by Mario Alfonsi | Published on Dec 21, 2011 | Updated on Dec 21, 2011To most people in the industry, it is no secret that Bodog and PokerScout have not historically seen eye to eye. More recently the distaste has grown a bit stronger for a number of reasons. Bodog recently announced its anonymous tables which were made to put a stop to the thieving that PokerScouts does. In case you did not know, PokerScouts collects information from poker sites and uses that to determine how much traffic a site is receiving as well as other relatively useful information. The only problem with this, in Bodog’s eyes, is that they never gave PokerScout permission to be using this information. The latest problem is that PokerScout is now reporting a 10% decrease in traffic on Bodog since it unveiled the new anonymous tables, a number that is said to be exaggerated according to Bodog.Calvin Ayre, founder of Bodog, does not hide his feelings about Bodog, and on his site CalvinAyre.com he released a statement on the matter, saying:“It shouldn’t surprise any of you that we’re not fans of Dan Stewart, his site Pokerscout.com and their business model of exploiting poker operator’s data without permission for profit. This dislike existed even before his extortion attempt of our friends over at Bodog poker. Dan’s business model involves pilfering a poker operator’s proprietary data and profiting on it without permission. Even if he doesn’t have accurate data, he’ll still post and profit from the inaccurate and fictional numbers…”The question everyone has to answer for themselves is whether or not they think Pokerscout is stealing, or simply offering useful information to players. Many people have mixed opinions on the matter. A story also circulated saying that Bodog asked to be removed from the site, but Pokerscout refused to take them off unless they were paid a very hefty price, which Bodog obviously refused. This story is mostly hear-say, but if it is true we can see why this feud is becoming so heated.
