^Absolutely this

I can no longer open the client without an instant "The Poker Client has stopped working" error. Any ideas?

This might be the worst site boycott/sit-out suggestion I've seen yet. Is the thinking that the site isn't concerned about, or trying to fix, an issue that is costing them money and pissing off their players every night, but a boycott will grab their attention?

Exactly. It's a little perplexing that after the 4th (?) night in a row of this, people's heads are still exploding with all these bizarre conspiracy theories.

anyone know how to claim the apology for our troubles bonus from the email. mine not showing up in my bonuses anywhere

It was the last one in my bonus section under "claim now".

I was playing the $11 PLO MTT on bodog.eu, everyone got kicked except me and someone else, I got 4th in the end (rip lol). They paid me out for the tournament and I got a $20 cash bonus as an apology (lol again).

Pretty sure it is only bovada players getting d/c'd, not bodog players. Have any bodog players been d/c'd?

I was playing in the Hundredaire Maker SMPO3 when I got d/c'ed with a little less than 200 left, and late reg just ending.

22 spots paid.

Finished 22nd. +$80

You have to go to bovada dot lv, sign in using the same password as you use for the client, click on the present box which is in the top right corner then claim the "Poker Interruption Bonus"

I got a free $65 bonus that just needs 65 points to clear and I have barely even been playing this week. Seems very generous... obviously still concerned though.

****This must be pretty bad****

I called this morning because I was not refunded automatically for the two tourneys I was in last night/blinded out during the shutdown. They looked me up and immediately issued a refund for both.....here is the scary part..........

The person I spoke to said, "I would stay away from playing on the site until these threats are resolved, which could be a few weeks."

Read this and just went to site and claimed my $65 bonus. Bovada Rocks!

Yes. They have been having problems.
Yes. I flipped out when it happened first night with hundreds on the tables.
Yes. Bovada refunded all my money plus some.
Yes. They have made it right, with no arguments 3 nights in a row.
Yes. They cashed me on to BTC in less than 24hrs in the middle of all this.
Yes. I will continue to play with out concern, because that have established this pattern of legitimate behavior through their problems.

Kudos, Bovada.

I didn't get this, was everyone who had their tourneys interrupted given one or just regs?

I never even had a tourney or cash game interrupted this week. Just was unable to log on a few times and played some late night.

While my knowledge is foggy in this area ill take a shot.

Both the website and the games shutdown when this happens. I also notice that you can be connected and playing at a table but you somehow get logged out/disconnected from the lobby. This leads me to believe that the computer that pipes traffic to their website and does authentication processing (domain controller) keeps taking a dump.

My further guess is that the new cross platform software is bloated, poorly written, and subsequently placed extra load on the servers. Bump that up a notch with new customers and peak playing time (afternoon and evening) and you're just asking for a crash. I don't think it is so much a crash as it is just a massive bottleneck because you'll notice there are always a small few who remain logged on stealing blinds/chips until someone or something on their end hits the panic button. Similar to when you have too much running on your own computer... things start to freeze yet you can still wiggle the mouse (high priority process) and maybe one application.

Again this is all just a guess as i've never really ran a server or network except tinkering in my own house. But maybe someone who has will chime in and tell me if my unemployed arse with zero IT certs is right.

EDIT:

I don't think this is a Denial of Service attack because it seems to have started with the new software and during peak hours. With as poorly as the client software is written i can't even imagine how bad the server side software is written and exacerbating the problem. I really think they just implemented garbage software which can't handle the load, process requests bottleneck and slow to a craw, most people get disconnected, and then someone/something on their end reboots the whole thing.

EDIT #2:

Anyone else notice that their "Buy More Chips" button sometimes greys out and never works again on certain tables? Very annoying if you're at a juicy table, running bad, but want to keep playing because you have to leave the table and rejoin after the 5 minutes timer ... assuming someone hasn't taken your seat.

Adding to my above post...

When i was a lowly desktop support guy in IT we had engineering computers that would take 30 minutes to load a model (times 50 users = 50 hours a day in wasted productivity). There was a lot of clamor by bosses to spend a quarter million dollars and buy "better computers". I suspected the problem was crappy antivirus software/configuration (scanning the same files multiple times) that was causing the problem. I removed it and ran a test ... same models took 2-3 minutes to load. Just goes to show how poorly written or implemented software can ruin things. Needless to say, nobody listened to me and they still spent 250K on new computers which only helped the problem slightly.

What probably makes this whole problem worse is that most IT people aren't programmers. So if this issue is both a programming (new software) and IT problem ... could take some time for them to fix it. Add in my 10% rule on life (that only 10% of people really know what they're doing) and this could be a long ride.

I have been in the software biz for a long time and developed my own little HUD, so while guessing, I think my guesses are better than average.

My guess is that they are trying to do development and IT on the cheap, and have inexperienced people and less infrastructure than they need. It seems like every time they do something major, it just isn't planned, tested, or executed properly.

I think back to when they re-wrote the client, which I guessed is to have a common code base for PCs, Macs, and mobile. It took them a long time to get that client stable and even now, it still locks up sometimes on my Mac when I bum hunt and swap tables (yes, I keep it in casino view and as an icon). My HUD still doesn't work as well as it used to because of various quirks in the client.

Last week, they warned us the site and poker would be down for a day. I don't use the website much - I don't know if they made big changes or not. Maybe they made a big change to the backend software. Maybe they moved to or from a cloud provider like AWS. Who knows. Odds are they did what they did to save money, didn't plan it well, didn't test it well, and now it is unstable in production.

I would guess their management is livid with their IT team. As frustrating as this is for us, they are losing a ton of money in rake. I have to believe they want the site up and running more than we do. Someone their should have lost their job.

So as annoying as this is, I don't think anything sinister is going on, just that Bovada isn't making the right decisions and investments in IT.

anyone not able to log in?

Us Texans (Houston) are representing hah. Nice car.

To add to the bolded. It's been my experience that management of non tech companies tend to scoff at IT and underestimate its necessity since it doesn't directly generate revenue.

They are being DDOS'd plain and simple, its the same thing ACR went through, its going to be rough for a bit, but the guys ddos'ing will eventually move on...

Yes indeed. Bovada is basically an Internet/Software as a Service (SAS)/cloud software company, but they sure don't seem to be making an investment in IT.

As I typed this, I took down a window and got the spinning wheel of death...

I think the evidence points against this.

- New cross platform software
- Laggy software
- Random authentication problems
- Buggy software
- Peak times and during promotion period
- Disconnect problems since the beginning of the new software was released
- The way the software/servers act in general seems to point to a software/infrastructure issue

Plus... i'm not sure ive seen a denial of service attack that specifically comes and goes during peak hours for a small amount of time. Most that i've seen tend to happen for one long period of time until measures are taken to stop it. If it was an attack then that means that either the perpetrators keep starting and stopping or Bovada keeps resolving and failing. Neither seem more likely to me vs. crappy software/IT.

It's ddos... they use a mitigation service, so the start and stopping is exactly that, they get hit with a ddos, they turn on the mitigation service and all the **** traffic is ported into a dead hole, making the network stable again, unfortunately this isn't instant and takes some time, that time is where you see all the disconnects...these are either russian groups or lizard squad...

Hard to tell if your serious or whatnot now but ya its no ddos attack.

Ive spoken to a member of their tech lead team and adovacy depo numerous times about their software/server upkeep and Fax pretty much nailed it in all aspects.

The lead tech i spoke with didn't seem to know what I was hoping to be way more than I did about SSL encryption and latency issues in line with that and im far from IT qualification, tech savy..maybe.

Buggy software with so many plugins
Multi-level platform that has more emphasis on the mobile although it uses chrome and not that cheap chicken scratch software
IT personnel to which is main culprit as they're world wide and caing into Malaysian office with IT guy beside a supervisor describe possible fixes to my comp for better operations, came across as a strip-mall electronics shop backroom of like 3 people all of whom not qualified to fully optimize their machinery.

So not to be redundant everything fax said

Could be. They would be a good target for extortion. But keep in mind that a lot of issues occur after Bovada make a change. Seems like self-inflicted "DDoS" as a result of bad IT.

^^This. Ever since the software changes they've had problems. This week isn't the first time... its just the worst.