making more money longterm from PTR being gone due to better health of the games.

The reason the health of the games improves is that PTR only kills action, it never creates any. If there are no games and no action then there's no edge to be hand in the first place. A bit edge of the poker professional is accurately assessing the edge vs their competitors, removing this skill entirely from the game also removes another edge.

Anyone who isn't genuinely concerned about datamined hands definitely falls into the regfish category, there's just so much damage done from datamined hands being in the public domain. From making it much easier to get high level bots running and making it far easier for unknown opponents to have an edge over you there's not a lot of good that comes out of it.

The info on PTR also helped the community to discover cheating rings.

I'm sure Stars already does a much better job doing this than PTR anyway and having PTR gone outweighs the bots they would detect imo.