PokerStars (+FTP) software improvements thread...

[MC]

Tikay's not gonna be happy! Looks like Bounty Hunter tournaments are forthcoming...


Over the next few days we will be releasing another client update that will introduce some new features which will hopefully improve your experience at PokerStars. We are also continuing to add support for upcoming promotions, such as the recent milestone hands in France, Spain, and Italy, but I will not reveal more details for now. Here is an overview of what is immediately player-visible with this update:

Views for Ring Games Lobbies (Beta)

After adding few enhancements and polishing functionality during the Beta stage we are releasing the new views for the list of games in the ring game lobbies to all players. With next update you will see a new control in the ring game lobbies to change the “View” and you have three options:

• List View (default) – This is the same view as today, i.e. one list with all tables that match your filter settings
• Groups View – All tables of the same type are grouped together in one entry and there is a “Find Me A Seat” button. “Find Me A Seat” will look for an empty seat at a table of this type. If no seat is immediately available you will be given the option to continue searching for a seat – in this case the system will automatically add you to waiting lists and check for available seats until you either cancel the search or a seat is found. In either eventuality, you are automatically removed from any waiting lists where the system has added you. Next month we plan to integrate this with Table Starters, so that if one exists you will also be added to the Table Starter.

We have also added a new “Observe” icon which when clicked will open a table of this type that a player can observe. Also, the number of tables now shows only tables which are dealing (for non-HU types) as opposed to also including empty or non-dealing tables.

Here is a screen grab of the Groups view:

Click to see full-size image.

• Combo View – You can see groups, and once you select a group you also see the specific tables within a group. Great for players who like to monitor multiple table types, but like to easily switch between them. Here is a screen grab:

Click to see full-size image.

Graphical Preview for Ring Games

After the update you will see a new toggle icon above the list of players on a table in the main lobby. You can then switch between today’s list and a new graphical view of the table. In the graphical view you will still see notes on opponents, but in addition you will also see sitting out players, as well as where the button is. You can also directly choose a specific seat to take from the lobby if one is available.

Progressive Knockout Tournaments (Beta)

We will be trialling a new type of a knockout tournament – working title is Progressive Knockouts. In this variant, when you eliminate a player you get a part of their bounty credited to your account, but another part goes towards you own bounty so you become more attractive to be eliminated!

We will initially deploy only few of these to make sure everything is running smoothly before we deploy these on a wider scale.

Ability to Change Order of Columns in Lobby

This update we are adding Drag & Drop functionality for the columns in the main lobby so you can arrange them just the way you want. Simply drag the header of any column and drop it where you want. You can also click the Column Settings gear icon just above the scroll bar to further configure your lobby.


Other updates:

• ZOOM Tournaments – We have added support for more ZOOM tournament types (Timed, Bounty, and satellites) and will run another set of Beta tests after the clients are rolled out.
• We have added a separator line between “Sit Here” and “Find this player” in the right-click menu on another player on the table. This will hopefully reduce mis-clicks in this area.
• We are also working on an ability to observe ZOOM gameplay and will share more details about this later on.
• This update we are also merging the “Find Seat Options” and “Table Starter Preferences” into one new “Auto-Seating Options (Ring Games)” that is found under then “Options” menu in the main lobby.

Note: The above changes would only take effect once your gaming client has been updated, which could happen at different times for different players. We are planning to update the Estonian client first today with Belgium and Denmark clients following tomorrow. .COM Windows client will most likely be updated on Thursday this week. Please ensure you are running PokerStarsUpdate.exe to get the update.

[teamonkey]

stars run MTTs with a good late reg period

so if a MTT is saying it has 80 minutes late reg, does that mean:

1) 80 minutes of play

or

2) 80 minutes from the start of the MTT

thanks muchly

Mick

[dakky]

80 mins from start of play

[teamonkey]

cheers mate. had my suspicions as i have missed a few late reg's for the 3x turbos, but wasnt too sure

[MC]

For Full Tilt Poker

Today's update is now available and the game is live. The Cashier and My Promotions should be functional in the next 30-60 minutes.

In the update:

A. 5 Card Stud and Irish Poker – We will be spreading these two games starting today. 5 Card Stud is fairly well known, especially if you're, uh, old. Instead of 3 down cards and 4 up cards like 7 Card Stud, you're making the best 5 card poker hand out of 1 down card and 4 up cards. You can find the game in the Stud lobby.

Irish Poker is lesser known, but great fun. It's a community card game where you start with 4 cards pre-flop and you're forced to discard 2 after the betting round on the flop. From there it plays just like Hold'em. You can find Irish in the new "Other" lobby.

Both will also have events in this FTOPS as well, with Irish getting Event #1 (on St. Patrick's Day!) and Event #25 is 5 Stud on Tuesday, March 26 at 14:00 ET. Irish is also the Game of the Week starting on Monday, so you'll have even more reasons to give it a try.

B. Escalator Tournaments – This new tournament type is a tweak on the length of time between each blind level increase. It starts out with the blinds going up very quickly, but the time between levels increases by one minute every other level. So at the beginning it acts like a turbo, in the middle it acts like a fairly standard tournament, and at the end it should give lots and lots of play. A few will start appearing in the daily schedule over the course of the next few days, and it's also the last missing FTOPS event (#30, on Thursday, March 28 at 11:00 ET).

C. Revamped Tournament Lobby – We've added the two most requested bits of information to the main tournament lobby. You can now see the name of most tournaments as well as their current prize pool at a glance. We had to move some things around to do it, but hopefully you'll agree the tournament lobby not only has all the important pieces of information you need to pick which tournaments you'd like to jump into, but it also looks much better.

D. "Early Bird" SNG Promo – If you're one of the first players to join a SNG (smaller than 30 players), you'll get double the normal FTPs. Pretty simple! Some more information can be found here:

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/promotions/early-bird

E. My Tournaments and Find Player Dialog Improvements – Two more old dialogs have gotten a refresh. The new "My Tournaments" dialog replaces the old "Requests->Registered In Tournaments…" dialog and has a whole lot more information about the tournaments you're currently registered in or playing.

The new "Find Player" dialog replaces the old one, and similarly has a lot more information about what the player you're looking up is currently playing. It also allows you to more easily take notes from the dialog itself.

Both are still in a bit of a "beta" phase, so if you think there's anything missing or wrong about either dialog, please let us know and we can tweak things a bit.

F. Removal of Late Registration "Penalty" – Also by popular request, we no longer force you to wait for your big blind before being dealt into a tournament if you register late.

G. Undo "I'm Ready" in Tournaments – Ever click the "I'm Ready" button, then realize not everyone was going to click it quickly, so you want to go get a drink or something but can't undo your readiness? Well, now you can.

H. Bet Amount Abbreviations and Cents Delimiter – You can now use either "." or "," to bet cents when you type in the bet box ("1,25" and "1.25" will both bet $1.25). You can also use a couple of abbreviations for betting larger amounts: Typing "2k" will bet 2,000 chips and "3.1m" will bet 3,100,000 chips.

[titaniumbean]

loll and they forget the best improvement.


The Find a player window has been revamped to be like stars so you also see X of Y by each of your tournaments you are in.

[zerofive]

Is there any way to save your preferences? Every two or three times I close Pokerstars it says it was forced shut down and all the settings get reset - table view, mucking options, hotkeys, filters etc.

Any help greatly appreciated thanks.

[titaniumbean]

Is there any way to save your preferences? Every two or three times I close Pokerstars it says it was forced shut down and all the settings get reset - table view, mucking options, hotkeys, filters etc.

Any help greatly appreciated thanks.

save notes etc then uninstall reinstall and try again? never not had it shut down properly so cant really help otherwise.

[MC]

loll and they forget the best improvement.


The Find a player window has been revamped to be like stars so you also see X of Y by each of your tournaments you are in.

Lol Titty you are a joker, it's in "E" ffs

Is there any way to save your preferences? Every two or three times I close Pokerstars it says it was forced shut down and all the settings get reset - table view, mucking options, hotkeys, filters etc.

Any help greatly appreciated thanks.

This def shouldn't be happening. Have you e-mailed support? They are pretty helpful with this kind of thing...

[titaniumbean]

I read a few words of each bolded bit there was loads of text for E so I skipped it


loooool

[MC]

We are planning to release another update to the PokerStars clients this week. We continue to work on support for new upcoming promotions later in the year, but we also have several new features coming up with this update. Here are the details:

New game types: 5 Card Omaha and Courchevel

This update we will be deploying two new game types: 5 Card Omaha and Courchevel. Both will be rolled out in Hi and Hi/Lo variants and you can find Ring Games under the “Omaha” > “5 Card Omaha” tabs.

In case you are not familiar with those variants, 5 Card Omaha is played just like Omaha, but with 5 hole cards. Courchevel is a variation of 5 Card Omaha where the first flop card is dealt face up at the beginning of the hand.

Font Options and Changes to Default Font Setup for List of Games

In order to improve readability of the list of games we are adding 3 pixels to the height of the rows in the main lobby game lists. Here is a screenshot that illustrates the change in a Ring Games lobby (similar changes will apply to the other lobbies as well):

Before:                                                                                     

Click to see full-size image.

After:

Click to see full-size image.

We also have added options to keep the exact same font setup as today and to also switch to the Utah font, which is a more narrow font that some players may prefer. To access these options go to “View” > “Game List Font Options”. If you want to change back to the same look as before the update, please select “Microsoft Sans Serif” from this menu.

Players who make a new install of the client will see a different font type by default – Arial. We decided to not change current users to Arial as the difference in terms of player feedback was not significant, and more players expressed preference for what they are used to. We still believe Arial is overall more readable, so we will be having it for new installs going forward. If you want to try it, you can select it from the fonts menu.

Auto-Rebuy for Tournaments Options

This update will introduce the ability for players to specify in more detail how they want Auto-Rebuy to work in rebuy tournaments. You will have three options to specify from the table of a rebuy tournament:

• Whenever possible
• 1x Rebuy when 0 chips
• 2x Rebuy when 0 chips

In addition, we are adding the ability to set your default tournament Auto-Rebuy preference so that you don’t need to specify your selection for each tournament. To do this, simply go to “Options” > “Auto-Rebuy (Tournaments) Options...” Of course, you can later change your choice via the table controls for each individual tournament.

With the April client updates we are also looking to add Rebuy and Add On buttons directly on the table, so players not using Auto-Rebuy will have easier access when they are eligible for either option.

Option to Register to New Sit & Go from Elimination Dialog

As some players have already posted, we have added the ability to register for another Sit & Go of the same type in the dialog that shows once a tournament ends for you. This is simply a convenience feature to allow players to jump straight into another Sit & Go of the same type.

ZOOM Observation Mode

This item was briefly mentioned last update, but we have now rolled out the ability to observe a ZOOM group. Once you select a ZOOM group you will notice an “Observe Game” button. What actually happens is that observers see a selection of hands that have been recently played, to allow them to get a feel for ZOOM. There are multiple factors that determine which hands are picked and show to observers, but the goal is to pick the more interesting hands.

We also now have the ability to show ZOOM groups in the main list of Ring Games, as some of you have already noticed.

Ring Game Views Improvements

We have added the ability to resize the first two panes in Combo view. We have also made a few other fixes and tweaks to the different lobby views.

Hall of Fame Client Badges

We are introducing “Hall of Fame” badges for players who are members of the VIP Club Hall of Fame. You can read more about the Hall of Fame here.
 
Other Updates:

• We have made a few improvements and fixes to the graphical table display in the Ring Game lobbies.
• We have ironed out several ZOOM tournaments issues – particularly we have eliminated a delay in getting seated at a new table during the first few minutes of the tournament.
• We have made a few improvements to Progressive Knockout tournaments and will have another set of beta tourneys after the clients are rolled out.

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.

[MC]

Minor update for PokerStars

We are rolling out a small client update this week. This software update will mostly contain increased support for upcoming promotions (not yet visible), but also includes several improvements to existing features and some bug fixes. Here are the things you are most likely to notice in this update:

Further Improvements for Rebuy Tournaments

After the update whenever you are eligible for a rebuy we will show a rebuy button directly on the table. The location of this button on the table will vary based on the theme you are using. Once the Add-on period starts, the button will change accordingly.

As a reminder, in the last update we introduced the ability to have more control of how exactly auto rebuy for tournaments works, and also added the dialog found at “Options” > “Auto Rebuy (Tournaments)...” where you can set default auto rebuy settings for new tournaments.

Focus Stealing

We have resolved a problem with focus stealing that was related to losing at showdown. This should improve the playing experience for players who stack tables.

Improvements to First Time Deposit Process

We are making improvements to the deposit process by improving the user experience at the first step where we collect and verify important personal information about the player. At this point this change will be for the French client only, and then we will roll out to other clients as well. While this is not something that will be visible in terms of a change to many players on the forum here, this change furthers our goal to make the initial experience for recreational players more streamlined.

Other improvements/bug fixes:

• A number of improvements to Table Starters, including an option to remember your preferred buy-in.
• Zoom tables will now properly show Happy Hour icons.
• The auto-rebuy option for tournaments will no longer sometimes block actions on other tables.
• Minor tweaks and improvements have been made to the client elements for the VIP Club Hall of Fame.
• Importing player notes will no longer mix up color labels.
• Several back-end VIP Store improvements that will help the user experience.
• It will now be possible to opt to discuss a deal in 4-max tournaments at the start of the final table which has 5 players.
• Many other bug fixes and usability tweaks.

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.

[MC]

For Full Tilt Poker:

There is an update out right now that has some new features. We didn't need to bring the game down for any of it, so you can just restart your client and grab the update to see the changes.

In the update:

A. 5 Card Omaha and Courchevel: We refuse to let any other site have a good poker game we don't have.

Courchevel will be the Game of the Week starting on Monday. We'll also have New to the Game tables set up for both if you want to give them a try in a slower-paced, micro stakes environment.

Learn more about both games here:

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/poker/games/omaha

B. Tournament and SNG Rake changes: Most of the higher buy-in ($150+) MTTs have had their rake reduced. For example, the $200+$16 tournaments are now $200+$15. If you had a Tournament Ticket for any of the tournaments that have had their total buy-in amount changed, you'll be getting (if you haven't gotten it already) a replacement ticket and some T$ to make up for the difference.

In addition, SNG rake has changed on many SNGs (total buy-in amounts are still the same). Chances are your favorite SNG is now a better deal than it was yesterday (and if it's not a better deal, it's the same deal it was yesterday).

C. Buy-In Amount Listed In Tournament Table Title Bar: By popular demand, this is a small change so that it's easy to see at a glance the total buy-in amount of the tournament you're playing from the table itself.

D. Rush Mobile on HTML5: Not related to today's update, but last week we soft-(re)launched our HTML5 Rush Mobile app for iOS devices. So if you have an iPhone or iPad, head over to http://ios.fulltiltpoker.com and play some Rush Poker!

It's worth noting that not only is this HTML5 app a beta, it's also a fairly temporary solution. We're working hard on native applications for both iOS and Android devices, and when they come out (still a good number of months off) we will likely toss out the HTML5 app.

In fact, I don't expect the HTML5 app to ever come out of beta. We dusted it off so players could at least play something on their iOS mobile devices while we worked on the real mobile apps. You should give it a try if you get an itch for Rush while out and about.

Unfortunately, we couldn't bring the old Flash app for Android back to life, so Android users will have to wait for the native app to come out. Sorry about that.


Some questions also answered here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=38411122&postcount=101

[sovietsong]

stars just gone down as i read this

"There is an update out right now that has some new features. We didn't need to bring the game down for any of it, so you can just restart your client and grab the update to see the changes. "

jinxed

[Ant040689]

phew, I thought there was a problem on my end.