As you've noted, players who are sitting out (in a PnG) don't get dealt cards. Why do you think it's important to have an indicator for someone who is not in the game? That's a serious inquiry. I'm interested to get this feedback.

Table resizing is possible, really. It apparently still doesn't work in some browsers. If you fire up chrome or edge, you'll see it in action. Now I don't expect you to switch browsers. But I do want you to know that the feature exists and its just a browser specific bug. Your dedication to Firefox is admirable. I'll see if we can find a computer with Firefox to tackle this bug this week.

We actually have a hand history server that will allow you to instantly look up every hand you've ever played in perpetuity. It's very efficient and very cool when you can see it in action. We just lack the client side feature to access the server. Indeed, you'll be able to see players' mucked cards at the showdown in the hand histories. In the interim, we are considering flipping over mucked cards at the showdown during live play. Thoughts anyone?

Please do not do this.

It's only for showdown, where any player in the hand has a right to see the cards. Had we a "last hand" feature, they would show in there. I'm sincerely curious what the objections might be.

I can't remember ever playing at an online site that did this, and I've played on Stars, Tilt, Merge, old Bovada, Lock, and BOL. I think it's because showing all the hands slows the game down. Assuming everyone has Auto Muck on, just briefly show the winner and move along...next hand please. Those who are interested in the other hands can check Hand History/Last Hand feature.

In most live games, you can usually choose to muck a losing hand unless the winner requests you to show and you haven't yet mucked. Not very well regarded if done often, again because of slowing up play.


Addendum: Sry, I just reread your earlier reply to me and saw you were thinking about doing this only until the Hand History/Last Hand feature is working. I think it's a bad idea to set a precedent by doing it and then taking it away when the feature gets set up. I can do without it for the moment. Don't do anything to make this already slow moving game any slower!

I've been thinking about this, but I'm not sure how well I can explain it. I'm just a rec reg, who studies casually to try to better my game, so someone else may have a more informed answer.

Anyway, I'll give it my best shot. I think first that it's always been a feature of any online poker site that I've ever played on, so I've gotten used to having it as a tool to rely on.

Why do I need it, though? That's a little harder for me to explain. I think it has to do with the speed at which online poker runs, and all the constantly changing info that you have to always be processing and keeping up with to make good playing decisions. This just multiplies as you add more tables.

I always try to keep a moving image in my head of a table's composition as to the type of players that are present at any given time, which helps when making playing decisions. If players are present at the table but not active, that can change my image of the table, so it's important to be able to just glance and know who is sitting out. It also helps to be able to quickly determine your table position for the next hand, which will be affected when players to your left are sitting out. Since everyone who has folded doesn't have cards, and those who are sitting out also don't have cards but there's no distinction between them on your site, it's really hard to figure out. It's probably even more important on your site, since when the ads are running, you literally can't see what's going on at the table. As soon as you can see the table again you need to be able to quickly grasp as much info as possible in a very short time frame.

Re: Table resizing

I found out in Firefox that I can resize the window that the table is in, but the table itself doesn't change in size, so a smaller window just means that part of the table becomes hidden.

Also, a few more things for the Wish List.

1) When you first get on a PNG table and click on "Wait for the Big Blind," the program should remember that til the BB gets to you. Right now, it asks you every hand prior to you getting to the BB, which I think is super annoying.

2) Add a Check/Fold button for those times when you're the BB and want to make a decision ahead of the action getting to you. Again, another way to keep the game moving. Now, if you have Check selected and someone ahead of you raises, you have to click again to Fold.

3) Add a 2/3 Pot bet button.

4) The box to type a raise size in can't come soon enough, especially when you play higher levels or against bets bigger than 6 chips.

5) Add 2x, 3x, 4x the BB betting buttons.

This wouldn't slow the game down one picosecond. If the user chooses to muck (manually or automatically) the cards slide down in the pod face down. I'm merely suggesting that they slide down face up.

Just out of curiosity, among all the sites you've played throughout the years, which is/was your favorite?

Thanks for your input on marking players who are out. I don't think it's very hard to show this status. We have to fix a minor bug in the missed blind status and can probably squeeze this in at the same time.

As for table resizing... Firefox bugs are going to be addressed later.

1) The wait for bb functionality has been completely overhauled as of last night's update. The new functionality speeds up the game in that any player present at the table when the hand starts is dealt in. Antes and blinds are automatically posted. We still have a sit out next big blind, but do not offer a wait for big blind upon return. When you signal you're in, you're in.

2) We have a Fold To Any Bet button which is the same as a Check/Fold.

3-5) The slider will go through a minor overhaul soon. Typing bet amounts will be added for sure.

I'm not saying just the act of showing them would slow the game down, but if you're going to show all the hands, you would probably need to allow more time for everyone to process all the losing hands as well as the winning one before moving on. If you only show the winner, it's easy to grasp quickly.

If someone on your team isn't already doing it, I would suggest having at least one or more representatives of BUP join a couple of online sites and actually play on them, so you are aware of what their software is like and what features they offer, and how they actually play.

My favorite site as far as the playing experience goes was Full Tilt. I joined them in 2009 as a relative newbie to poker, and was totally emotionally crushed when they were shut down on Black Friday, although I had very little money there. The software was excellent, play was smooth, and they had cool avatars with three versions to show different emotions (happy, sad, puzzled), which could be changed to comment on the action. They offered many games besides HE and Omaha, and lots of freerolls where you could win small amounts of cash.

I also joined Merge during that time. Their software is also very good. They have a feature similar to what someone asked BUP to add that I've never seen on any other site. Animated gifs can be played to comment on the action or a player's state of mind. It can be distracting and slows down the game a little, but it's kind of fun as well.

These days, until just recently I've been playing on Merge for cash, and Stars for play money (can't play for cash there since I'm a US resident) just because I enjoy playing there, I like the variety of games on Stars that no other site offers, because they're not terribly popular compared to HE and Omaha. I also enjoy playing with people from all over the world. Stars is my current favorite site as far as the playing experience goes, and these days is the closest thing to the old Tilt, which of course Stars bought, then later decommissioned and merged them into Stars. I don't play on Merge much anymore though, because they have so little traffic that it's often hard to get in a micro stake cash game, and I had an issue a couple of months back with their Customer Service.

I joined BOL back in December, 2017, since I could play there for cash and they have a fair amount of traffic and offer a free HUD. Their software is pretty clunky compared to Stars and Merge, but they have been making improvements and adding new features all the time. However, they've been having a lot of disconnection issues lately, and I began having trouble being able to deposit with the credit card I've been using for poker for years with no problem, which has forced me back to Merge at least occasionally. Now I have BUP to add to my roster of online poker sites.

Yes they have this right but everybody knows that this behavior is frowned upon. I've been playing live poker semi regularly for 20 years and I think I've seen this right exercised only 3 times? definitely 5 or less times.

I have no problem with the last hand feature where a players hole cards would be shown or for the hole cards to be show in a hand history. But showing all cards involved in every showdown to all the players is in bad taste.

Thanks for doing this so quickly. Really helps a lot. Speaking of the missed blind notice though, I'm not really sure why this is even being shown. I find it distracting and really unecessary. If any other player thinks this is a good idea and can explain why, I might change my mind. Right now though I just can't see the need for it, unless it's because you eliminated the "wait for bb" option. On most sites, as soon as a player joins the table they can either elect to pay the bb and immediately begin play, or have the option to wait til the bb comes to them, so there's no need for a notice. Players that elect to wait for the bb are usually marked as "Waiting".

Why in the world would you start out letting players choose to wait for the BB, which is pretty much a standard option everywhere including live AFAIK, and then take it away?? Things like this which deviate from normal play standards will quickly drive away players who are even slightly serious about their game. There are definitely a lot of areas of BUP where the game needs to be speeded up, but this isn't one of them. I do realize (because I play there) that now Stars doesn't give players an option to wait, at least on the free chip side (I don't know what they're doing on the cash side these days), but that doesn't make it a good thing.

I've mentioned this before, but, assuming you're not doing this, I suggest you have a couple of your people actually play on some of the other online sites to see how things are done. I'm not saying everything has to be the same for all sites, but it seems like there are quite a few areas where you guys differ from what I've always found to be pretty universal standard features for online play.

Ok.

This should be moved to the top of your to-do list, because it's so important. I have literally made way too many bets that weren't the amount I wanted them to be because of how difficult the current setup is to use. Also, the slider seems to be more prone lately to sliding back to the min amount, just when I get it to the desired number. The slider really becomes a really major problem for me when playing where bet amounts go into the hundreds of chips, like in the Top of the Hour tourney, or at PNG Levels 2+.

Hey Annie, Thanks for all your input. It's quite valuable.

Regarding the wait for big blind thing, we recently did a very big overhaul to the ante/blind logic that was a pretty big deal from my end. Let's just consider this 6 steps forward and a half a step back. The wait for big blind implementation isn't final, but we felt it was important to do the update considering a few other features and fixes that were in there as well. The programming to wait for the big blind can still be added to the client and probably will be in the near future. Considering the stakes at present, this shouldn't be a showstopper.

Most of our team has extensive experience and knowledge of the online poker industry, both as insiders and as players. We're quite familiar with many of the sites out there, especially the big ones (past and present). We want to stay in line with expectations of experienced poker players, but we also want to take the opportunity to innovate a little. A few examples of changes we've made are adding the tournament bar to the top of the table so that pertinent information is always at hand, which is most useful in conventional tournaments. We've also replaced the tiny pre-action check boxes (circa 1980's design guidelines) with simplified toggle buttons that no one has complained about yet :-) I've been personally involved in every aspect of our table design which we've tried to keep as clean and open as possible. Some pretty impressive table customizations will be coming down the pipeline some day in the near future too. Some of our conceptual changes are grand slams, a few solid doubles, an occasional foul ball, and once in a while a strike out. We will continue to evolve our site design over time, especially as we receive more valuable input such as yours.

As for the slider, it's on deck. Right now I'm working on ad features that will allow us to bring on our first co-branded partner, which will hopefully increase the players on the site 100 fold. And that's the biggest feature everyone wants -- more players!

Glad to hear all of this. Sounds very positive.

When you say "tournament bar info", I hope you're referring to how many players left in, your position, upcoming level size, time til break, etc. Merge did away with easily getting that info and it's horrible. Now, you have to re-open lobby, which is slow to update & sometimes won't even open, to find out about position and # of players still in, although upcoming levels & break info are still on tourney screen.

Personally, I've never had any problem with small pre-action buttons. Yours seem overly large to me. I'd like it better if they were smaller, so more pre-action choices could be included. I think Merge has a great bet area setup, which has pretty much everything I want. Quick and easy to use, very compact, and works well.

Just noticed something else that I'm used to that seems to be missing on your site. Lately, tables I've been at have had quite a bit of player chat, which is easy to miss if you look away from the table for a few seconds since the scroll goes so fast when both player and dealer chat (option everything) is enabled. I'm used to seeing truncated player chat bubbles come up on-screen, so that you're more aware that a player is chatting. I haven't tried the dealer chat on minimal, but can't think of anything currently being shown that I would want to not be able to see.

I believe you will lose players just because of this feature. The idea of just playing hold em is appealing but when you are forced to move up with no one else at the higher level I'm gone. It would be nice, as a normal site, to be able to buy in using part of your so called bankroll. If I have 2000 chips why can we not buy in to level 1 tables with a max buy in amount? Myself, I check the site, there are 0 players registered in the scheduled games which I have never played for this reason.. The play n go tables may have up to 10 players at a given time but once you are forced to move up to level 2 maybe there is 1 or 2 players there but not often. If they are like me they are not waiting around for someone to join. So the site concept is good, but I believe it wail lose it's appeal.