We had 14 players, and a format I was not too crazy about, but it wasn't my call. Two hour tournament with alternating levels of Omaha and Omaha 8, both pot limit. 5,000 stacks. Blind Valet suggested 8 minute levels, which produced a smooth progression of jumps. If I had to choose again, I'd go with 15 minute rounds and have bigger jumps, because 8 minutes required constant clock watching and we only got in 3-4 hands per level. But none of this has much to do with Blind Valet.

Blind Valet worked pretty well. I ran the tournament on my laptop. I used my iphone to keep an eye on the clock, and start and stop the clock as needed. I did not knock out players. No one else logged into the tournament on their phone, though I mentioned it to the group and repeated the offer to some people I thought were more likely to do it.

There were no major problems. Here is the good and bad.

Good:

1. The setup was very simple. Much like the previous version.
2. Player registration was a breeze.
3. The clock ran and the blinds changed without a single.
4. Seat assignments and table balancing worked quite well, once I realized I had to put in the max number per table.

Bad:

1. I initially tested the payout calculation with three players registered. When I added more players, the payout didn't change. We had to use a calculator at the end. Only later did I find that switching to manual editing then back to the calculator would update the amounts. Maybe I missed something.
2. The tournament "closed" spontaneously a few times. The lobby page was shown instead. But when re-opened, the clock was running as before. I had the power management settings all set to "never."
3. On my iphone, the screen would go black after a while, and I had to unlock the screen and reopen the tournament. That's a browser limitation, I suppose. I'd like an app which kept the screen on as long as it is active.
4. I re-raised all in preflop with KKQT and got three callers(!). I had the best hand at the time, but one caller with J997 (!!) hit a set of nines and made a full house. He took a huge pot and ended up winning the tournament handily with a monster stack. Can Blind Valet do something about suckouts?

All in all, I was happy with it, and I'd use it again.

Glad you enjoyed it.

I'll address the Bad:
1. Yes, some others have been confused by this as well. The Calculator/Pencil toggle switches between Automatic and Manual mode. I am going to add a confirmation window when switching from manual back to automatic to alert that manual changes will be lost (same mechanism for the blind structure).
2. This is a new bug that has popped up since Google upgraded their Firebase real-time database servers that I use. Some event is triggering a change in the authentication status. You are the 2nd person to alert me to this and I just managed to reproduce it today. I will work on getting a fix for this, hopefully before the weekend.
3. Yes, this is a limitation of the browser. I have made the decision to stick with the web application at the moment as I am making frequent updates and the web application gives me shorter turnaround times. I am still planning on providing iOS and Android versions down the road.
4. This is a bug. There aren't supposed to be any suckouts for the tournament director!

Thanks for the feedback, I really do appreciate it.

This bug should be fixed now.

This is something a little different, I think.

I registered 3 players, and then changed the Places Paid from auto to manual and set it to 3. I did not change the setting on the Payouts on the left. I left it set to auto and thought it would update the payouts as I added players.

Then I added the rest of the players. The prize pool and payouts did not change. It was only after changing the payouts to manual then back to auto did it update.

This is non-intuitive. Anything left set to auto should calculate.

Suggestion: when registering new players, it would be much faster if I could hit return to register the player and start the next registration. Touch typists much prefer this method.

This is not just counter-intuitive, it is a bug. It looks like for some reason when the Places Paid is manual, the prizepool doesn't update when players are added. Should be a trivial fix. I'll get a hotfix done on this quickly.


I agree. Will add it to the list.

Fix is done, tested, and online. Browser refresh should get you the update.

Thanks again for the feedback. It makes Blind Valet better!

-Jeff

This has been added as well.

I tried both fixes and everything is working great.

I don't know about the one hour turnaround on this, though. Next time, see if you can fix it in 50 minutes or less.

I added a major new feature on Friday: Translation Console. From your user profile you can now choose your language and click on "Help Translate" if you want to help translate Blind Valet in a new language. All the application terms are available and it is integrated with Google Translate to give a head start on translating. Since Friday afternoon I have already added 3 languages submitted by the user community (Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian). Up to 5 languages now, would love to have more.