I feel it's important to step in here, speaking as a former PokerStars Game Integrity specialist. First and foremost, let's clarify and not confuse a few key concepts:

• Hands obtained from your own play — These are private and belong solely to the participants of the game. While observers may occasionally witness a portion of this data (typically showdowns), the complete hand histories are strictly limited to those who actually played the hand.

• Datamined hands — These are hand histories collected via third-party tools or unauthorized means, often without the consent or knowledge of the players involved. In some cases, these hands are sold by players themselves or scraped through spyware or illicit software. Sites like PokerTableRatings (PTR) were known for dealing in these kinds of hand histories — a practice SharkScope has zero involvement with, now or ever.

• Tournament Results — These are public records, comparable to sports results published in newspapers (e.g., basketball or baseball box scores). For example:

1st Place — Player XXX — $400
2nd Place — Player YYY — $350
3rd Place — Player ZZZ — $290

These leaderboards are generated and displayed after each tournament and are intended to be transparent, both for the benefit of the player community and for maintaining game integrity. (And yes — boos to GGPoker for choosing to obscure this essential information.)

It’s crucial to understand the core difference between SharkScope and sites like PokerTableRatings (PTR).

SharkScope's primary focus is — and always has been — the aggregation and analysis of public tournament results, not individual hand histories. The site provides tools that help players evaluate long-term performance, study profitability trends, and detect patterns that could suggest suspicious or unfair play (e.g., collusion, chip dumping, or multi-accounting). This is accomplished through statistical analysis of tournament placements and winnings, all sourced from public leaderboards.

In contrast, PokerTableRatings (PTR) operated by harvesting and distributing hand histories, often gathered via questionable or outright unauthorized methods. This kind of data collection raised serious ethical and privacy concerns and was a clear violation of many poker platforms' terms of service.

To summarize:

• SharkScope = public tournament result tracking, performance analytics, and integrity-focused tools.

• PTR = unauthorized hand history harvesting and resale.

It's essential not to confuse the two, as their methods, purposes, and ethical standings are fundamentally different. SharkScope is built on transparency and the responsible use of publicly available data to improve both player knowledge and game integrity.

Cheers!