Sharkscope Stops Supporting 888 Poker

Late last month, the poker tracking site Sharkscope ceased supporting 888. Sharkscope labeled the development "extremely disappointing," writing, "We regret to announce that 888 Poker is preventing us from including player statistics from their network on SharkScope. This development is extremely disappointing and has come as a surprise to us, as we have worked in close partnership with sites on the 888 Poker network for many years."

888 is a major network to lose, as according to PokerScout, it is the fifth largest network worldwide. It has a seven-day running average of 2,050 real money ring game players with a 24-hour peak of nearly 3,500.

It's in a virtual deadlock in traffic with PartyPoker, whose network includes brand name sites like bwin and WPT Poker.

In the same message, Sharkscope asserted that it had offered to install an "opt-in" system for 888 players whereby people could enter their 888 user names to have their results tracked, but 888 apparently "declined all the options we have put forward."

Sharkscope then encouraged its readers to steer clear of 888 altogether, writing, "This damages all players on this network by making it harder for them to track and analyze their tournament results, publish their own results for staking deals or social reasons, compete in our global leaderboards, and also the ability to use our 'By Opponents' feature to detect and protect themselves from the large amount of collusion that occurs in online poker. As always, we encourage our users to get the most out of our service and that can only occur by playing where the service is available."

Sharkscope concluded its statement on the issue by asking its members to contact 888 Poker. One user commented on the article and asked where he could get a refund for Sharkscope. The site told him to e-mail support@sharkscope.com for it. All references to 888 Poker will be removed from the tracking site, so even old data will apparently be unavailable.

An 888 representative responded in the comments section of the Sharkscope article, contending, "We do not give permission for any data mining sites to access our poker room, and actively enforce this policy. Data mining is a violation of our End User License Agreement and copyright law. This policy is to protect you, our members, from these sites providing data on your game play and potentially selling it to third parties."

One person quickly responded, "And what if your software is rigged? The only way to uncover a rigged poker room is to analyze the totality of players' stats. But, I'm sure you know that. I think that you made a very, very, very bad choice 888!"

So what do you think? Should Sharkscope and 888 have parted ways? Will tracking inaccuracies in 888's software now be more difficult? Do you use and believe in poker tracking sites in general? Let us know by commenting here.

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