The Good:
Lock CS has been pretty damn good lately. I contacted them twice this week to get a refund for my lost BI when my SNG never launched. Both times I received a response within a few hours and a refund within 24 hours. Kudos and thank you.

The Bad:
SNG tables still fail to launch on a regular basis. It happens to me about once per 50 games and is obviously very annoying. I have to leave the My Tournaments window open to catch it when it happens. Sometimes I can get into the game before I get blinded down and sometimes I am unable to open the table even when I see the SNG has started. When that happens I open the tournament window but the Take My Seat button either doesn't appear or doesn't work. I have provided CS with logs and system specs. I hope the info goes to good use since this really needs to get fixed.

The Ugly:

yeah happens to me on occasion, when/if it launches it is already at level 3 or 4. i have to continually check "My Tournaments" to make sure i have all running

awesome, no telling how much i've lost from playing 25+ tables and not being able to notice when one doesn't load.

^^^ The only way to know is to compare how many games your HUD lists to the number of BI's subtracted from your account in Lock/Admin. The tables that don't launch won't appear in your HUD so ...
Lock>HUD=PROBLEM.

support has been great lately, responding to my emails within 10-15 minutes, great job!

Re: tables not launching I found this gem of a post in which one user wrote a script that reproduces the bug:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...15&postcount=5

Shane - Please provide your dev's with a copy of the linked post. Fixing this bug (and getting us a rematch button) would make it easier to get more SNG traffic.

Thanks for the heads up, Ive passed this over to our devs.

Shane - Two things on this topic:
1 - I frequently see a disparity between what is displayed in the My Tournaments window and what is actually happening. For instance, after registering for one or more SNGs, My Tournaments displays the table(s) and lists the status as registering but shows 0 players ... even though I am registered. Frequently, after another player sits and the game has actually started, My Tournaments still displays the status as "registering - 1 player" ... even when the game has been running for several minutes. Lastly, I sometimes experience an issue where the status never updates from 0 players, no one ever sits the other seat (unlikely to happen at my micro stakes) and I can't find the table in the Lobby. Overall, that's some weird behavior and it seems significant to this problem.

2 - Since this is a significant issue and has been around since June, it would be really nice if you circle back on this and let us know what is happening in the not too distant future.

Thank you.

That's how you can check live.

But it's also pretty easy to go back and check your tourney history and see what tourneys you never played a hand in and were blinded out all the way.

Speaking of that, Lock should be pro-active in issuing these refunds based on those criteria and following up on these types of things. Obviously SOME of them may be related to a player signing up for a tourney and then leaving the computer and it just going off without him. But if a player is in 10 tourneys at once but is always timing-downand never playing a hand in one of them then it's safe to assume it never popped up.

Lock knows this is a common problem. There is a very good chance they have taken buy-in's from players who never knew they missed a tourney. It's almost a guarantee actually.

Putting the impetus on the players to figure out when this bug is hitting them is a bit unfair. Lock has the people in place to look into this and should be issuing the refunds themselves imo.

Just write a script to go through and check which tourneys had a player time-out on the first hand and then never play a hand after that. Easy.

I will start having to do this, I 4 table and sometimes wonder why my 4th table didn't pop up, assuming I maybe didn't register or accidentally unregistered. I wonder how much I have lost due to this.

There are 2 issues that are killing me in HU sngs.

1) For some reason when I type in the amount I want to bet and hit enter all of the buttons disappear at the bottom of the screen except for the "fold to any bet" button. And it acts as if I did not place a bet and am just timing down. It then proceeds to time me down and then the "take seat" button appears, but its a little late by then

2) My $ after winning is not immediately put back into my account. It takes anywhere between 45 seconds to 2 minutes for the money to show up into my account.

MB - I agree that Lock could be more proactive in refunding these ... I'd settle for being more proactive in resolving the underlying issue TBH. Re: the quote above, how/where would you do this? These games won't be in your HUD. Does Lock have some client interface that let's you do this type of search?

Yeah, they should just fix the software asap.. they'll end up saving money that way. The thing is: if you register for a SNG and don't play, the money isn't going to them, but to other players.. and then you ask a refund from them.

Mcc, the rake is still going to them of course but yeah, that's a fair point.

Karma, I was referring to having a database like PT3 or HEM. But I guess if the table never popped up it perhaps wouldn't show up there. Not sure. I think it would still automatically load all your hand histories like normal.

Or maybe you can request your hand histories or tourney histories through the lock client. I've never played around with that really since it is all in my HEM. but I think it might be available to you somehow. Maybe not.

I do know that there is no way I'm playing more than one or two tourneys at a time until this is corrected. I have too much going on to constantly need to be doublechecking whether the client acted correctly and whether I should be asking for a refund.

I could be a whole buy-in or more incorrect in my cashier balance just from my cash games and never know it. I think it is correct. But I just don't pay that much attention to my starting and ending balance. I trust lock to get that correct. The uncertainty in that regard is just another price and risk you pay if you play on lock and are racking up the great value there. I'm nor very comfortable with that but can't do much about it either. all I can do is try to advocate for lock to get on this stuff and do better and fix it etc.

Right, but still most money is going to other player who can then still cash it out.

Don't get me wrong, though: obviously this isn't the player's fault, so they should get refunded. Just fix the software already so it stops happening at all.. :/

As I mentioned in the post you quoted, the missing games are definitely not tracked by PT3. I believe this is because the game doesn't exist as far as your poker client is concerned and the HH never makes it to your computer. FWIW, I checked the Lock HH folder on my PC and there are no remaining HH's for the dates when this happened to me. Siince it is PT that moves them and the games don't appear in PT, it's pretty reasonable to assume the HHs never existed.

To put it bluntly, if you play too many tables to actually notice when one doesn't launch you're basically ****ed. Assume you are losing 1-2% of your ROI to this error.

You should be able to go into your admin page under "reports" and see what tourneys you have entered and then match it up to your PT3 or HEM. If you paid for a tourney then it will still list in the admin page the tourney number I assume.

Then you go to your HEM/PT3 and make sure all the tourney numbers match up. Or you just count the number of tourney numbers in your admin page and make sure it matches the number of tourneys in your PT3...while also being careful with the time-zone considerations, etc. You may have to a two-day check to be sure the error isn't on your end in trying to count if you know what I mean.

I'm not really sure how it works for SNG's. But under "reports" in the admin I have a listing of all my cash-game and MTT buy-in's and exactly how much I cashed out from each table as well. It will list a lot of rebuys for each table as well as I top-up my stack. And then at the end when I leave I cashout $204.35 from that table or whatever.

For MTT under reports it lists the game ID.

All that stuff is there for you to check.

If you have 55 tourneys under your Reports page on admin and only 53 tourneys on PT3 then look into it further. Now, ther emight be some weird glitches where a tourney that you really did play in won't appear in your PT3....maybe if you time-out as you also bust-out and it gets confused as doesn't show it as final or something. So you can't automatically assume the difference is Lock's fault. But you can look into it further from there and try to figure it out.

If Lock lists a tourney ID # you bought into and you can't find a single hand history for that tournament then it's a good bet that it never opened up or you.

MB - So is this what you were trying to say?

No. You can check it live via your HUD too of course. The HUD is not the same thing as your poker-database.

^^^ Terminology nit.

Shane - Can we get an update on this? It's kind of a big deal and so far it doesn't seem like Lock is taking it seriously.