Data Mining PokerStars

Crossing The Fine Line Between Competitiveness And Wrongdoing

The online poker industry has attracted millions of customers since the first poker boom, in 2003 when Chris Moneymaker stole the show at the WSOP Main Event. Many of them brought along a competitive edge that hadn’t existed till then in an attempt to maximize their profits.

To ease their efforts at the table, the HUD was born along with other poker tracking softwares like Poker Tracker and Holdem Manager. Articles about how to play the game the right way and training videos spread throughout the Internet making the average player more competent. More advanced concepts were defined pushing the bar even higher than before and setting the stage for what is now known as data mining (observing the game without playing to build up a database of hand histories).

The notorious Black Friday virtually banned most Americans - a huge part of the poker market - from playing on the international sites. This sudden lack of fiscal liquidity only made it harder for players to make a living. As a result, auto-seating scripts and table selection programs were developed and data mining became a must for all the wannabe poker professionals.

No game was spared in the battle of the fittest. Poker became a neverending search for a competitive edge, from cash games, SNGs, and MTTs to the newest high-variance games such as Spin & Go’s. Most importantly, no poker room was spared, not even the largest and most secured in the world, PokerStars. Does this mean that someone may already know your game even though he hasn’t played a single hand with you? Unfortunately yes. Here’s why:

Data Mining Is Real And PokerStars Confirmed It

In a recent 2+2 thread, a PokerStars player complained about the fact that every time he plays a Spin & Go, he is being watched. Not by real human beings, but by bots that datamine. He claimed he has played thousands of Spin & Go’s and every single one had at least one viewer constant viewer that would show up right at the beginning.

However, what the user 1v1 discovered is not breaking news to say the least. In the summer of 2015, another user created a similar thread complaining about the bots that datamine Spin & Go’s. Many users and experienced poker players acknowledged the claim as legitimate and even extended it to PokerStars as a whole. ‘alternative 3’ posted back in July:

Poker coach Jamie ‘buffyslayer1’ Wilby confirmed in the latest thread and said:

And indeed there are. If you search the Internet, you will find a handful of sites (many Russian-based yes) offering PokerStars hand histories from cash games and Zoom to Sit & Go’s and YES even Spin & Go’s. For example, on one site, if you want to buy 400.000 Spin & Go’s hands at the $7 levels, you have to pay $9 or $10. To buy 4 million hands, you must pay around $50. There are also many messages you can see in the chat from observers that claim to posses millions of PS hands, especially at Spin & Go’s.

Interestingly enough, PS Sit & Go and Tournament Manager Baard Dahl confirmed last week on 2+2 the data mining leak:

Is It Legal To Data Mine?

On PokerStars it is NOT. According to the Third Party Tools and Services FA

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done as Baard Dahl mentioned in his post. Everyone can observe any given table on PS - yes including Spin & Go’s with the Observe tab - no matter if they're logged in or not. Moreover, you can search tournaments by ID which is probably how bots are datamining Spin & Go’s anyway. Regarding the regular tables, the job is much easier for a bot: just look into the lobby, open as many tables as it can and start gathering information. Easy as 1, 2, 3, up to 24 cash tables and beyond (in tournaments).

For other poker networks and skins however, the situation is not as clear as on PS. Many don’t mention anything about data mining so since it’s not illegal, it can very well be used in such poker rooms.

How Effective Is Data Mining Anyway?

Data mining can be quite an effective tool and can give any player a significant edge at least in the beginning. Instead of discovering your opponent’s style of play on the go, as you play, you can know all there is to know about him without playing against them. So while he doesn’t have a clue about your game, you can virtually print money against him with the data mined info at your disposal.

Data mining is also very useful for any table selection tool. You don’t have to test the waters anymore - marking your opponent as a fish or a shark - you already have all the data to table select effectively which can save you from some obvious troubles. These table selection tools - Sharkystrator is one example - transformed the SNG environment on PokerStars (especially the Single Table Tournaments and Heads-Up SNGs) into a semi-exclusive club that targets the weak players, thus depleting in one way or another the medium and high-stake games.

Even the popular Spin & Go’s had such tools until recently. SpinWiz promised the buyer automated registration and highly-effective table selection. PokerStars banned this software on October 1, 2015 in the attempt to randomize the tables and create a friendlier environment for the recreational players.

What Can PokerStars Do To Prevent Data Mining?

There are a number of things the largest poker room in the world can do in order to make data mining bots obsolete.

For Spin & Go’s for example, the obvious choice would be to disable the tournament search by ID option. But what about other games like STT, HUSNG and cash? To make the bots ineffective, PokerStars would have to reshape its lobby entirely - eliminate the single game and combo view and popularize the group view just like Full Tilt did in 2015. No table selection and an automated seating system - just like in Zoom without the joining and leaving table frenzy. What you have is what you get! No other complications.

Of course, there are other options and the 2+2 users were kind enough to share them with the rest of the poker community. Among those options were banning accounts that search for too many games, changing the format of the hand history files, or this interesting suggestion from ‘Albert Socrates’:

Interesting, right PokerStars?

Editor’s Take: Pushing The Competitive Edge Too Far

The games have changed since the Golden Age of Online Poker and the average player has become more and more competent. The gap between a good and an average player has shrunk considerably pushing the grinder to look for any competitive edge possible. But to go beyond the fairness of the game is just too much.

Data mining is not an option any of us should look for when playing the game we love most. It is illegal and should remain that way if we truly want a healthy poker environment. Buying hand histories from all those data mining sites on the web not only means we encourage illegal actions but also means we jeopardize the future of online poker. Yes, poker is a game of incomplete information but that info must be acquired at the table while actually playing and NOT by some specialized data-gathering robots.

And if you are not sure how you could possibly jeopardize the future of the online games, just take a closer look at the PokerStars lobby, select the Sit & Go tab and filter your results by medium/high-stakes and heads-up/single table. What do you see? If the answer is not much, only a few tables, then you would be correct. After that, you can maybe take a quick peek at the Cash Games tab, the medium and high-stakes Heads-Up tables. Quite the same, bum hunting gone terribly wrong. Is this what we want from our future?