Poker Room Notes

How to Run a Professional Poker Tournament

2011-01-01T18:27:00.000-05:00

Here is short article on how to run a poker tournament. it includes basic information on how to run your bar poker tournament, or your Texas Hold'em home tournament including blinds structure, blinding out players, and balancing tables.

It's too short to give in depth information, but it is a good start for beginning tournament directors of home and bar games.

Harrah's Poker Room Expansion

2008-05-10T12:33:00.003-04:00

Harrah's Resort in Atlantic City poker Bad Beat is up to around $160,000.00 right now.

They are doing construction to expand the poker room. The Reflections Cafe was moved across from the pool and a McCormick's and Schmidt's seafood restaurant is moving into the old spot. Expect for a small portion which is being taken out and added to the poker room. The poker room is also taking over the old retail store space that was adjacent to it.

I've heard the new space will include a cashier and horse race betting. But the expansion will add new tables and make Harrah's the fourth largest poker room in Atlantic City.

Showboat Poker Room Moves Downstairs

2008-04-18T11:11:00.000-04:00

Since it first opened a couple of years ago, the Showboat poker room has been one of the prettiest poker rooms in the country. It now looks even better.

Showboat recently moved their House of Blues poker room from upstairs across from the music hall, to the main casino floor in the House of Blues gaming area behind the Spirit bar. The new poker room is more spacious and has windows with a view of the boardwalk.

I was concerned about the move. The old room had bathrooms next door and a cashier's cage in the poker room. For the new room both are on the far wall, but not too far away. The added beauty and space make up for the extra walk to the cage, and about the same distance for the bathrooms.

I was also concerned about the noise level, but the poker room seems clear of the slot machines that don't stop making noise. There are the kids that like to hit the windows as they walk by, but I'm happy it is quiet.

I had my misgivings when they announced the move, but I am happy with the new room. Very happy.

High Hand of the Day

2007-12-07T16:03:00.000-05:00

Harrah's in AC has a High Hand of the Day prize. I'm at Harrah's enjoying the WSOP Circuit event. Today my first hand of the day made the High hand of the Day - I had quad 6's with a King. It didn't last; a straight flush became the new high hand a bit later.

In the Harrah's poker room the prize for the best hand of the day is 20,000 Reward Credits, which is $200 to spend on your Total Rewards card.

IRS Tournament Reporting Requirements

2007-11-16T19:48:00.000-05:00

The IRS has made changes to the reporting requirements for poker tournaments. From what I can tell it seems that the IRS is not requiring the casinos to issue W-4G forms on your winnings as long as the casino keeps internal records of your winnings and does yearly reporting to the IRS.

If the casino does not have your taxpayer ID number on file and does not submit records to the IRS then they must issue w-4G forms to all tournament winners.

IRS Bulletinn: Poker Tournament Winnings Must be Reported to the IRS

Doyle's Room is back

2007-11-16T01:50:00.000-05:00

Doyle's Room is back in the U.S. From what I can tell, they must have switched to Microgaming's software and are now taking U.S. based customers. I went to the site and entered my old information and got my account back, including my old balance. I have money still there.

Give it a try. Sign up for Doyle's Room.

Absolute Poker Bad Beat Jackpot

2007-09-18T18:48:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to RHH9302 on hitting Absolute Poker’s $288,914.70 Bad Beat Jackpot and taking home $93,897.29 in cash. Hit the Bad Beat tables for your shot at instant riches.

Your Avatar can help you score $100 - check their website promotions page for details.

Transfer funds between poker rooms - Now you can move your money between Absolute Poker and UltimateBet all for free.

There's been another pay rise! Sunday's Guaranteed is NOW $75,000. Every Sunday at 20.00 ET! That's $225,000 Guaranteed EVERY weekend.

Absolute Poker is not responsible for deals made between players at our tables. We urge you to exercise extreme caution when chatting online or offline.

Clocking in and out

2007-09-13T14:48:00.000-04:00

Each Casino has a method for keeping track of comps. I've only worked out the details for a few of them. But here is some information that might be of interest.

At Harrah's and Showboat they require you to clock in and clock out at the front desk. If you do not clock out then they throw away your comp points. If you clock in in the morning and clock out at night then if you play in a tournament in the middle you risk having all your points thrown out if there is only one table of players remaining because of the tournament and it breaks down due to lack of players. If they run out of players they sometimes throw out all the cards they track points on.

The Tropicana handles tracking for you by scanning each person's poker club card each hour. As long as your card is at the table, whether you are or not, you will get credit for comp points. At the Trop, poker comp points are on a different computer system than the Diamond card points for the slot machines. (Comps on table gains like blackjack are actually done by a third system and at the discretion of the pit boss)

At Caesars while they ask you to clock in and clock out, they apparently go to each table and collect cards ever three or four hours and rescan all the cards because the clock everyone out automatically. So apparently you can pick up an extra hour or two here and there by not clocking out.

No W-2's in Casinos?

2007-09-06T09:03:00.000-04:00

Tammy from Showboat told me they were doing away with W-2 reporting of tournament wins.

Whenever I have won a poker tournament in Atlantic City they give me and make me sign a tax form. It's either a W-2 or something very similar to a W-2.

I spoke today with Alan from the poker room at Showboat and he tells me that there was a change in the federal law and all casinos are no longer doing tax reporting on tournament winnings.

Showboat Poker Tournament Sat. 9/8/07

2007-08-30T17:14:00.000-04:00

Showboat in Atlantic City has announced a Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament to be Held on Saturday, September 9, 2007. It is a $20,000 guaranteed tournament. The buy-in is $225.

For $225 they need 89 people to make the tournament. It does not sound like they are risking much, but it does sound like they want to make a splash a big tournament location in AC. Oh, I missed that 1st place alone gets $20K, not the total pot.

THE POKER TOURNAMENT

Hosted by Alicia Lee, Philly's Hottest Sports Calendar Pinup and Poker Player. Saturday, September 15 starting at 11 a.m. First Place wins $20,000- Guaranteed! Tournament is in the New Orleans Ballroom and tournament play begins at 11 a.m. Register at the Showboat Poker Room now to September 14. You won't want to miss this tournament, and seats are limited.

Buy-in is $225+$25
Start with a $10,000 chip stack
Blinds start at 25/50

From what I have seen posted, you must register by the day before the tournament. I called the poker room (609-343-4686) and asked about this and Kellie said she had been getting a lot of this question and yes, you can register the day of the tournament, but it is limited to 423 players by fire code regulations.

General information on poker at Showboat, Harrah's. Caesers, and Ballys can be found at
http://www.harrahs.com/atlantic-city-poker.html

New Name for Bodog

2007-08-29T19:45:00.000-04:00

Bodog.com has gone off the air. The site has been replaced by newbodog.com as part of a domain name dispute.

It seems that Bodog was sued for patent infringement related to its software. Apparently Bodog did not respond to the lawsuit and 1st Technology LLC was awarded a default judgement that allowed them to take possession of the Bodog domain names.

Bodog claims it is business as usual and they are fighting to get their original domain names back.

Absolute Poker’s Bad Beat Jackpot Approaches $700,000

2007-08-27T19:57:00.000-04:00

The recently announced bad beat jackpot at Absolute poker keeps growing back every time it gets taken down by someone.

The online poker tables at Absolute Poker are filling up faster than ever after the popular online poker site reported that their current Bad Beat Jackpot is quickly approaching $700,000.

By 9am ET on Monday, the jackpot of Absolute Poker’s popular Bad Beat Jackpot Texas Hold'em game had reached $667,000. With $0.50 collected from each qualifying hand at designated Bad Beat Jackpot tables, that number is growing by an average of $2,000 per hour.

The larger-than-life jackpot eclipses Absolute Poker’s own record of $464,652.03. What’s more, the Absolute jackpot is nearly twice as big as Party Poker’s (a site not open to US players).

The next player to lose a hand holding four 8s or anything better will win a large piece of the jackpot. The participants in the bad beat hand will also share in the jackpot.

Full details can be found at Absolute Poker.

Bad Beat Jackpot at Absolute Poker

2007-06-26T18:48:00.000-04:00

Miami, FL (PRWeb) June 26, 2007 – Within one day of releasing its new Bad Beat Jackpot game, Absolute Poker doled out nearly $78,000 to five lucky Absolute Poker players after the very first jackpot was hit.

Less than 48 hours later, it was déjà vu for players of the new online poker game as the jackpot bells tolled once again.

“This is proof that Absolute Poker has taken the lead in making online poker more lucrative,” stated David Clainer, senior vice president for Absolute Poker. “When you can lose a hand and walk away with tens of thousands of dollars, it’s pretty amazing.”

The first Bad Beat Jackpot was won early Saturday morning by CGA11 who lost quad tens to NEDKELLY’s straight flush. In traditional Texas Hold’em, CGA11 would have walked away from the table with nothing but a whole lot of anger. However, at a Bad Beat Jackpot table, when a player loses a hand holding four eights (8888) or anything better, they win the largest piece of the Bad Beat Jackpot. In CGA11’s case, that meant nearly $40,000 for his losing hand. All players who were seated at the table where the bad beat occurred also shared in the jackpot.

History repeated itself early Monday morning when MARKM3451 lost four of a kind to WHITETAIL0’s king high straight flush, losing the hand but winning nearly $13,000 by hitting the jackpot.

Absolute Poker is the only online poker site open to U.S. players to feature Bad Beat Jackpot tables. Full details on the latest addition to Absolute Poker’s suite of poker games can be found at www.absolutepoker.com/badbeatpoker/.

2007-06-24T20:19:00.000-04:00

Online Poker Room - Absolute Poker - launches a Bad Beat Jackpot, adding a new spin to their Texas Hold'em poker game.

Miami, June 24 2007.- Absolute Poker today announced the launch of Bad Beat Jackpot - a new spin on Texas Hold'em that lets players walk away with a hefty profit after hitting a 'bad beat' at the online poker tables.

"We're taking away the pain delivered by bad beats by throwing money at their victims," stated David Clainer, senior vice president for Absolute Poker. "Who knew losing big could feel so good?"

In poker, the term 'bad beat' refers to losing a hand that is clearly favored to win. But at the Bad Beat Jackpot tables, losing a seemingly unbeatable hand just got more lucrative.

Now, when seated at a Bad Beat Jackpot table, if a player loses a hand holding four twos (2222) or anything better, they'll win a piece of the Bad Beat Jackpot.

To kick off the new online poker game, Absolute Poker is putting $100,000 into the jackpot. To help it build, $0.50 will be collected from qualifying hands at Bad Beat Jackpot tables. The jackpot will keep growing until someone hits a qualifying bad beat, at which time a large percentage of it will be distributed among the bad beat victim and the players at the online poker table where the bad beat occurred (a small fraction of the jackpot will remain in the pot and another minuscule piece of it will be dedicated to administration costs).

Bad Beat Jackpot tables will be noted with the word "jackpot" written in brackets after the table name and will be categorized in red text. Complete details on Absolute Poker's Bad Beat Jackpot.

Visit Absolute Poker for more information.

Winning By Not Playing

2007-06-22T18:18:00.000-04:00

As a joke I started a new strategy in online poker. And to my surprise, it is working. What I do is not play. By not playing I get more chips.

Specifically, I enter single table tournaments then mark the "away next hand" box. I sit there and get blinded out, but otherwise I lose nothing. Well, I gain nothing as well. But surprisingly, I end up winning more chips on average than I pay in buy-ins.

So what makes this happen? At first I jokingly came up with the idea that If I did not play, and play badly so as to lose chips, I would have more chips if I just came to the table late. One way to achieve this online is to start the tourney, then walk away. In fact right now I am (not) playing in a STT while I type this message. The game runs in the background. I saw my hand get dealt AQ, so I quickly hit the "I am back" button and went on to win 4,000 in chips in one hand. Then I left the table again.

There is no way to win first place using this strategy, unless I actually play in the game. But it seems I almost always make it to the money. STT's pay the top three and since I have essentially no time invested in this any win is a good win. On the abandoned game I am playing right now I am the chip leader of five payers based on the one hand I won. With the big blind at $30, my $4,320 in chips will not be blinded out anytime soon.

I have foudn that once it gets to two or thress players, I am in the money and can then go on to actually play and often win if I want. Since I have already made my goal of being in the money I can play very agressive against tight players who think they were there to win. I'm just there to get in the bubble.

So why does this work? A friend suggested that maybe online players are just bad poker players. I don't think so. I think online players are agressive. Too agressive for their own good. So an ultra passive player will tend to beat the average online player. How much more passive can you get than "away from the table"?

Caesars Galdiator Games

2007-06-21T10:32:00.000-04:00

At Caesars Atlantic City, their poker tournaments are called Gladiator Games. They have a points system for the tournaments that will award a free entry in the WSOP Circuit event to be held at Caesars. You earn one point for entering a tournament, then you get another point for every position they pay out in the tournament.

For instance with a 40 person tournament and paying out five people, if you get 1st place you get 6 points. I don't have all of the details, but they schedule a free roll tournament for the top points people, maybe inviting 100 people of which 60 might show up. It might require you have 16 or 17 points to get into the freeroll. Then they "payout" the top finishers with vouchers for entry into the local WSOP Circuit event.

Northern Virginia's Top Poker Winner Announced

2007-06-20T16:06:00.000-04:00

For the NOVA Poker Group's spring 2007 quarter, Robert Costner has emerged as the player to win the most tournaments. This makes Robert one of the best poker players in Northern Virginia and the Washington, D.C. area. Robert has placed first in 40% of all money tournaments he has played for the quarter.

The question is often asked, is poker a game of skill or a game of chance? To repeatedly win two out of five of every multi-table tournaments played, Robert shows that it is skill, not just luck that makes a poker win. The alternative is to suggest that Robert is the luckiest poker player in Northern Virginia.

The NOVA Poker group (NPG) is a group of amateur poker players who host weekly home games. NOVA stands for Northern Virginia. Home poker tournaments without a rake, such as those held by NPG, are 100% legal in Virginia. NPG holds a tournament every Tuesday night and also holds tournaments each weekend, usually on a Friday or Saturday.

Robert Costner is an Arlington, Virginia resident who plays in or runs about 500 Texas Hold'em poker tournaments per year. Robert has won in bar games, home games, internet tournaments, and casino tournaments. He can be found playing at casinos such as Showboat and Harrah's in Atlantic City, as well as various bars and restaurants in the local northern Virginia area.

For more information, contact Jim Slade at (703) 531-1995.

MyBorgata Website Registration

2007-05-28T10:22:00.000-04:00

How do I register on the MyBorgata website? Wht does the website say my card number birthdate combination is incorrect?

After my first visit to the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, I tried several times to register on the website. My registration failed every time. I asked at the My Borgata desk, but they said they had no infomration about the website. I called customer support a couple of weeks later and it turns out that if you enter the id number from you Red Label card it will not work. You have to enter your number, but leave off the leading zeros.

Since I only play poker I only had seven dollars of comps, one dollar for each hour I had played $1/$2 no limt poker. The iste said I needed 1,000 more points to get a Black Label card. But I have seven points. Why don't I need 993 points? Why do I still need 1,000 points when I already have seven points?

For that question I got the answer from a Casino Host. Yes, I do get one point for every hour I play poker. While it is displyed on the website as comp dollars, it is not subtracted from my points needed to get the Black Label card. At least not on the web site. If I were to actually qualify for the Black Label card then a human woudl manually resolve the point problem.

Showboat throwing away Rewards points

2007-05-23T10:33:00.000-04:00

According to Carolyn George who was running the poker room at Showboat, she threw away my comp points I earned that day because I went to the bathroom. In general I want points because this is how the casino rates me and why Harrah's gave me six free room nights each month for the last two months.

I drove up to Showboat on Tuesday morning and started playing $1/$2 no limit at 10:20 in the morning. I'm trying to learn how the points work so as Carolyn clocked me into the poker room I asked some questions about the points. Then shortly after the 11:00 tournament started I moved to the other side of the room to play there.

Apparently I can't win 1st place in every tournament and I busted out after about an hour and a half. So I went back to the desk and asked for a no limit table. At this point Carolyn, perhaps with a gleem in her eye, or perhaps with a bit of anger in her voice told me that I would have to clock in again because she had thrown out my card and because of that I had not received any points. She went on to tell me that she did this because I had left the poker room. She seemd a bit pleased with herself and at the same time angry with me as she told me that I had lost my points for the day.

Well, I did leave the poker room but only to go to the men's room and I came back so quickly that I didn't even miss the next hand that was dealt in the tournament.

This was a surprise to me. I was told I was supposed to have clocked out. Since she had disposed of my points only about an hour ago, I asked her if we could resolve the problem. She said no way, it was not possible. My points were lost forever.

I left the casino and went to the Tropicana to play.

Atlantic City Poker Wins

2007-05-20T13:21:00.000-04:00

I've decided to start playing in casinos in Atlantic City. I've just finished my third week of trips to AC to play in Texas Hold'em poker tournaments. The first week I won the 1st place at Showboat in the Friday lunch tournament, for $1,600. The second week I won $3,060.00 for first place in the Harrah's Friday night tournament. The buy-ins were about $65 - $100 each.

The third week I did not win, but I did get quad Aces in one of the hands. I am trying to stick with the Harrah's family of casinos for now, but I did go over to the Borgata and won about $300 in six hours of $1/$2 no limit.

Cashout Problems at Doyle's Room

2007-03-02T14:54:00.000-05:00

Admittedly, I do think Doyle's Room is doing the best they can do. But that does not mean I am getting my money.

I'm an affiliate and I took a partial cashout shortly after they withdrew from the US market. According to their records, the funds were withdrawn from my account on 2/22/07. A week later, on 3/1/07 I recieved an email that no check had been sent and they wanted my ACH information. Well, I prefer ACH over cashier's check, so that is fine with me.

I sent the information in to them and got a reply back that I cannot have a partial cashout, but must withdraw everything or they will send my money to Full Tilt. This sound increadibly unreasonable on several fronts, including that I don't have an dealings with Full Tilt or have any sort of account with them.

After some email discussion they decided they might be able to send me my money. But they said that I need to talk to the affiliate department and run it by them.

Since they are in the process of cashing out tens of thousands of US players and I'm in the front I can't blame them for not knowing fully how they are going to handle this. But we will see what happens.

Changing Hot Keys Annoyance

2006-05-06T19:23:00.000-04:00

I don't want to play with my mouse. I want to use keyboard keys to control my game. This method of user input happens to be a Windows standard and even is part of section 508 compliance.

So Doyle's Room has a feature they call hot keys. This lets you run the program without a mouse but with your function keys. The trouble is the the "hot key" changes meaning, often while you are trying to press the button.

The programmer apparently took the list of all possible actions and assinged the function keys to them in sequence. F1, F2, F3, ... But not all the possible actions, only the possible actions for the moment - this particular time and place. So the meaning of the function key can change, drastically and adversely, from minute to minute.

So just as you are about to say, check your hand, the function key for check might suddenly become "call 6,400". A very irritating morph. But to be honest, I complained and the following week the software changed. Most of the problem went away.

But not all of the problem. Just look at F1. If you have just joined the game, F1 is Post Big Blind. When it is your turn to bet, F1 is fold. If it is not your turn, but you want to perform a pre-action, then F1 is Check/Fold, while Fold has no hot key. If it is time to post blinds, F1 might be Post Small Blind. This lack of consistency causes the player to feel he is less in control of his computer.

Website Schedule Annoyance

2006-05-05T18:59:00.000-04:00

The tournament schedule posted at http://www.doylesroom.com/tournaments/schedule.cfm is both annoying and wrong.

The schedule is wrong in that if you change the time to GMT -0500 (EST) you get the correct schedule for the Hold'em $5 Giveaway tournament. But if you them change the filter from "All Tournaments" to "Free Rolls" the times get horribly skewed and the schedule is meaningless.

The page is annoying in that it uses Text boxes to present the starting tmes. So once you have the schedule in front of you (assuming it was the correct schedule) the text boxes prevent you from doing a copy and paste into another document so that you can make the information meaningful.

Post Big Blind Annoyance

2006-04-11T17:28:00.000-04:00

I've just joined a Holdem table at Doyle's Room and I want to play. To do so, I will first have to post blinds. Soon the system will check to see if I have done this yet or not, and if I have it will let me play. While it checks and waits for me to decide, everyone else at the table waits as well. The final cut off point is still a minute or two away.

The annoyance is, I already know what I will do but I can't do it until the appointed time, and then I only get 10 or 20 seconds or so to press the button. I want to be able to declare my choice when I join the table, not some time later.

Show Avatars Hide Avatars

2006-04-10T17:04:00.000-04:00

There is this wonderful selection on the options menu that is called "Show Avatars". This gives you the ability to show the avatars, or if you prefer to save screen space and not show the avatars.

Unfortunately when the avatars go away, the screen space is not reclaimed. In other words, the feature only controls whether or not you see the pretty colors. Where did this requirement come from? I can't imagine that there is any user who has ever said, you know, what would be really desirable would be if I did not have to look at the attractive avatars people use to personalize their player.

Instead it would be nice if the ability to hide avatars allowed the table to become smaller to give me back more of my screen. I do have a larger screen that most, but the table takes up exactly on half of my screen space. Please let me have my monitor back.

I'm sure the graphics designer thinks his screen is wonderful, and I'm sorry for him. But if you can take the avatars out, then do something useful and make better use of the screen space. Make the table smaller.

Or, here's an idea. Without the avatars you might have room to put in the radio buttons and command buttons and other betting dialog widgets that don't currently fit on the screen. What ever you do, please do something that makes sense.

Login Annoyance

2006-04-09T14:55:00.000-04:00

Logins and passwords are a balance between security and usability. It makes sense to protect a real money account with a password. This is security. For convenience, the Doyle's Room client stores the username and password for you so you do not have to type it. This is usability.

The login annoyance is the fact that even though I have requested the application to save my username and password, I still have to manually login at some point each time I run the software. This just makes no sense.

There is absolutely no added security derived from the manual login. There is no password that needs to be typed. No secret that has to be entered. There is no reason for this feature. No reason at all. The client software should just allow the person to play the game without the "manual" login that requires nothing be typed in.

Hot Keys Not Working

2006-04-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

When I play at Doyle's Room, my hotkeys sometimes do not work.

I'm not sure about this. I have two computers and I note that sometimes the function keys work and sometimes they do not work for betting, folding, calling, etc. I seem to think I only have this problem on my desktop machine. Because it is intermittent, I need to track the problem down. My perception is that on single table tournaments (STT) the function keys work, but on multi table tournaments (MTT) the function keys do not work.

Update: I'm playing a $0.10 NL 9 Seat - Holdem NL STT and my hotkeys are not working, though they are working in other applications at this moment. So it appears to be an intermittent problem that is not reproducible.

Cause of Problem:
I've finally figured out what causes this. It is those annoying popup screens that Doyle's Room continually generates. Specifically, this screen causes it.

This will be buried several windows below the table I am playing at and while it does not appear to have focus, it will capture all keystrokes. I suspect the other popup windows cause this as well, but I have only confirmed this one.

Hand Winner Annoyance

2006-04-07T11:24:00.000-04:00

When Playing Doyle's Room, the chat window, strangely called "Options" in the title bar, often confuses me. More accurately, it irritates me. For instance, I just lost the last hand that I had bet heavily on. I had three Jacks. I missed the cards the other player had, but the chat window tells me

[other player] wins 4,060 with 3 of a Kind: Jacks

But I had jacks. Why didn't I win? I had a jack in my hand and two on the board. I had three jacks. And I didn't see a jack in his hand when he turned over his card. If the software is working correctly, I can only assume his kicker was higher than mine. It would be nice if the game would tell me what was actually going on rather than a confusing irritating message like it does.

Buddy List Annoyance

2006-04-06T10:21:00.000-04:00

At Doyle's Room, the Buddy List is a small window. A very small window. I have a very large screen. But the window is not sizeable. I've only added a few players to my buddy list, but I intend to put dozens, even hundreds in there if I can. It is a pity that the designers of the software choose to not allow me to see the players on my buddy list.

Which is odd, because the default is to allow a window to be sizeable. You actually have to turn this feature off. This represents control issues comparable to a DOS programmer who just doesn't get Windows.

Losing Focus While Betting Annoyance

2006-04-05T12:27:00.000-04:00

When playing in Doyle's Room I like using the shortcut keys. No Mouse. The concept is a simple one. I press the function keys to perform my bets. This is a feature of the client software.

F1 - Check/Fold or Fold (it morphs)
F2 - Check
F3 - Bet
F4 - Call

The default is mouse only, but you can enable hotkeys in the options menu.

The problem comes in that if you do not have window focus in the client, then you cannot use your keyboard to control the game. Annoyingly, the client software continually pops up dialog boxes (look alikes, they are not actual Windows common dialog boxes) giving you all sort of very important you must know information. I've seen this happen as often as eight times in the same hand.

Sometimes it is actually relevant, such as informing me that a tournament I'm registered in starts in five minutes. Well, to be honest, it doesn't actually let me know I am registered, it just pops up the message. So I get the notice on a lot of tournaments I am not registered for as well. In fact I seem to get the notice on tournaments that I am not registered for and are full, so I could not register if I wanted to. But after all, why play when I can watch a tournament I'm not in?

The point is my hotkeys no longer work and a significant portion of the table is obscured by these idiot messages. Several items I've come close to losing my turn because the client software won't let me access the game.

Tournament Reminders

2006-04-04T22:58:00.000-04:00

As I peruse the list of tables in the multiple table tournaments at Doyle's Room, I find that I want a feature that does not exist. (Whoops! The list is gone. It just minimized itself so it can hide from me - that is really irritating.)

There is already a "My Tourneys" feature that will list the tournaments I have registered for. What I would like to see is a list of the tournaments I have an interest in, but have not yet chosen to register for. I'd like a "watch list" of tournaments.

For instance, there may be a tournament I have an interest in that starts in three hours. But I don't know if I will stay up that late, or maybe I might be about to go out to dinner and don't know if I will be back or not. On any given day I can find several of these potential tournaments, but I don't want to register for them unless I know I actually will be able to play.

I may find a tournament I like when I am online at 7:00am, but I'm not going to remember it at 10PM. I'm wasting a lot of time looking for tournaments that are the type I like. And I look for the same tournament again and again. I honestly have never tried it, but I assume if I register for it in the morning, then can't make it they don't give the money back to my account.

I'd like a watch list I can add tournaments to, then decide later if I want to play in them or not.

Sit Out Next Hand Annoyance

2006-04-03T02:57:00.000-04:00

In Doyle's Room ring games, when you run out of chips the client software marks a checkbox labeled "Sit Out Next Time". Presumably both the software and the player know that if you have no chips then you cannot play. It is annoying to me in that even once I go to the cashier for more chips, the sit out next time checkbox is still checked. So what normally happens is that I miss the first game because I have no chips, then I miss the second game because the system has checked the box for me and I have not remembered to uncheck it.

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for not letting you play in the first place, The system does not allow you to ask for more chips after you lose everything, but before the next game starts. A trick around this is to, just before you go all in, hit the more chips button and get what you can. Of course, this only works if you are betting less that the maximum amount the cashier will give you. For me on 5/10 hold'em ring games that is 750 chips.

Since I tend to win and very seldom lose all my chips, this only happens to me once every few days. But when it does, it is very annoying. And to note: in tournaments, the "Sit Out Next Hand" is called "Away from Table". Same functionality within the game, but a differrent name depending on which game you are playing.

Window Minimization Annoyance

2006-04-02T08:12:00.000-04:00

The Doyle's Room client is obviously smarter than I am. On the one hand, I think I want to have the window open so I can see it. The software agrees with me, but only to a certain point. It knows better than me that I really don't want to have it open and usable.

Apparently the software has a timer built into it and the "lobby" will minimize itself after a certain period, even if you are looking at it. If you are not looking at it and have something else on top, you still get this "flash" as it minimizes and zooms to nothingness. The effect is similar to the sky falling and makes you want to run and hide for cover.

So I keep restoring the screen several times per day in order to use the software. I've never seen a piece of software with this behavior - it auto minimizes itself throughout the day. Of all the insanities the programmers of this program came up with, this is the one that confuses me the most. What were they thinking? What requirement are they trying to satisfy? Why did they program behavior that does not exist in any other piece of software on the planet?

Display Setting Nag Window Annoyance

2006-04-01T00:51:00.000-05:00

In the Doyle's Room software client, there is a very annoying nag screen that comes up several times per day. For this software, there is nothing unusual about me clicking 'OK' and canceling a dozen of the nag screens in one morning.

Display Setting

A display setting of 1024 x 768 or higher resolution recommended for best user experience.

I've not figured out how this is triggered. But somewhere in the program during the middle of running it, the program decides to popup this message and keep it there. As it turns out, I have a two monitor system, so I have a lot more screen real estate than most people do. I can easily show both the lobby and a table at the same time without overlap. But the software demands to inform me that I need a screen with a lower resolution than what I actually have.

Even if it were true that I needed this screen size, this is not the way to provide this information to the user. Off all the annoyances the programmers have built into this product, it makes me wonder how anyone can conceive of the idea of having a dialog box appear every hour suggesting the user change the screen resolution. The premise is not correct, I do not need to be informed of this even if it were correct, and I certainly don't need to be informed of it every hour.

Error converting data type varchar to datetime

2006-03-31T14:35:00.000-05:00

Of the errors you can get in software, the two most basic errors are a syntax error, and a data type error. Neither of these have anything to do with actual program logic, but are caused by not doing the most basic of things that can be done when you program. This is the type of incorrect coding that should never be done, and certainly is only a work product of the most junior of programmers. The data type error is again one of the most basic things that can be tested by the testing team, so it should never make it to production software.

Good software engineering is an iterative process that involves cycling through requirements, coding, testing, and deployment. These most basic of errors are indicative of software teams that do not follow best practices.

While attempting to access http://aff.dbpn.com/aff_home.aspx, for use with Doyle's Room, I got an error. A data type error, "Error converting data type varchar to datetime."

It sems if you press the "update" button without first selecting dates, you get this untrapped error.

Error converting data type varchar to datetime.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Error converting data type varchar to datetime.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web
request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be
identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[SqlException: Error converting data type varchar to datetime.]
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream) +740
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader() +41
AffMan.aff_home.DoReport() in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\AffMan\aff_home.aspx.cs:59
AffMan.aff_home.btnUpdate_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\AffMan\aff_home.aspx.cs:105
System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) +108
System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.System.Web.UI
.IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +57
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent
(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +18
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(NameValueCollection postData) +33
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +1292

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032

Ticker Annoyance

2006-03-30T11:38:00.000-05:00

In Doyle's Room, I find the ticker at the bottom of the window to be very annoying. First of all, I don't like the "motion". Secondly, I can't actually read anything there if I wanted to.

The ticker looks like it was some "nifty" gadget some young programmer saw and said, hey let's put this in here. If there was some way to remove it, I would. An option choice, like with show avatars, don't show avatars would be nice. I'd simply turn it off. It serves no purpose other than to annoy me. This leaves me wondering what wisdom declared that some people do not want the avatars, but all people want the ticker. I can't imagine the avatars being offensive at all, and they certainly are far less offensive than the ticker.

The ticker just said "of the games we offer". That is all that was there. The rest had scrolled off the screen. As far as I can tell, there is no way to recover the message. It is gone. There was once a message about "trivia games" but I never saw the message, only a portion of it. As much as I'd like a feature to get rid of the ticker, what I would like even more is a feature to be able to read the ticker.

My Tourneys Annoyance

2006-03-29T22:28:00.000-05:00

Doyle's Room is full of minor inconveniences such as the problems with the "My Tourneys" section of the Multi-Tourney screen. The "status" columns do not update at all on their own. To get a tourney status to update, you have to go to that specific area where you found the tournament originally (Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha H/L), then come back to "My Tourneys". It will then update in a few seconds. If you have Tourneys from three different areas, then you have to do this three times.

Absolutely not the worst problem they have, but far from a good design.

Affiliate Server Error

2006-03-28T19:48:00.000-05:00

I received the following error trying to get statistics from the Doyle's Room affiliate server.

Server Error in '/' Application.

Timeout expired.
The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.

Description:
An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details:
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.

Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:
[SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.]
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream) +740
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader() +41
AffManAdmin.Agent.GetInfoForDates() in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\affmanadmin\agent.cs:829
AffMan.aff_rep.DoPage() in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\affman\aff_rep.aspx.cs:83
AffMan.aff_rep.Button1_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\affman\aff_rep.aspx.cs:309
System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button .OnClick(EventArgs e) +108
System.Web.UI .WebControls.Button .System.Web
.UI.IPostBackEventHandler. RaisePostBackEvent (String eventArgument) +57
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent (IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +18
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(NameValueCollection postData) +33
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +1292

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032

Doyle's Room GUI

2006-03-27T19:45:00.000-05:00

The Graphical User Interface in Doyle's Room leaves a lot to be desired. But I like the way the cards appear otherwise.