This morning I'm constantly disconnecting every 30 seconds. Different problem but so tilting when you're playing zoom.

Reduce numbers, ban play money, kick players who are logged in for more than 30 mins and arent playing

KILL ZOOM

My response to Bryan's email, which sums up how I feel about this whole situation:

Hi Bryan,

This is the 2nd time I have wrote this email, the first time the draft didn't save and I lost the whole thing. I decided to leave things for a while to see if anything happens. It hasn't, so I am now re-writing this email.

Firstly I'd like to thank you for taking the time to write to me. Secondly, I feel that I owe you personally an apology. I admit that I get frustrated a little too easily and sometimes lack the ability to hold back once this happens, and due to the fact that you are our first/best point of contact at Pokerstars, I feel that I may have been unfair to you during this situation. I want you to know that myself and the community values your presence and greatly appreciates the contributions you make on the forum.

That being said, I absolutely will not apologise for the way I have spoken about Pokerstars during this issue. There is good reason as to why I have been somewhat aggressive/provocative on this issue, you as a company have handled this situation so abysmally that it is shameful. I know that I am the one speaking out the most about this issue, but trust me, this sentiment is shared throughout the community right now.

Firstly, when this problem first started to arise. I appreciate that Pokerstars were not receiving a large amount of complaints, relative to the size of your player pool. This is obviously because casual players play irregularly and play few tables, and thus would not notice the issue as much compared to regulars who mass table every day. For these regulars, the problem was immediately obvious and immediately began to affect our EV the moment it began. Many regulars are also very technically aware and can instantly recognize that this is not a problem at their end, I myself have a degree in Computer Science, and I knew for a fact as soon as the problem started that this was a Pokerstars serverside issue, it was painfully obvious. I realise you have millions of customers, but you should realise that regulars pay the majority of your rake, and should be your most valued customers. When a thread goes up in MTTc, and you multiple
complaints from regulars all on the same theme, chances are it's not a coincidence and there is a very real issue, and you really need to be quicker on the ball with acknowledging the issue and working towards a solution.

Secondly, with regards to your Support team. Using the word "lie" might be a little strong, but there is no denying that your support have been deceitful during this issue. There has been a constant theme of denial, myself and many others have been explicitly told by your support that the problem MUST be on our end. This is actually still happening, I am still hearing from regulars who are being told this by support. It is disgusting. All your support have done during this issue is exacerbate the frustration felt by regulars. Literally, this is all they have achieved. What is the point of requesting technical logs from our PCs/software when this is a serverside issue? Why are your support being condescending towards your customers by trying to explain routing and how the internet works, when you should know full well this is not a connectivity issue? I have seen so many examples of your supports responses to complaints on this issue from many
regulars, and 75%+ of them are insulting or condescending, it is beyond ridiculous. I still don't think I have seen one support email that actually admits the issue. The fact of the matter is that when you realised this was a Pokerstars serverside issue, which as I have already mentioned should have been very soon after the thread went up and you started receiving corroboratory complaints from regulars, your support team should have been instructed to make this issue completely transparent and not give us all the run around as they have been and continue to do.

Thirdly, with regards to your development team and the fixing of this issue. You mentioned that you believe you have isolated the issue and that a fix was incoming. This obviously has not happened. I also noticed that the other day you sent out another request for client logs from us, a matter that I have already addressed. Honestly, I cannot for the life of me figure out what you are all playing at. How is it even possible that you have not tried rolling back the update that started all of this? Or even just rolling back the entire software to a point in time where everything worked. This should have been the first thing that was attempted. Considering that I have an IT background and have extensive experience with software engineering on large, mass multi-threaded client-server software packages, I can only assume that your development department is rife with incompetence as it is totally inconceivable to me that this problem has not been fixed yet.
Instead of concentrating on this issue, you have been launching new features such as Zoom. It is literally beyond ******ed, I cannot stress enough how ridiculous it is that absolutely zero progress has been made in well over a month.

Lastly, allow me to comment on the utter callousness of your operations during this issue. In addition to everything else I have already mentioned, you have attempted to proceed with day to day operations as if nothing is wrong. The 6m Sunday was a disaster with respect to this issue, as we all knew it would be. I myself considered not even playing at all on what should have been one of the most exciting days of the year for online poker. You have also chosen to proceed with MicroMillions, a series that is going to put a significant amount of extra load on your servers, when you still have not fixed this issue. I'm sure you will see from the thread that this is a ridiculous decision on your part. You have also launched Zoom poker... I mean it is very obvious that instead of doing the right thing and postponing events such as these until you fix this issue, you choose to proceed the easy way at the expense of what should be your most valued customers. I'm
sorry if you disagree, but any time a large company behaves like this, lining their own pockets at the expense of their customers, they need to be called out on it.

Let me spell this out for you once again. POKERSTARS IS BROKEN RIGHT NOW. COMPLETELY BROKEN. It has been for well over a month, yet you continue to allow this issue to continue, you give us extremely infrequent updates, you willingly proceed with events and launch new functionality when you KNOW, YOU KNOW, that it's going to make the issue worse. I am disgusted with Pokerstars, I have lost all respect for you. I don't know what else I can say.

Agree whole heartedly obv ^^^^

I thought they dealt with the lag issues but so many people still seem to have problems

I haven't had any problems whatsoever the entire week so far

=

Issue still exists but it's not as bad as it was after the most recent update (for me at least).

I still wait for a ~1k Refund for 9 days(and 14 days, I got refunded 75$ which was pretty much ridic, considering the dmg the lag made(I was sitting out in turbotourneys for 20+ minutes) now, slowly I`m pretty pissed.

Also I could not really play(Besides 2 tabling on sunday) for over a week now.

I don`t even know if I get refunded, if not what then? I feel like I can do **** because all the MTT-Action is on stars, monopol ftw.

Well. They refuse to refund me for all the equity the lag cost me. I probably should have just sat out everywhere but just because I was able to click raise/fold 5 out of a million times they are refusing...such a joke.

Update: Our developers report that a problem which they believe is causing lag for some players has been identified. The issue involves the amount of data sent to the main lobby, causing lag for some computers when many tournaments are being played simultaneously. This issue will be addressed in the next client release, which should come before the weekend.

In the meantime, if you are experiencing lag while playing, we recommend that you minimize the main PokerStars lobby. You can automatically minimize the lobby by clicking Options > Advanced Multi-Table Options > Minimize main lobby when opening table. You can maximize, register, and re-minimize with no ill effects.

Thank you again to those who have sent in logs and feedback, helping us to track down this issue.

so, now that you identified what it was, will you be refunding players who were affected by this?

Sorry, I don't believe you Bryan.

.

Started lagging really bad for me today aswell, I was not affected at all before. In Canada ... Not sure what the deal is..

I'm in Canada to and it wasn't just tourney lag but system wide lag. Seems better now. This happend 5 hours ago.

With this occuring when multiple tournaments are played simultaneously, could it not also be a problem with the amount of data being sent to each individual tournament lobby, ie. the updating payouts. Because it seems some people have reported how it was really bad during rebuy periods, which would make sense seeing as the prizepool would update much more often than a freezeout due to rebuys being made.

yeah, bernard tapie group will also be refunding players for inconvenience and loss of income

Why wouldn't you believe this?

I remember some other issue like this and I learnt during that thread that the lobby is constantly updating listed tourneys - unless minimised.

Now I wish I'd rememberd that during the last few weeks.

Everytime voices in this thread get louder Bryan shows up with magical solution that hasn't been verified yet.

i had a long break from poker and strarted playing again about a month ago. The first thing i noticed on Stars was how the main lobby seems to take quite a while longer to refresh than it did before.

Over the last few weeks I have definitely been playing with the main lobby minimised and tourney lobbies auto-closed. I've only been 12-15 tabling and still experienced lag..

wow terrible laggg playing mtt's, i wish i had read this before.

We have released a new client today which our developers believe has gotten rid of this issue.

Can those who have been experiencing lag before this latest client update (issued today, client version 5.622) confirm whether or not it's gone once the new client is in place?

I personally can't fault Bryan's handling of this issue. He's taken the time to contact people privately, and has handled some of the more irrational abuse itt professionally while offering updates and possible solutions. Would you rather Stars didn't communicate with us at all?

^