WSOP Launches WSOPStats.com Online Poker Stats Site

Now is the time of year that, with the exception of the occasional update on poker legislation, most of the news in the poker industry is going to be about the World Series of Poker, which began this week. As such, the timing of the WSOP’s latest announcement works perfectly. This week, a new website dedicated to tracking statistics on the WSOP’s regulated sites in the United States, WSOPStats.com, was launched.

WSOPStats.com is a source of interesting and useful information, but at first blush, it does look like its primary purpose is to drive people to WSOP.com in both Nevada and New Jersey. After all, there are plenty of people that are interested in finding information on World Series of Poker historical statistics, so one might expect internet searches to eventually pull up WSOPStats toward the top of the search results. I mean, heck, the gigantic banner that covers most of my laptop’s screen is an ad for both WSOP.com sites.

But no matter, if I made a site for WSOP online statistics, I would naturally advertise the place where people could those stats, too.

All in all, though incomplete, it is a pretty solid-looking site so far. The primary draw, of course, is the stats. Right now, visitors to WSOPStats.com can see recent multi-table (or scheduled, as they can be called) tournament results from both the Nevada and New Jersey versions of the poker room. It appears, from clicking “Next” several times, that “recent” results date back about a week. Each tournament name is a clickable link, which takes one to a page with all the tourney details, including the complete standings and payouts. There is also a tab for upcoming events, listing tournaments for the next couple days.

The two other statistics tabs are for “2015 Biggest Wins” and “2015 Most Cashes,” which are exactly what they sound like: the former lists the largest individual cash prizes awarded in WSOP.com tournaments, while the latter lists the players who have cashed the greatest number of times.

Where things get a bit more interesting is that site the gives visitors the ability to dig deeper on individual players. For instance, the top casher for New Jersey right now is “FullDeck.” When I click on his name, I can see that he has won $10,348.38 across the 1,986 tournaments in which he has played. His biggest buy-in was $35, he made 496 final tables, and placed in the top 20 percent 228 times. I can also see how many times he finished first, second, and third, as well as his latest tournament results, regardless of whether or not he cashed.

The site offers the ability to search for players by name, but has no other search capabilities yet (like by buy-in, game, tournament name, keyword, etc.). Stats for other games, like cash games and Sit-and-Go’s, are likely to be future additions to the site.

While the stats will be the main draw, WSOPStats.com also has a section for poker training videos provided by GrinderSchool.com. There are just six videos right now, all free, but one would assume that there will be more in the future. It is not known if they will always be free. It appears that there will also be poker articles on the site, with the first columnist being the venerable, long-time WSOP Media Director, Nolan Dalla.

WSOPStats.com has not drawn a ton of attention yet, but some of the attention it has received has been in the form of raised eyebrows. Online tournament statistics have been the domain of other sites such as PocketFives.com and OfficialPokerRankings.com and online cash game stats have been tracked by sites like HighStakesDB.com and PokerTableRatings.com. With the launch of WSOPStats, it could be the WSOP’s way of stiff-arming the data scraping sites, particularly ones like PokerTableRatings that many people see as giving those who can those can afford a subscription a way to hunt and take advantage of less-skilled players (not to mention the fact that PTR sells hand histories).

As mentioned, the functionality of the site is fairly limited at this point. It is presented well, even if the main reason someone would want to visit it (statistics) is obscured a bit by ads and links for WSOP.com downloads, training videos, WSOP.com promotions, and Nolan Dalla’s face (I like the guy – he was a huge help when I was a rookie covering the WSOP a decade ago – but just wait for the banner on the homepage to scroll…if you don’t have a very high resolution monitor, his picture will cover most of your screen). What is there is fairly easy to navigate and once further search, browse, and filtering functionality are added, it could be quite useful. We’ll see if it does actually become useful, a go-to site for WSOP.com players, or just ends up being an SEO project.