We will be releasing a client update that will introduce some new and exciting features. Estonian client will be deployed today and other clients will follow early next week with the Windows .COM client being planned for Monday. Here are the most significant player-facing features that are being rolled out:
Run It Twice (Beta)As already mentioned we have been working on Run It Twice and are ready to deploy it as a Beta feature to the main clients. To recap for players who might not be familiar with the feature, Run It Twice allows players to have the remaining board cards dealt twice once everyone is all in. The pot is split in two and awarded for each “board” separately. Players must “opt in” to always using Run It Twice when the opportunity arises.
You can configure your Run It Twice settings from “Options” > “Run It Twice (Beta)” and can select from the following states:
- Never (default)
- Always
- By Table (default On)
- By Table (default Off)
Everyone remaining in a hand when action is completed needs to have elected to Run It Twice in order for Run It Twice to actually happen. If any of the participants in the hand have not turned on this feature in advance, the board will run out normally, one time, for all players.
We will not charge extra rake for Run It Twice hands.
New Deck (Beta)We are releasing the new Quasar deck to the main clients. We have both new front cards and new back cards which are independent of each other, so you can mix them with current fronts and backs. Here is a screenshot of how the new options look:
The deck is only available in “4 Color” option and the emphasis has been on a less busy back and an easier to read plain front. We hope you will enjoy the new additions!
ZOOM Tournaments (Beta)We are in the final stages of finalizing ZOOM tournaments on the TestPokerStars site and will invite players to test on the TestPokerStars site once we reach a stable point. We will keep you posted!
System to Unregister from Sit & Go’s when Disconnected (Beta)We will slowly roll out a system that will protect players who are registered in Sit & Go tournaments should they become disconnected before the Sit & Go starts. In essence, the system will unregister players from specific Sit & Go’s if the players are disconnected for longer than a specified amount of time. The time you will need to be disconnected will depend on the specific Sit & Go and will be configured per tournament. The purpose of this feature is to help prevent players who register and then get disconnected from being blinded out of an event which starts when they are no longer able to connect to play.
There is an option to opt out of this protection through “Options” > “Advanced Multi-Table Options” > “No Automated Unregistering for Sit & Go tournaments”.
We will share more details once we start to implement this protection per Sit & Go.
Round to Nearest Blind OptionPlayers who use the bet slider shortcuts or hotkeys to “bet % of pot” will have their bets rounded to the nearest small or big blind. Whether the rounding is to the small or to the big blind will depend on the bet slider increment you have chosen in “Options” > “Bet Slider Options” (default is Big blind).
We have added the ability for players to opt out of this behaviour and have the old logic by selecting “Set/Bet % of pot: Don’t round to nearest blind” in “Options” > “Advanced Multi-Table Options”.
Other things rolled out:- We are putting back the Refresh button in the “Info” tab on the tables. The auto refresh would still work, but due to popular demand we are having in addition a refresh for those times when you really want to refresh quicker than at the end of hand.
- ZOOM tables will preserve the chat from last few hands now. This will hopefully make it more social in smaller ZOOM pools where it is likely to have similar opponents on next hand and will also allow ZOOM players to BOOM! their hands more easily.
- We have added three new emoticons – fish, donkey, and shark (at the bottom of below screenshot).
- XThemes will now properly work with the changes introduced to table design.
That’s all for now – we hope that you will enjoy the new features, and as always are looking forward to your feedback and further suggestions on how to improve!
Note: The above changes would only take effect once your gaming client has been updated, which could happen at different times for different players. Please ensure you are running PokerStarsUpdate.exe to get the update.
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