Quick update - for technical reasons, we have to upgrade Mac users to the new download client earlier than anticipated. This has been done for RedKings and Grosvenor already, and will be done in due course for remaining Mac users.

This does not impact Windows users, who can continue using the classic client for the foreseeable future - we have no plans to force you to upgrade any time soon.

We have a bug fix release, v37.03, coming soon - I hope in the next few days - which will resolve some of the technical issues with poor performance / tables failing to open.

Our entire development team is working on player feedback at the moment. Our next major release, v38, is looking very promising and will include the most highly-requested features from this thread and elsewhere. I'll share specifics nearer the time.

The classic client is still available, I have PMd you a link and will get in touch with the poker room so they can bring their support team up to speed.

Any device capable of running Windows 7 or later, or Mac OS Sierra or later. That said, there are some performance issues with the first version of the new client that we are busy resolving. v37.03 will resolve these.

We are working on making the tables clearer and easier to read, especially at smaller table sizes. You'll be able to continue using the classic download client for some time yet.

Alex,

As someone who's been following your blog and twitter for a long time, I have complete faith in your sincerity and the quality of your decisions. I can only hope that the MPN development team will be up to task of implementing user-requeted features in a timely manner. If they're not, then this will be a major fiasco for the network.

As someone who's been playing exclusively on MPN for the past year, I would really hate to see that happen. Please, use all your skill and managerial abilities to kick some developers' asses and make this new client a success story.

How Long can u play on the old version? I can’t download the old version of nordicbet. Can u maybe send it to me Alex?

If you play on the old software is it the same player pool and tables as the new??

I will do my very best. On the plus side, I have just moved into a new role and will be spending 100% of my time on poker again (previously I was split between poker and bingo).

Yes its the same player pool. Windows users can continue to use the old version for some time yet, certainly for the next few months.

Download links for both the new and old clients are here: https://mpn.poker/prima-download-links/

Scroll to the bottom for the links to the old client.

Version 37.3 of the client will be rolled out over the next few days - all poker rooms will have it by Thursday 6th September, although most will have it sooner. You can see the version you're running by going to 'About' in the lobby menu.

This is a bug fix release. New features will start to appear from v38 onwards.

After the feedback we got last time, I'm sharing the full change log here. If you find it useful let me know.

Issues with table loading (table would get stuck at 100%):

• The client now uses a more reliable comms framework.
• We have fixed a language fallback issue which can cause the table to get stuck at 100% under specific conditions.
• We have fixed a preloader issue which could cause a 100% loading issue under specific conditions.
• We have fixed some 100% table loading issues which occurred when multiple tables were opened quickly over a slow connection.
• Added additional debugging to ensure if any other issues arise we can troubleshoot these easier.

Other Fixes:

• Various issues where Wait for Big Blind was not enabled by default, or could become unintentionally disabled
• Poker Room Title not showing correctly on Table
• Client startup bug when windows registry access was blocked by policy.
• Tournament list not showing “unregister” on tournament list immediately after player logs in.
• Help files will fall back to English correctly if launched with an unsupported language
• “Select buy in option” should no longer get cut off on the tournament lobby depending on the resolution
• Splash screen not showing correctly
• Login dialog showing automatically on launching client
• “Connection lost” error showing incorrectly on lobby

The entire team is now focused on addressing player feedback for v38.

In addition we have two notable server updates going out next week:

• On Tuesday 4th we'll disable the 'End Tournament Early' feature. If a tournament reaches a point where all the remaining prizes are equal, it will end and pay out prizes immediately, not offer the chance for players to keep playing
• On Thursday 6th September we're fixing the satellite filter (it will now correctly treat tournaments that award Tickets as satellites).

Appreciate it that you are letting us know about the fixes but honestly any of these doesn't make playing experience any better. Hopefully the v38 rolls out soon.

Also, Alex, what do you plan to do in regards to seating scripts? They are used everywhere at higher stakes and it's tough to get a seat without one.

You can't choose your seat with the new client. Meaning they have the autoseating system.

Ah, I guess that takes care of that then, thanks.

Does the new Prima software allow for Poker tracker and Huds because there does not seem to be any options on Red Kings to save hand histories etc? Will you be adding tracking-functionality to the new software?

I tried the new client for a couple of days.
When opening the 5th table the client takes 40% of my cpu and it is impossible to play. (timing out because of severe lag)
No matter how much I would like to play on prima it simply isn't worth the frustration playing on software that is this bad, sorry.

It’s unlikely that any tracking software will work, because the new software is only a month old, and because we don’t save hand history files on the device.

You can track your own results using the Player History app, in the lobby menu.

Tracking software and HUDs are currently permitted, should somebody choose to develop one that is compatible.

The next version of the client will improve performance significantly for players who multi-table.

In the meantime, if you have enabled Ultra HD mode (in Display Settings, it is off by default), turn it off and performance will improve.

Hi, Alex, when will the new software be compulsory, specifically for Red kings

So are you saying you will not be adding the hand history feature to the new software like within a month, six months, a year?

I realize that its not your responsibility to ensure tracking-compatibility but would you mind expanding on the "Player History app" and if that would/could work with something like poker tracker. Also have you /they spoken to you/them in regards to this

Thanks

We haven't decided when to discontinue the old software yet. We have many improvements to make to the new software before we would be comfortable forcing all players to use it. The only exception is Mac, where we have decided to discontinue the old software sooner for technical reasons.

We have no plans to offer hand histories stored on the device, or to do anything to explicitly support tracking software. We haven't spoken with anybody at the tracking software providers. This is simply because we believe there are much more important things for us to use our development resources on, which would deliver more value. (For what it's worth - this is the same reason the tracking software providers dropped support for MPN cash games last year - the effort was not worth the reward).

In future, we will improve our Player History app in many ways. One possible way to improve it would be to implement similar features to tracking software (for example, more stats about your gameplay). We already have a database like this anyway, which we use for Game Integrity investigations, so we have something of a head start.

What is going on and if it's some scheduled maintenance (prime time??) why hasn't there been any information? Email, tweet or message here would be lovely. Any estimate when the network is up again?

We’re not aware of any network-wide issues right now. Can you elaborate on whats happening to you please?

What do you gain by not saving hand histories locally? You turned it off a while ago, would turning it back on really take much development resources?
Now some players that are ready to go that extra mile and pay money to few third parties gain an unfair edge on other players. I guarantee that many recreational players might have Holdem Manager or Poker Tracker but absolutely no recreational player has H2N and whatever other programs that are needed.

The bit in the italics just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Tracking software providers dropped support because you made them do it. If you saved hand histories locally they would have support up in minutes. "The effort was not worth the reward" is also pretty bad coming from the MPN bosses, basically saying your network is insignificant.

I just don't understand why you would waste your sacred development resources on creating something that other companies specialize on and have been improving their product for over a decade. Everyone knows your Player History app will never be good enough and you really shouldn't waste your time and effort on it. Just save the hand histories locally and others will take care of this.

When I launch my old Red Kings software, I get a message that says:

In order to improve your gaming experience we are performing a systems upgrade and our services will be unavailable for several hours. If you have any questions the customer support department are standing by to help.

Guess I should contact Red Kings support then. Presumed it was network wide.

Edit. But I can't as their webpage is down too.

Hi,

Is it planned to do something against bot "Blackberry" or not at all ?

There are some misconceptions in this post that are worth addressing.

The maker of HEM and PT dropped support for us last year, long before we released the new client. If I remember correctly it was April 2017.

They did this because we changed the hand histories to include less information. We made the change because we wanted to make it harder for players to passively gather data on their opponents. The new hand history files contained all the data required to track your own game, but only contained information on your opponents actions if you actively participated in the hand.

Although we gave the developers a few weeks notice of the change, it turned out that supporting the new format required some extensive development on their side. Since MPN is a small, predominantly casual network, we have relatively few people using such software. So the developer decided to discontinue support for our cash games instead, which is understandable.

We could change the hand history format back. However, third party developers would need to reinstate support on their end, which I doubt they would do. It would also need work on our side.

Given that there is no guarantee that the changes would succeed, there is relatively little demand, and we plan to discontinue this client at some point - not to mention that the reasons we discontinued support in the first place are still valid, in my opinion, we have no plans to do this.

Introducing hand histories saved on the device in the new client is a whole different ball game. We would be starting from scratch, so doing this would be a huge amount of work. For the same reasons mentioned above we think the work would not be worth the reward.

If you have suspicions about a player please report them to your poker room. Please don’t put them on high alert by mentioning them here.

I never said they dropped support due to the new software nor I see any other misconceptions in my post.

The reason they dropped the support was because the gathered data wasn't entirely accurate anymore due to the software not getting all the hand histories. That broke many valuable stats from HEM and PT regarding your own game too, not just about your opponents tendencies.

I just don't understand why you did the changes in 2017. So much action in anonymous tables and ability to change nicknames daily had already made gathering data basically useless. You had already solved a problem and then you dropped a nuke on top of it just because you could and no one gained anything from it, MPN included.

I can also guarantee that unless you really made HEM and PT people angry behind the curtains, they would have support for your cash games running in days if you made it possible.

Couldn't you use this as a base to save hand histories locally in the new software and not start from a scratch? You surely have to be saving them somewhere already.

This is not correct. There are no missing hand histories, and every hand history contains all the data required to track your own results. Only stats which require data about your opponents actions become inaccurate. (For example, Fold to PFR will be inaccurate, because if you fold preflop without contributing to the pot, we only store your own actions and not your opponents').

It's not that simple unfortunately. If we do decide to support third party software in future, it will likely be through allowing players to download previously played hands in some way.

I could track my winnings but only on normal tables. How about stats like positional stats, where HM2 shows my VPIP and UO PFR% as 100% on EP, MP, CO and BTN? Or that I'm 3betting 39,5% from the button and 38.7% from CO according to the data. I can't even see something as basic as bb/100. These things are pretty huge just to analyze your own game.

It's all irrelevant anyway, I had to update my HM2 months ago as I play on two sites and the other site needed an update to work. But it's 2018 and I use an Excel spreadsheet and a calculator to keep track of my winnings and rake on Microgaming which is just absurd. I don't have any information about my play. I really hope you can find some solution on the new software (even if it means downloading old hand histories) and come back to this century.

Would love a comment on this and why it was seen as necessary, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

And thanks for answering all these questions and requests, it's great to have this thread on here. I really appreciate this despite possibly sounding all negative.