Can a Wrong be a Right?

In the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale, Jr.(played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is a con man and counterfeiter on the run from the FBI.  He is charismatic, and while entertainment value could be found in many of his exploits, he is a criminal, plain and simple.  Even though he should have been put away for a long, long time after he got caught, he only spent a relatively short time in prison because FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) offered him a deal: work for the FBI uncovering fraud and counterfeiting schemes and become a free man.  The bad guy used his criminal skills to make himself a legitimate success.

Recently, events in the poker world have loosely mirrored those in the film.  Three major problems were discovered at online poker rooms over the last few months: significant encryption flaws on both the Cereus and Cake networks and a bot ring at PokerStars.  The interesting thing about them is that they may have gone on unchecked were it not for a controversial player in the industry: PokerTableRatings.com (PTR).

Before I go on, let me clarify that I am not drawing a direct parallel between the folks at PTR and federal criminals.  That would not be fair.  But there is a similarity in what happened in Catch Me If You Can and what has been going on with PTR lately.  PTR is a poker hand aggregating site.  It datamines at several different poker rooms and transforms that data into detailed information about every player at every one of those sites.  Want to know how aggressive that guy in seat two normally is on the turn?  PTR can tell you.  Want to know if he’s a big winner or loser in that specific game?  Check out PTR.  The site has all sorts of tools that allow players to know everything about their opponents before ever laying eyes on them at the virtual felts.  Some information can be had in limited quantities for free, but the good stuff is available only via a paid subscription.  On top of that, players can actually purchase hand histories (PTR boasts that it has tracked over 8.7 billion hands) to download into their personal poker tracking software, such as PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager.  For example, if I want hand histories for $.5/$1 short-handed No-Limit Hold’em games, I can buy 5 million of them for $195.

PTR’s services are not looked upon kindly by many players.  The prevailing opinion seems to be that the availability of this information is bad for the game for several reasons, but three stand out.  First, PTR’s services (note: there are other similar sites, as well) are almost exclusively used by strong “regulars,” giving them even more of an advantage than they already had over casual players.  Casual players, or “fish,” as people like to call the lesser skilled ones, are good for the poker economy because they are the ones who reload and inject more money into the sites.  The faster they have their money sapped by the “sharks,” though, the faster they are likely to just give up on poker.  Second, there are inevitably regulars who get mad about a suckout and then berate the “fish” who won the hand, announcing to everybody how much money PTR says that player has lost.  Players don’t like to be embarrassed or feel unwelcome, so they are more likely to leave the site if it happens.  Third, data aggregators like PTR just make the games worse, as their customers will scour the poker rooms looking for juicy games (PTR has a tool that can find you the best games), only willing to sit down when they find some fish to abuse.  This is most noticeable in the heads-up lobbies, as regulars often refuse to play against anyone who PTR reveals is a good player, making it hard to find a game.

Oh, and on top of all that, it is against the terms and conditions of pretty much every poker room to buy, sell, or share hand histories of hands in which you were not involved.  Thus, PTR blatantly breaks the rules in offering its services.

But now things have gotten interesting.  The site that so many considered to be the “bad guy” has now helped the industry and poker players immensely.  It found security problems on two major networks, potentially saving players and the poker rooms thousands, or even millions, of dollars.  And if PTR hadn’t existed, it would have been much, much harder for the PokerStars bots to have been found, as there likely would not have been such large amounts of data on those bots all in one place.  Players may have had their suspicions, but without all the information that PTR had, there is no guarantee that the bots would have been caught.

So, PTR and similar sites can be valuable assets to the industry.  Where the poker rooms fall short in their security, the hand tracking sites can fill in the gaps.  But are the benefits worth the problems they pose?  I’m not so sure, but at the same time, putting all that information in the hands of a knowledgeable third party, not to mention all the poker players who pay for it, can really help clean up online poker.  Fewer bots, colluders, and even possible superusers will attempt to cheat players because they know people have the tools to catch them.  And those that do still try to make their money in a dirty way will be easier to stop.

It’s an interesting debate.  I’ve always been squarely in the “PTR is bad” camp, but I do see the value the site can offer and have most definitely appreciated the site’s efforts in weeding out poker’s issues lately.  Is there some sort of middle ground?  I don’t know.  The debate will rage on.