You've had a look, you've played some games, now you have suggestions and things you want added. We want to hear them! Help us plot out our development roadmap here. Thanks!

Hi Zeta, the forum should be live under Internet Poker in next hour or so.

Small box to manually type in bet sizes.

Agreed. That is already #1 on our client guy's feature request list.

4 color decks!

Yes! We want this too and hope to have the option soon. Thanks for the suggestion.

Wait... fronts? or backs?

Just kidding. But wait until you see what we have planned for table options in the not-too-distant future.

The ads need to not make you miss a hand. Maybe have everyone watch ads at the same time. It is especially awful when trying to play 3 handed. Also 50 percent of the time its just a blank screen nothing loads. Also, maybe an option to watch x number of ads at once, for x amount of play time.

In the play and go as you move up there is no one to play. You should be able to go back down to the lower levels where there are people playing. Right now it has me at level 6 and there are zero games.

When I leave the screen with the table up and then come back, the sound goes away and doesn't come back until I load a new table. I use firefox fyi.

Notes on players would be nice too. Thats all I can think of right now.

Maybe obvious, but once the "X" in the top right corner of an advert appears, after a few seconds, you can x it out and you return to the game.

auto muck

This is a function of our current ad provider. This behavior will change when we find a new one. A better ad company with more lucrative ads means we can put more funds into prizes. It's unusual, but ads (especially more effective ads) are good since they drive the site economy!

I have good news and bad news...

The good news -- that feature already exists
The bad news -- we haven't built the options page that allows you to set it

File this one under "coming soon"

Oh, ok. I assumed it was because "they" know I had watched the particular advert before and had already bought the product. My bad.

Exciting stuff.

1) When the ad came up I wasn't sure if I was being folded out of a dealt hand or not. Might want to throw up a message to let the user know the game is pausing for the add or something. Right now, when the ad starts, you hear a time-out beeping sound which I assume is for posting the blind but it gives the impression that I'm timing out on a decision.

2) You currently have the blinds being posted and then the dealer button moving. Clearly you want to move the button first before posting the blinds. I can imagine it would throw people off a lot especially if multi tabling.

Hope that helps.

Thank you. I'm happy to hear that.

You are *not* wrong in your assessment here. However, the placement of the ad and how it fits into the game is a very contentious topic within our company. There are several issues at play here. If we place the ad somewhere innocuous that doesn't get in the way, no one will see it. And the ad companies are pretty smart about detecting that. If we hold up the game and wait for players to watch ads, then, well, we hold up the game and that gets kind of annoying for the players.

Here're a few positives to consider. The current placement of ads (will eventually) yield a very high ad rate due to its placement and user attention. This means more revenue for players since we give half of it back to players. While ads can be pretty tough to sneak in playing heads up, they're a breeze to manage on a 4-handed or higher table. Fold preflop... watch ad. After playing a short time, it's very manageable. I already know how to sneak in ads on a heads up table so that it doesn't get in my way or cause noticeable delay for my opponent (hint: don't do it between hands; start your ad immediately after clicking a pre-action, especially if you think your opponent is going to ponder a few more seconds). We are considering making ads optional on heads up tables. Also, ads become optional starting at level 10. I've played on level 10 for a few hours and I must say it's really slick being able to skip the ads. If I were 4 handed or more, I'd definitely watch them anyway.

While we know it's not 100% perfect, we're open to all forms of suggestions on how to make ads more manageable.

When this was originally programmed, it threw me off a bit myself. But there's a programmatic reason for this. In a live game, [human] dealers tend to handle unexpected events quite well. Buttons move in concert with the shuffle, posting of the blinds, etc. Occasionally something will throw off this concert such as when the [presumed] big or small blind bids adieu to the table and the blinds adapt along with the button without much fuss.

However in the world of software, things aren't as forgiving. Since players at the same table are occasionally on the opposite side of the planet, we need to verify that they are taking the blinds before we know where the button goes. Technically speaking, the button isn't the leading indicator for the blinds. It's the big blind that moves around the table and the small blind and button follow in accordance with whoever ends up taking the big blind. While we auto post blinds, occasionally network delays make the button movement lag. Also, new players or players who have missed their blind will be offered an option to post, which also introduces substantial delay. Only once we figure out where the blinds are going can we know where the button will end up. That's why we do it this way. If it's any consolation, I happen to know at least one extremely large site that does [or did] it the same way.

It does. Thank you.

I personally have missed zero hands watching ads. As long as you press the 'x' to close ad early nobody should miss a hand. Please don't ever pause the game so people can watch ads.

Also the bet slider should move up in increments of the big blind. Or at least an option for that.

If I have anything to say about the matter (and I usually do) we won't ever hold up the game for ads. Others in our company aren't as heartless as I am though.

Duly noted on the slider behavior. Thanks for the input.

Hey Dean,
You're misunderstanding my suggestion on #1. I am not saying to not do a full-screen for the ad. Clearly that's expected/fine. I am saying you may want to indicate to the user before displaying the ad that they are not going to be folded out of a hand. Just a simple message above the ad "ad playing, don't worry, you won't be folded out of a hand", something like that. Or, just don't have the time-out alert sound when the ad is playing.

WRT #2, sorry but your reply is absolute nonsense. There are plenty of ways to handle it, but you can always simply delay the graphical update of the blinds posting just long enough to move the button first (more ideally you'd move the button to where it 'should' go, and then update again if needed). And the fact that one major site used to or still does it wrong doesn't make it OK. There is a better way of doing it that improves user experience. Clearly it isn't going to be a top priority - but don't tell me it's a feature or that it's an issue beyond repair. That makes me less likely to contribute in the future.

You'll be happy to know that a confluence of issues came to a point yesterday and we discussed this topic at length. The fact that people (such as yourself) were bringing this issue up weighed on our conversation. Long story short, we agreed to a fundamental change to how we handle blinds and antes and button movements, which should not only solve this issue you brought up, but improve the user experience in other ways as well.

I didn't mean to suggest that simply because it was a difficult problem to solve that it was impossible to change. We are always looking for feedback from users and evaluating how to improve our software. I can't begin to describe how difficult it is to manage a live poker table in software, and how equally difficult it is to get the client side to render correctly. So sometimes problems such as this one must be factored into how easy it is to make cahnges.

The solution we have decided to implement (in two weeks, when I return from a 9 day sabbatical) is to eliminate the client side decision to enter a hand. Essentially, if you're at the table and not sitting out when the hand shuffles, you will be dealt in and your blinds/antes will automatically be posted. If you want out of a hand, you must indicate so prior to the next hand starting. This will not only solve the problems you have pointed out, but it will take away some of the annoying delays we have observed between the shuffle and the deal when players take too long to decide if they want to be in the hand.

The game doesn't pause, nor should it, when people are watching ads. If you only have a few seconds to act and you start watching an ad your hand will be folded. Even playing heads up I haven't had the problem of watching ads/timing out. If they start pausing games while players are watching ads then its game over for BUP.

Dean,
Glad to hear it. Again, I wasn't saying this was a critical issue, and I could see putting it very low on the todo list. I just thought it should be there. And I get and appreciate more than most that it isn't as easy a thing to do as most people think.

buttfracker,
Ah, I was under the impression that everyone was seeing ads at the same time. I didn't even realize you could choose when to watch an ad (before that timer ran out).
Thanks for the heads up.

1. Are you guys planning on having the tables pop to front on action?

2. Are the scheduled tournys going to have synchronized breaks in the future?

Dean (who is out for a few days) would be able to answer more definitively but...

1) We'd like to but browsers tend to not like pop-out windows. They assume they're ads trying to be sneaky. Controlling the order is tricky.

2) It's my belief that the breaks are actually synced. Unless you mean across different tournys, in which case I don't think so. Each tournament is on its own timeline.

I recommend lifting the level restrictions until the player base grows. If there are only two people logged in they shouldn't be stuck on different tables.

People like me are willing to test your software for free. If we can play.

+1