ShareHighStakesDB recently undertook an ambitious project to revolutionise how traffic data for the online poker industry is displayed. It strives to present the most accurate and up to date poker room traffic rankings and data available online today.
Investigating Suspicious Traffic Patterns
Over the past couple of months, HighStakesDB has removed several online poker rooms from the rankings page following the discovery of suspicious traffic patterns.This includes, but is not limited to, counting individual players more than once, players not being removed from the overall count after logging off until much later on, and the use of bots to artificially inflated traffic figures.
The rooms that were removed had a very high software traffic ranking while the website was comparatively low. Following an investigation these rooms will not be displayed in the rankings until a fair assessment of the genuine traffic can be carried out.
What’s Different about HighStakesDB Traffic Rankings?
HighStakesDB actively carries out investigative work to compare reported traffic figures to how many users visit the website. Frequently, a manual check is carried out where the number of online players is counted and compared to the official figure.A database of reported bot activity has also been built up which can now be taken into account when investigating suspicious traffic figures.
Many readers might think that this is a fuss over nothing but there are obvious benefits to over-reporting traffic. In the past, there have been many online poker rooms who had potential to do well in a competitive industry but low liquidity hamstrung the company to the point where momentum never built up. Many cryptocurrency rooms suffer from this issue even though they charge low rake and pay good bonuses.
Currently, HighStakesDB is confident that two high-ranking online poker rooms have indulged in some of the behaviour described above and further investigations are continuing.
