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a number of software issues
1: Firstly I am using the downloaded software, when I click sit out at BB and have then sat out, I close the table but 10 seconds later skypoker insists on reopening the table for me. The only way to get it to stop doing that it seems is to click "stand" and then wait for the hand at the table to finish before it actually stands you up, and then close the table. This is pretty irritating when you are playing several tables and trying to change to other tables. Especially when you have finished your session and close 8 tables only for them all to start popping up again.
2: It often does not work when you click on the "choose next action" buttons, eg you click on the fold button before it's your turn to act but it doesnt respond almost as if the button is "sticky". Sometimes spamming the button works other times it does not.
3: The time given to you to act on each hand is very short compared to any other poker site, this makes playing more than a few tables very difficult and you end up timing out at a table. By comparison playing 6 tables at skypoker seems to go faster than playing 12 tables at pokerstars. If more time was given to act then players would be able to play more tables therefore bringing in more rake for you.
4: When you have added yourself to a waiting list and a seat becomes available, instead of it asking you whether you wish to join it instantly opens the table. This is annoying if you have enough tables open and just simply joined several waiting lists to begin with to get going and forgot to remove yourself from them. On top of this when you close the table that has automatically opened it then decides to often reopen again as described in point 1 above.
5: The tile button doesnt allow for you having 2 monitors, if I have 6 tables open on my main monitor and 2 open on the other, instead of tiling the tables on the corresponding monitor that they are open on it will move all 8 tables on to my main monitor and tile them all on there.
6: There are no settings that allow you to automatically set the buy-in amount and to automatically have auto topup enabled, therefore opening 8 tables means you have to go through each one and click on maximum then click on auto topup etc for each table.
7: There is no replay button to review the last hand played.
I hope I havent come across as ranting here, overall the games are good and the software looks nice, and the player rewards and vip scheme are good. But there are so many irritating things about the software that may put me off continuing to play there (and will have put others off too). If these problems can be fixed/improved i'm sure you will draw a lot more players to your site.
Many thanks
2: It often does not work when you click on the "choose next action" buttons, eg you click on the fold button before it's your turn to act but it doesnt respond almost as if the button is "sticky". Sometimes spamming the button works other times it does not.
3: The time given to you to act on each hand is very short compared to any other poker site, this makes playing more than a few tables very difficult and you end up timing out at a table. By comparison playing 6 tables at skypoker seems to go faster than playing 12 tables at pokerstars. If more time was given to act then players would be able to play more tables therefore bringing in more rake for you.
4: When you have added yourself to a waiting list and a seat becomes available, instead of it asking you whether you wish to join it instantly opens the table. This is annoying if you have enough tables open and just simply joined several waiting lists to begin with to get going and forgot to remove yourself from them. On top of this when you close the table that has automatically opened it then decides to often reopen again as described in point 1 above.
5: The tile button doesnt allow for you having 2 monitors, if I have 6 tables open on my main monitor and 2 open on the other, instead of tiling the tables on the corresponding monitor that they are open on it will move all 8 tables on to my main monitor and tile them all on there.
6: There are no settings that allow you to automatically set the buy-in amount and to automatically have auto topup enabled, therefore opening 8 tables means you have to go through each one and click on maximum then click on auto topup etc for each table.
7: There is no replay button to review the last hand played.
I hope I havent come across as ranting here, overall the games are good and the software looks nice, and the player rewards and vip scheme are good. But there are so many irritating things about the software that may put me off continuing to play there (and will have put others off too). If these problems can be fixed/improved i'm sure you will draw a lot more players to your site.
Many thanks
Comments
Hi Trenmonsta,
Thanks for that reasoned critique, I'll pass it on to the Suits.
FWIW, I agree with some, disagree with some, am neutral on parts of it, & some I don't understand. Opinions. We don't all think the same, or want the same things.
I don't really understand point 1. Why not just click "STAND" in the first place?
"Time to act" is too short. That's a balancing act. For those playing 8 tables, more time would be helpful. Give those guys more time, & you end up wasting the time of the 1 tablers. A HUGE proportion of traffic here "one tables". On the App, for example, it's a one table affair, which would be of no use at all to you. Bet you could not guess what % of traffic plays through the App though - it's a very significant %, & it is why this site has been able to grow in recent years whilst most others are in decline. So by giving the minority who multi table more time, it wastes more time for the single tablers. Who should get priority? Neither & both - it's a balance thing.
The site would generate more rake if multi tablers had longer to act? I disagree with that.
a) The single tablers would get bored waiting, & may be lost to the site.
b) More time to act equates to less hands dealt in a given period. That means less rake generated.
I get your point completely, but it's a many sided equation.
Replay button to review the last hand? Well I don't want to sound like Lord Wet Blanket, but I don't see stuff like that coming to Sky Poker in my lifetime. Then again, I'm not a young man......
Anyway, thanks for keeping in non-ranty, & I'll pass it on.
I love this para, by the way......
"I hope I havent come across as ranting here, overall the games are good and the software looks nice, and the player rewards and vip scheme are good. But there are so many irritating things about the software that may put me off continuing to play there (and will have put others off too). If these problems can be fixed/improved i'm sure you will draw a lot more players to your site."
It's rare that anything in life is perfect, & this certainly applies to poker sites. The software on, say, Stars or Tilt is gorgeous. Tough to win there though, far easier here, & as you say, the Rewards scheme is OK. Hard to get that EXACT balance though.
We have a few players here - one in particular springs to mind - who is abso minting it here, getting the lot. He is good enough to beat most of the player base here. And yet he is completely intolerant of even THE most trivial irritation. He wants it both ways, he wants a perfect world where everything is right for HIM.
Ain't gonna happen, ever. Cake & eat it.
To clarify point 1, if you just click stand it doesnt usually instantly close the table but says the following as shown in the cbox:
You can see that I have sat out at the BB and am not participating in the hand but need to wait for the next hand to finish before it allows me to exit properly. Therefore upon finishing a session you cant just close the tables but have to wait until all players at every open table have finished their hand before closing the tables otherwise they all start popping up again.
This is also annoying when you havent finished your session and are multitabling, and want to close the table straight away because a new table popped up that you joined the waiting list on (since it didnt ask you whether you still wished to join it as highlighted in point 4).
What's odd is that if you do try and exit the table by clicking the X it says this:
But this isn't true since clicking "close" will mean the table pops up again 10 seconds later.
This is a pretty bizzare system, I mean you're not at a dinner table with your grandparents and therefore should be polite and wait for everyone to finish eating before leaving the table?! You should be able to leave immediately.
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I see what you mean about the time to act being preferable to people only playing 1 table, however I am not talking about adding a significant amount of time here, just a couple of seconds. Pokerstars allow much longer for you to act even though there are many playing via their app and it works fine? Perhaps just a couple of seconds for a preflop decision and maybe 3-4 seconds postflop decision would make all the difference.
Surely the players that want to play 6-8 tables are bringing in 6-8 times as much rake as the players that are only playing one table therefore it makes sense to cater for them a little more?
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Your attitude in your second post of "Ain't gonna happen, ever. Cake & eat it." is a little odd, I mean as you stated the software on stars and FT are gorgeous, but the downside is that it is tougher to win. The advantage that skypoker has over pokerstars is softer competition and better rakeback through the VIP system. However the software is miles behind so can you imagine how busy skypoker could become if they got their software closer to that of pokerstars?? And we're only talking about a few improvements that wouldnt be that difficult to make. The only major ones I feel are points 1-4, the others arent really that significant, and yes although they are my opinions im pretty sure there arent many players that want tables popping up again when they have already closed them, or buttons that stick!
Thanks for passing this on anyway and look forward to any improvements that you can make.
cheers
I simply stated a view, being my personal view on the likelihood of these things happening in short order. It was perfectly polite, & had no edge or attitude. If the Suits answered, they'd wrap it up in Corporate speak, but I believe it would be the same answer.
If I ran this Business, I'd do a LOT of things differently. But I don't, & I daresay The Business is far better off doing it the way they do for the reasons they do.
Fact is, knowing the Business, & the Business Model, I'd be astonished if a "hand replay viewer" (I assume you are thinking of the equivalent at 'Stars & Tilt) were installed here any time soon.
I'm simply expressing what I believe to be the Company's position. Sorry if that comes across as "attitude", it was certainly not intended that way. It was just the facts as I believe them to be.
ok sorry I just assumed for a minute that you were involved higher up in the business (the suits) and therefore I found it an odd way to say that if it was corporate speak
But yeah the hand replayer isnt anything major, I would greatly appreciate it if you could pass on my suggestions about point 1-4 though to the suits,
Many thanks
Morning.
No, I'm not a suit, I report to the Suits - lots of them, but I'm deffo not a suit. I just do little odd jobs - look after the Forum, act as a bridge between players & the Business, organise the UKPC, write Content, "host" the players in previous years in Las Vegas & Punta Cana (someone has to.....) & that sort of thing. I was originally hired to teach the staff on the TV side how to play poker, that was before the original TV Channel started. Somehow, one thing lead to another, & I'm in my tenth year here now.
The Corporate reply to your question would have been along these lines......
"That is not something we currently have under consideration, but we note your comments."
I'm generally able to flesh that out a little, as I firmly believe its good to help poker players understand how the Business works, in exactly the same way as I can, on occasion, give the Business a steer as to poker players thinking.
As to the Hand Replay Viewer, I'd say that ANY site that does not currently have one, is unlikely to ever add one. That's because online poker is moving much more towards a recreational model, where they have different needs & wishes.
A lot of sites who ignored that are suffering. Full Tilt, amazingly, are not even in the global Top Ten sites any more, after traffic tumbled over 40% last year, & PKR, who have been in terminal decline for some years have now given up their independence & joined Microgaming Poker Network. Traffic on sites like Ladbrokes & Betfair (both now on Networks) has virtually vanished altogether, amazing, as both were big players in their heyday.
As it happens, global poker traffic has shown an uptick in the last 3 months, but its mostly going towards the sites that are recreational friendly.
When this business decides to invest money & resource in a new or improved product - in fact, IT resource is a far more valuable commodity than pure cash cost in a Business which is expanding rapidly (I'm talking SB&G as a whole) - the Product manager has to "make a pitch" to the Board. Good IT resource is at a premium, so they want them doing the most optimal things.
And the Board will be primarily looking at stuff like payback, player retention, acquisition, etc.
So, lets take 2 examples, a Hand Replay Viewer, or an App where players can multi table via Mobile. It's "no contest", I'd say, that one ticks all three boxes, especially, but not exclusively, payback.
Anyway, appreciated the questions, & yes, I'll send them up to the Suits this morning.
thanks again
^^^
I'm not sure I could convince them of much, to be honest, but I've certainly sent your comments Upstairs for their consideration, that's all I can do.