Amaya slowly destroying what pokerstars has build over the years. This will not end up well.

Okay - thanks for trying the test build and letting us know your results. I'm sorry it didn't improve your situation, and we will continue to work on a solution. I do appreciate your efforts to help and have shared your comments with the team.

We only have a handful of results from the .COM test client we made available on Monday, and the results are mixed. The code changes worked for half the players who tried Build 13519, and the other half still experienced the crash bug.

Nonetheless, we plan to update the clients for all licenses, starting with .bg/.ee/.be today. This update will have the code changes from Build 13519 which should improve the crash/freeze situation at least for some players, and it should address the avatar bug as well a few other minor issues. The .com client will also get this update, but after it has deployed on the other licenses.

For those players still affected by the crash bug, we have heard from several players that:

• the bug went away when they upgraded from Win7 to Win 10 - although some players on Win10 report that the crash still happens to them
• the bug went away when they upgraded their graphics card

If, after updating to the new client, you are still affected by the bug, you might try Win10 if you are on Win7, or you might try updating your graphics card.

Alternatively, you can try an older version of the software mentioned by others in this thread, but there are risks with that, too (each build fixes some bugs or makes some improvements, so going backwards is going to bring those problems back).

We understand how frustrating this is for the affected players. We share that frustration, especially because we cannot reproduce the problem in our QA labs so we don't know if our code changes will resolve the issue when they get in your hands. Thus we greatly appreciate the efforts of those players who are willing to help us investigate further. No hard feelings if any players don't want to help - we understand that, too.

It's clear from the Win7/Win10 effects, from graphics card effects, from the irreproducible nature of the bug, from the fact that 13519 works for some but not others, from the fact that the vast majority of players have been completely unaffected all along, that whatever is causing this problem is on the margins, which is why it is so hard to nail down.

Unfortunately my client just got crashed after I got eliminated from a tourney when I closed the table

This was the only crash that happened in last 2-3 days. Before that crash was happening almost every session

Was using the test build version 13519

Do you want me to save the log files and dmp file and send it to support?

Edit: I don't want to take the risk to upgrade my windows 7 to win 10 coz last time I tried to upgrade, it failed and my laptop bricked

Will try to update the graphics card and see if the crash happens

I wonder how much rake these incomepetent ******s already lost due to this ridiculous "bug".

Yes, please send us your log & dmp files, along with details of your situation and the software behavior leading up to the crash. Thanks - this will be very helpful. Sorry that it's still affecting you, was hopeful that the 13519 code changes would make more of a difference. I'll let the devs know and ask them to look for your logs.

Sent.

It isn't as bad as it was before. Just got crashed 1 time only.

Build 13519 is OK so far, no crashes or rampant connection dropouts on my system (windows 7) as yet.
Had to click Auto Detect in HM2 Site Setup to import hands which seemed odd.
Avatar appeared briefly in the lobby before disappearing as do other players avatars when I open tables (not a priority I know, unaffected players can see our avatars anyway).

Will you be updating the FTP client also? The Deal has not opened properly since the merger and only appears as a transparent box before crashing the program.

Cheers...

Long awaited new version 13531 of pokerstars.bg, MONTH of day and night work to solve the problems with the crashing by the very competent Amaya programmers, 10 tourneys into the session, and obviously the client CRASHES AGAIN. And on the top of that the old 12713 which by some miracle was WORKING FINE now delievers a "update to newer version" message when i try to register spins in it.




PLEASE ALLOW US TO PLAY ON THE OLD AND WORKING VERSION 12713 UNTIL YOU FINALLY MANAGE TO RELEASE A VERSION WHICH IS NOT TOTAL WANK IN 2025.

EDIT: Honestly, i am just astonished why don't you just auto downgrade it to the last working version, and figure out what is that so complicated problem without using your loyal customers as lab rats and making it impossible for them to play, i wish you go bankrupt ASAP, this is just a sick joke.

First of all, Keith, since I am in decent amount of group chats with poker players, I would like to tell you that the % of players experiencing crashing is far greater than you are trying to make it. It's not 0.0001% or something like that, but good try. It's possible that recreationals playing 5 hands or 2 sngs a day don't experience it, just because they don't play enough. It's possible that a ton of players just shrug and reload stars, without sending a mail or coming to write here. Who can blame them, these days Stars support and quality of software is 1.5/10 and 0.5 is given for the sake of old times.

I am guessing you will ignore my post again, because you won't like my tone, this is fine. I have a relatively long history in the IT industry. For a "giant" like Stars, or at least perceived giant, saying things like "please try another Windows version" is really really really bad, I can use stronger word but you get it, I hope. If your whole QA team + software developers can't for the life of them find out what is wrong, I can tell you one thing - you should be looking to change something. I know you couldn't care less and will ignore this, or alternatively you may think there is at least some truth in this but you can't do anything.

One last thing, I couldn't try the test version you released, since it was .com, but I am looking to try the new .bg version and will try to give you log files when/if it crashes.

Yeah, not sure what stars did, but I was using an old .com version prefectly, and now I cant register in spins. So, I guess they dont even want us to use old versions no matter what. WTF?

Who is the responsable for not wanting to make a downgrade? He should be fired ASAP.

FIX

A V A T A R S !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, Anuj22! I told the Devs to expect your files.

Thanks for the update, antiquity!

Yes, we will be updating the FTP client, too. I was not aware of an issue with The Deal, but I'll ask about it.

Hey there people.

I have been following this thread for a week or so since I lost my avatar (which was Cindy Lauper in a particular pose). It is quite annoying since my avatar is like my trademark and I feel a little less without it. And for the life of me I have been unable to find the same image again.

I know compared to the crashing issues this is a minor gripe.

I am not telling anyone here how to behave, believe you me I know how frustrating issues like this are when $$$ is on the line, but as an observer to this thread I am beginning to feel that Keith will soon find himself on the end of some unwarranted abuse here.

The issue is with the software engineers, who may or may not be the same people employed by Stars previously. Or it may be the fault of Amaya management.

My point simply being, it probably isn't the fault of Keith. I know he is the point of contact and whatever, and in his role here he should probably expect some hostility, but I sense it might soon get out of hand.

Having said that, I do feel that Amaya has taken/ is taking Stars in an unfortunate direction.

This is what needs to be fixed asap to make at least a little progress on this dreadful situation. Allow us to use the only WORKING version of the client and afterwards hire some software engineers and QAs who can deliver a client which at least will not throw you off non stop, i don't know any other site in which you can't play 15 minutes without being kicked off, it is mind blowing what kind of management there is which continues to tolerate this circus.

Kobmish, I never said only 0.0001% of players were affected - that's a number you made up out of thin air. I said the 'vast majority' of players are unaffected, and I stand by that assessment. One could argue where the delineation might lay between a simple majority (above 50%) and a vast majority in casual parlance, but I suspect it is generally held to be somewhere south of 99.9999%.

I don't know exactly how many players are affected, but based on forum posts and Support contacts we have reports from between 100 and 200 players. The bug seems to affect multi-tablers rather than recs, and multi-tablers are more likely to report problems. So my guess is we may have several hundred affected players, but not thousands. If this was really widespread, it would relatively easy for us to reproduce, and therefore fix, the bug.

Yeah, I get it - but I did not say "Please try another Windows version." I said "If you are having problems, you might try another version". There's a really big difference there, which I hope you get. Earlier in the thread affected players asked what could they do to mitigate the problem while they wait for us to fix it. Other players indicated upgrading worked for them. I was just being helpful to the former by relaying what the latter reported. I was not directing players to please upgrade Windows as a matter of policy from the giant PokerStars.

Not really sure what you’re driving at with respect to “change something” – obviously we are looking to change the software to eliminate the crash bug. In any case, this is the third time in this post that you’ve presumed to incorrectly state my meaning or intention. I do care deeply about this issue, as does everyone involved in investigating, testing and resolving it.

We’ve not been able to find out what is wrong precisely because of what I stated earlier: this is an edge-case bug on the margins that has not been reproduced in our labs during the many weeks we have been trying. This is the nature of an irreproducible bug. It does not indicate that we don’t care about resolving it as soon as possible. You are drawing the wrong conclusion from the evidence.

But I can understand that, as you don’t see all the evidence. You only see from your point of view that the problem isn’t solved after so many weeks, so it appears to you that nothing is being done or not enough is being done. My assurances to the contrary have thus far not persuaded you differently, and that I can’t change.

Thank you for that, it is very much appreciated, as is your post. Although I take exception to some of the things you said which I feel are either incorrect or mis-characterizations of what I said, I nonetheless appreciate that you’re engaging in a dialog. I know you care about this, too.

Sadly, I must let you know that the new .bg version we deployed today may well still have the crash bug. We’ve gotten mixed results from the players who tried the modified .com version. For some, it still crashes as before, for some it crashes but does so far less often. I’m hoping your experience is like the latter. We are still investigating, still testing, still trying to nail this down.

I appreciate addressing my post and answering with such detail. Regarding the number, that I made up out of thin air - I thought it was obvious I vastly exaggerated, actually deleted few 0 after the decimal point before I posted. You got the point there, I think more people than you think are affected. Really doubt it's 100-200 total out of your whole player base, but this is not so important.

Regarding Windows, it just doesn't sound serious. But if we look at it from the pov that you are just trying to help, can't argue with that.

We'll ignore the "change something" comment, this isn't something that you can or will discuss here and tbh it's 99.9% (don't pick on the number) not your fault.

I will put the writeminidump line and try to crash it and send you files.

Thanks, kobmish! I think we both have a clearer understanding of each others' points.

This will be most helpful - thanks again.

The avatars should be fixed in the new clients that started deploying this week. Today we deployed .bg, .be, and .ee. More will come tomorrow and next week.

Thanks for your comments, Riceman! I try to take abuse (sometimes warranted, sometimes not) with as much aplomb as I can muster, and words of encouragement/compassion from players are always warmly received.

Yes, very disappointing for everyone that the new .bg client did not resolve the crash bug.

I have no idea why the older clients stopped working. There was nothing intentional in the client deployment to invalidate older clients. Typically, when we need to disallow older clients, we will do a “forced update” that forces players to use the new version. This is done relatively rarely and usually comes with advanced warning. This is not a forced update situation, so something else must be affecting the older clients.

Regarding making a downgrade – this is not as simple as you imagine, for reasons discussed in this post last week:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...ostcount=25242

Although I have mentioned the irreproducible nature of this bug in several posts, players continue to castigate Amaya, the software developers, the QA testers and management for “tolerating this situation” and “letting it drag on for months”, often intimating a mixture of greed, incompetence and callousness on our part. This is unwarranted and incorrect on several levels.

First of all, no one – not management, not the dev team, not Amaya – is “tolerating” this. We are collectively working to isolate the problem and devise a solution. Second, the very nature of a bug that is not reproducible in our test labs is the difficulty of knowing whether any proposed code change will make any difference. Irreproducible bugs typically take a long time to eliminate – often many weeks or even months, and they often require the cooperation of affected players to help us investigate and gather data so we can try to isolate common threads. Far from being lab rats, the experiences of these players are key to resolving the problem.

Sometimes we get lucky and find the source quickly, sometimes it remains stubbornly elusive. This one is stubborn. We are frustrated by that, and we understand how frustrating it is for you, too. We understand the urge to lash out as well – no hard feelings there. I just want to set the record straight on behalf of my hard-working, dedicated colleagues.

Making a downgrade is very easy - i have a copy of the 12713 pokerstars.bg directory, at the Session Lord archive page there is a copy of all previous versions, you just download it, delete the new version, paste this folder, no more than 15 seconds job. It worked fine for about 2 weeks, i hope we won't get bans for using the Session Lord archive of the older version

+1

I know in the middle of the current mayhem it's not a good time to request a mundane fix/feature. At the very least give us a hotkey to close a table without needing confirmation.

Individual players digging up old versions on their own is massively different than having PokerStars rolling back the client for all players. We're talking about two different things. The post I mentioned discusses rolling back for everyone, which is something we do very rarely and only under extreme circumstances.

In principle, we don't have any rules against individuals using older versions of their client (at least not for those that are newer than the last forced-update version). However, you do so at your own discretion and risk. There is no guarantee that you won't have different problems with those older versions (that may have been resolved in later versions), and if you write to Support reporting a problem that has been fixed in a later version, our Support staff will of course recommend that you update your client.