After reading Part One of Dusty (Leatherass) Schmidt’s  blog ‘It’s Time To Clean Up Poker’ I felt it necessary to reply. As a Pro poker player, a coach at Drag the Bar and also a author of many books including  "Treat Your Poker Like A Business" I am defiantly not questioning his credentials, he is a man who has done very well out of poker and has many valid points.
Indeed pro sport is regulated but with A Handicap of 20+ I cannot play in the PGA. Nor can I register my Mazda 3 in the Daytona 500. Professional sports is regulated and graded , this is why people spend all their time and money training to become an elite athlete. They do this for many different reasons, mostly because they love their game but for some it is for the money or maybe even fame, and as Texas Holdem Poker exploded world wide it brought with it a drastically increasing player pool that had all the pros licking their lips with all the fresh money coming into the game.
I do Agree with Dusty that the online game is vastly different than it was years ago, but things change. Like the way people train for sports and run there businesses. Twenty years ago training for a pro golfer would be doing a few extra rounds in the week. Now they have swing coaches, fitness coaches, massage therapists, and they review every little detail of there games. Much in the same way a poker player is using  poker tracking programs to analyse and improve their game.  As sports has changed so too has online poker, many people are now seeing poker as a way to make a income and are taking the measures to monitor their progress and keep an eye on there competition as any business minded person would do.
Poker is one of the only games that a complete rookie can play against a pro. Take away the shine of the word PRO and replace it with what it is in essence, a hustler. They make their living taking advantage of weaker less experienced opponents.
Is there not an advantage to a M.I.T graduate who has been making money out of poker for years over a man who only completed high school and is new to poker? If what Leatherass is saying is to work then there needs to be grading in online poker and I don’t think anybody would like this. After all Leatherass can sit down at a $1, $2 6max table against a newcomer to the game and take stack after stack. Should this be regulated?How do you thing that would affect the pros profits I would bet its more than what Leatherass claims "poker tools have shrunk the pros win rates by at least 50%".
Poker tools don’t win people money, as the best golf clubs don’t make you a good golfer, most poker tools help players who want to improve their game do this and in time they no longer need or use  the assistance the software provided. The average player may not have a poker tool and nor are they properly interested in having one, they just want to play a few hands and have no desire to track their sessions, replay and analyse to improve their game.
Leatherass’ statement that there is 'insider knowledge' is a bit of an exaggeration, poker tools are not hidden from anyone, every poker review website and major forum has a section dedicated to them, even poker training sites such as the one that Leatherass works for has videos on using poker software to your advantage. To me Leatherass is calling anybody who does the slightest bit of research on the online poker environment an "INSIDER", this is not an insider it is a person with commonsense. Anytime there is real money involved commonsense should tell you to find out about what it is you are getting involved in.
At the end of the day you don’t buy a car without test driving it first nor should you invest in Microsoft shares without looking at a stock report. I myself took days before making my first deposit at an online poker room, I searched the web for online poker and found out about poker tools very quickly.
I think tracking software is a necessary investment for anybody serious in treating online poker as a business. Tracking software such as Holdem Manager and Poker Tracker  made there business off the back of the pros, who these programs were designed for, as a new comer to poker has no  idea what PFR,VPIP and 3bet mean nor how they relate to the game of poker. Leatherass  himself admits to using poker software and probable for the same reason I do! To keep track of winnings and loses which can all be done after you close your poker room.
As for data pooling sites like Poker Table Ratings, these sites are only providing a service that people want. Most poker training sites use either a Poker Tracker or Holdem Manager graph to prove the coaches worth or in Leatherass's own case his profile at Drag The Bar links you directly to POKER TABLE RATINGS one of the sites he is complaining about. So here we have him saying these sites are bad (and I will not argue that aspects of this site is in breach of the terms of service of all poker rooms) but on the other hand it is used to promote and make a portion of his income.
There is no question that POKER TABLE RATINGS has assisted in some nasty hits on a few pro poker players and doing it all with information you your self have access to, the information it the chat box. Now the bit pros and regs don’t like is PTR then sells the hand histories and now their profit margins have shrunk. (How dare pray get smarter).
 Terrible things happen daily to players  bankrolls with PTR around but for this which I would  call adding more money in the poker economy, PTR also provide aspects of what Leatherass is asking for, as without PTR many players would still be playing at Absolute Poker and ub on a platform with outdated security and having their accounts drained or having their hand information intercepted and displayed to their opponents. The Chinese poker bot ring would still be running at Stars, PTR detected this and reported it to Stars who then investigated, closed the accounts and reimbursed the players  who were affected. So PTR provides a service that everybody has access to. In doing this they have discovered  information that they could have taken advantage of, but instead they have tried to make a fair and secure environment by informing players of threats and scams.
 
Skill and knowledge is still needed to use a poker tracking programs such as Poker Tracker correctly, but having the tool does not mean you will be a +ev player, and  there are not any requirements to purchase a poker tool and everyone has access to them. If a runner chooses to run in bare feet when he has the option to were shoes, he should not have the right to say that he was unfairly disadvantaged. I think the same applies here.