Hostility Between Bodog And PokerScout Continues Unabated
December 21, 2011 1:26 pmThe feud between Bodog and PokerScout.com. has continued to grow since Bodog requested that the traffic stats site removed Bodog from their listings following Black Friday.
Bodog has been leading the fight within the online poker industry of trying to protect its recreational players, which it sees as vital to the survival of the industry. Some of the measures taken by Bodog in the past include banning tracking software, heads-up displays (HUDS), scrapping rakeback schemes, as well as blocking data-mining sites.
After requesting PokerScout dropped Bodog from its site, Bill Beatty, managing editor of Bodog news site Calvinayre.com, then claimed PokerScout’s owner Dan Stewart demanded $1 million from Bodog in return for doing so. This claim was vehemently refuted by PokerScout who, nonetheless, continued to include Bodog on its site.
Recently, Bodog then introduced new Anonymous Tables, which had the dual purposes of stopping data-miners collecting information on the players, as well as preventing PokerScout.com from collecting data on the site’s traffic.
However, PokerScout.com has continued releasing information on Bodog’s traffic, which it says is down nearly 10% since Anonymous Tables were introduced. In return Bodog has said that the information collected is fabricated and designed to harm its brand, while PokerScout’s Dan Stewart countered by releasing a statement stating:
“Our current traffic readings for Bodog are projections based on a combination of available data and known traffic patterns. While this data is more volatile than before, we believe it to be accurate on average. If it becomes necessary, we will simply publish estimates of Bodog’s traffic as we do for some other untracked sites.”
The upshot of his statement can be interpreted as follows; ‘if PokerScout can’t accurately track Bodog it will simply just estimate its traffic.’
Therefore, the feud between the two businesses doesn’t show any signs of abating any time soon.