- HH Dealer has announced that it is now able to sell hand histories for partypoker and Borgata Poker’s New Jersey regulated online poker rooms.
- The use of such hand histories usually contravenes poker room’s terms and conditions, but is a widespread practise used to populate poker tracking databases.
Data miner HH Dealer had announced that it was selling hand histories from the partypoker New Jersey network. The network includes both partypoker and the Borgata online poker rooms.
However, the announcement that was posted on May 10 has now been removed and the sale of mined hand histories for the New Jersey online poker network halted.
According to the web site, HH Dealer had expected to expand its subscription based offering to include the bulk sale of hand histories—typically several million hands at a time—in one or two months.
The collection and commercial distribution of hand histories violates the Terms of Service set forth by Borgata Poker.
“You may not use the Services or any intellectual property contained therein for any commercial purpose,” the Terms state.
HUDs in New Jersey
“Observed” hand histories describes a hand history that reveals no hole cards due to it being collected by a player sitting out while seated at the table.
The use of these hand histories allows players to build up databases of hands played by other players. These can then be used to analyze how opponents play and provide statistics through a Head Up Display (HUD) in real-time.
Since launch, partypoker NJ and Borgata have saved played hand histories to the hard drive, and tracking solutions providers like Hold’em Manager and Poker Tracker recently began official support for the sites.
WSOP NJ and 888 NJ began providing hand histories in early 2014.
According to a WSOP representative, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement chose not to clarify its stance on tracking software and WSOP took a “won’t endorse, won’t ban them” stance.
Use by Players Constitutes Cheating
The mass collection of such hands and the use of them in-game is commonly against the terms and conditions of online poker rooms.
Under New Jersey regulations, players found to be using observed hand histories may be considered in violation of the law.
Under the Unfair Advantage Policy that is part of Borgata Poker’s Terms of Service, the “sharing and using [of] combined knowledge to gain an advantage over other players” is considered collusion—a form of cheating that is outlawed by the New Jersey gaming regulations.
PokerStars Pushes Back
In April 2012, PokerStars took legal action in the form of a cease and desist letter against Poker Table Ratings, a site that sells access to statistical data on individual online poker players and hand histories in bulk.
PokerStars argued that the information being made available gave some players an unfair advantage.
PTR swiftly responded by removing PokerStars data from the site and ended the sale of hand histories.
Software Provider Opposes Observed Hands But Supports Them
PokerTracker—a suite of online poker software tools commonly used by those that purchase hand histories—opposes the use of observed hands, however it must support them.
“We must support every variant and nuance of the hand history provided by online poker sites that we support, including observed hands if the network provides them, because they are considered an official part of the network’s hand history spec,” Marketing Manager Steven McLoughlin told pokerfuse.
Though commercial data miners can use other methods to obtain the hand histories they sell, the ability for those hand histories to be used with popular analytical software programs like PokerTracker exists because “it is impossible to tell the difference between an observed hand and a data mined hand,” according to McLoughlin.
“Without observed hands it would be impossible for a data miner to use our software for nefarious reasons,” McLoughlin continued.
“If a poker network that currently provides observed hand histories chooses to stop providing observed hand histories, we will build a filter into our software to block the import of observed hand histories as of the date that change was made.”
