Bodog blocks poker information portals to save recreational players

Calvin- Are these guys trying to be idiot savants or did they actually do market research studies of recreational players? (And ones that didn't pre-taint they answers with leading questions about huds, tracking sites etc.?)

I'm NOT one of the rec players. ( I am, well, I suppose I WAS a tournament regular for the longest time.)
But I've never spoken with any recreational player that was all up in arms about these things to the point where they decide not to play. Most, if they complain at all, are afraid of the RNG/ their funds – and THAT is what keeps them from playing online.

While I am against the PTR's of the world selling hand histories, I'm not sure what purpose the rest of this serves?

-Not providing a readable HH in-game? Those are just as useful to a regular as a rec player. No advantage their. There is a reason every site on the planet provides them – and the one bodog provides is not usable, and even in it's old state it wasn't scrapeable or usable by the HEMS and pokertrackers of the world.

-Blocking pokerscout? That one seems only a move to let the industry not know that the poker room is a sinking ship at bodog, as it has been for a long time. There is no single player that goes to the pokerscout listings to get an edge. Perhaps to yank there money off a site when they see its base shrinking… though that only confirms what they already knew from seeing noone at the tables.

-Blocking Sharkscope and the pokerdb? Again, as the article even stated, the rec players and fish don't even know those things exist in most cases. And given there is between some and near complete free access to those tools for non-paying customers, what's the big deal? You can't table select in MTT's for one…so no edge there… and in tournament play, the rec player is ultimately getting crushed anyway – in about the same amount of time, pokerdb or no.

The one reason I CAN think of for blocking those sites is really more a monitoring of chat problem – that players sometimes call each other out and that can be a bad thing certainly. But your room has the most hyper-active chat filters built in already, you think they might look for stat-banging in the chat and censor/suspend chat for players that use that info. Chat abusers are the problem here, not the sites.

Lastly, in the midst of attempting all that they are… they bungle the software updates every time. Do they have merely ideas yet no quality control? No other poker site that I can think of is consistently as poor in regards to SW changes and QA. I can't remember one update that ever got it right the first time. I'd suggest that in the midst of a hiring spree and visionary* thought they actually learn about execution of strategy, not merely the concept of it.

I'd be interested in your opinion. I've made most of the money I've ever made in the bodog room, yet see it go further down the tubes as the months and years pass… and the player base dries up… and the tournament offerings get poorer. And I hate to see it wither and die and alienate current players. I'd much rather see some sensible ideas on how to make it flourish.