Just a quick note here – we’re running a huge 50% off sale to ring in the new year! Check it out at the official hhSmithy End of 2011 Sale page!

Ah yes, Full Tilt Poker. We all remember them, don’t we? A paragon of security, fairness, and timely payouts. Well, we’ve been sitting on this information for awhile, and since they’re dead and gone, we thought it might be interesting to share with the end users just how… invasive Full Tilt’s reporting tools were. Most of the technical details can be found below from an article/synopsis our Chief Technology Officer wrote some time ago, with a lot of the code and specifics scrubbed out for various reasons....

Yesterday we posted an article about how Bodog’s anonymous tables weren’t so anonymous after all. We accompanied this with a video showing how this was true: Bodog’s response was to cover it up and not really address the root problem: The violation of server-client trust. They went on to say: Your money is and has always been safe at Bodog. If you are concerned about the security of your account, having access to an account number is similar to having a screenname before our latest update. In a future blog post we’ll talk about how the only secure method of user...

(Be sure to read part 2 of Bodog’s security failures!) As many of you are aware, Bodog has completely anonymized their poker tables. They say they’re doing this to protect the “recreational gambler,” the one that is preyed upon by the winning players. (We have a blog post about this “theory” coming in a month or so.) Bodog’s press release on November 30th states: This feature stops poker pros accessing any data on how you play your game via the use of HUDs and other data mining sites like PokerTableRatings and SharkScope. This is totally unique to...

Over the past year or so there seems to have been a growing movement for anonymous heads up tables, and currently they are offered by Party Poker, IPoker, OnGame and some other poker sites. Just how anonymous are these tables and have the poker sites properly implemented this feature? Were anonymous tables not implemented correctly, a few players could bypass the restrictions and gain a very unfair edge of their opposition. Over a year ago the following post showed up on twoplustwo regarding PTR apparently being able to track who is playing on anonymous tables. Apparently the issue was fixed...

We’ve just launched our new subscription pricing model to make it simpler to use and understand. Check out the side by side screen shot of the old with the new: If you’re an existing user your price will remain the same until your subscription expires. Overall prices will go up slightly for some of our users and overall it represents a 15% price increase, however you get a lot more for the price you pay. Some of our luckier users will find that their price actually goes down. Why we’ve changed our price model? The old pricing model was unintuitive and unclear. The cost of...