Privacy In Online Poker: Bodog Prevents Screen Scraping

Bodog poker has been at the forefront of a fight against screen scrapers and poker data miners since about four months ago. They declared war on sites which collect and sell various useful statistical data about online poker players. Such data is generally used by winning poker players (a.k.a sharks) to gain advantage in the game or just play more poker tables simultaneously. How can one play twenty (20) tables at once? To track over a hundred opponents at once is beyond ordinary human memory’s ability. That is where some neat software tools come into play.

Initially, to thwart scrapers, Bodog only removed full tables from its software client lobby. They also promised to follow on with a more comprehensive software update which would take care of screen scraping once and for all. I have written before suggesting some technical measures to prevent bots from scraping data. I emphasized pure technical means vs zealotry and political bickering that was going on between pokerscout and bodog at the time. Recently Bodog Poker released a software update they promised. But had they gone too far in their crusade to level the poker playing field?

Bodog’s New Software Overdelivers On Anonymity

They said they were going to do it, and they have done it. Bodog’s new client contains features designed to protect recreational players and make it harder for sharks to maintain their edge and win rate. These privacy “features” are mostly lack of features as you can see below. Among those features are:

1. Removed capability to keep notes on other players
2. Completely anonymized tables by removing screen names and individualized avatars for all players.
3. Removed access to hand history. Even one’s own hand history.

Removing notes. Small stuff, probably just a side-effect of item #2. That said, it does feel a bit sinister. The move is kind of a throw back in time. Our civilization is about more written word, more notes, storing and using those notes. Well, not at Bodog, notes are not allowed.

Anonymous tables. The term might even be trademarked by Bodog. No doubt this drastic move does solve all unwanted data collection issues. Such policy is as simple and powerful as a sledge hammer. Though it strikes me as a case of curing a headache by guillotine. Here avatar and screen name are important individuality cues. These cues or attributes are what makes multiplayer poker social and fun after all! The biggest trend on the Internet is to bring social aspects into everything. Am I wrong?... then...just call me Player#3 from now on.

You may be wondering why Bodog went for such drastic changes: “Bodog Recreational Poker Model” explains that sharks are bad for site profitability. Basically, they want to attract and retain recreational players, players who blow their money quickly and deposit again. At least there is a clear business objective here. It is too early to tell whether such policy would work as expected.

No hand history. Hand history (hh) as a feature got “scrapped” because it was the focus of scraping efforts. Pun intended. HH is the very data which gets scraped without permission to be aggregated and sold later. But hand history is also the primary method for self improvement. Now aspiring poker players are left without means to analyze their own game. In other words, they are doomed to stay as recreational players (suckers or fish) forever. This point raises question as interesting as it is important.

Data ‘R’ Us

Who owns the data derived from poker hands as they play out in cyber space? Take web mail as an example. Obviously email author owns their own emails. Despite lengthy Terms of Service which allow providers to insert ads, in the end, data is still owned by the account holder. If that is the case for a free product such as web mail, than why is it not so in online poker where players pay a fee (rake) to use the product? It is just common sense. A player should be able to obtain and/or review her own complete hand history at all times. While this question might seem rather irrelevant. It is not, because HH is key to computer learning. After all a player is nothing but the sum of all its moves. Thus any player can be defeated by attacking their individual playing patterns.