Looking at the December leaderboards, it’s nice to see that the bankrolls aren’t ballooning out of control anymore. We’ve got 2 1,000,000 chip tables now, so the stakes are high and leaders will to take some risks to keep growing their totals. Nice.

I have fixed up the 1,000,000 SnG because I raised the chips to 10k, but I left the bets as if the chips were at 1k. I raised everything, but not quite 10x, so the game will be a little slower than the other tables, but not by much.

Now, on the subject of “all in” and “no fold” tables – I can now force calls on timeouts instead of folds. I like the idea of having a separate balance for this type of game, but I can’t make that work right now. I’m open to bringing back those types of tables (without the huge tourney payouts though) and seeing if this new setting ends the fighting. Post your comments here, but I might set up a “no fold” and an “all in” this weekend to see how it goes.

Starting this month, Poker Underworld will no longer seed the jackpots in the SnG tournaments by an extra 80%. This is the same as the change I made at the beginning of November, and then rolled back. Unfortunately, rolling back on the change was a mistake as November was a bad month for fighting and complaints.

I’ve just upgraded security on the tables which should help with players playing multiple accounts at once.

I’ve been clear in the past – I’m not getting involved in sorting out disputes. Everyone has a right to play here. In a real game, if the people you were playing with were annoying or rude, you’d leave and go to another table – so I’d rather work on giving you that ability. No matter what changes I make, somebody will find a way to annoy you.

Most complaints of “cheating” are because of the “no fold” tables. I cannot technically force people not to fold when they time out. That means forcing a true game of “no fold” is not possible, so let’s stop playing it. If, in the future, I can force calls on timeouts, then we can try this type of game again. In normal Poker, the best players win.

I have to apologize about the Champion of Poker Underworld tournaments. I’ve had a few problems getting the interface to work properly and getting the tables to merge properly on multi-table tournaments. That, combined with a busy November means I’m a month late now on delivering. I had planned not to make any further changes to Poker Underworld until the tournaments were ready, but I can’t wait any longer.

UPDATE: I just found a way to force players to call instead of folding when they time out. This means it probably would be possible to force a true “no fold, all in” table. I’m not sure if I want to bring it back, so please put your comments on this below.

For those of you that are looking for an update, we are still working on the tournaments due to some delays with the software. These will be multi-table tournaments where as each table completes, players are automatically transported to the next table until the final table plays. These tournaments will also support satellites, so if you win in week 1 you get automatic entry into the next tournament. This is how we’ll decide who gets to enter the monthly Champion of Poker Underworld tournament.

Once they are complete, we’ll also be launching tournaments for prizes which you use tournament credits to enter. This will give you a chance to earn either cash, gift certificates or prizes.

I’m sorry for the delay, but there’s a lot of work that is going into these new features, and we have to make sure they all work properly.

Also, in regards to comments and suggestions. I really appreciate all of the suggestions, and they seem to be coming in from all points of view. I have been very clear in the past that my goal is to focus on real poker, and not “all in” and “no fold” style games. I am also not interested in building a game where balances climb higher and higher endlessly at such a fast and unrealistic pace. That being said, I brought back the old rules in order to give everyone on Poker Underworld the opportunity to play the style they like while we work on new improvements. I agree that the balances are skewed – you can’t compare the balance of somebody playing in SnG tournaments that pay out 150% to somebody who plays in the normal poker tables that take a rake of 5%. I would have preferred to keep the changes I made on November 1st to remove the extra 50% in SnG, but we’ll change them again when the timing is better.

Update: I have removed the changes that were made on November 1st. I don’t like going back on these changes, but obviously the timing was wrong. I will continue to add new features, and we’ll revisit this later. Please keep writing in with your opinions.

The feedback to the latest changes is overwhelmingly negative right now. That’s interesting, because really what I did was take away the extra 50% in bonus points that was being given away in every tournament. It’s obvious that Poker Underworld hasn’t really been about competitive Poker lately, it’s been about building your balance as high as possible, and as fast as possible.

I don’t think that simply changing back to how it was is the right answer here. If things are left the way they were, balances will climb higher and you will continue to ask for higher blinds so you can compete for more points. Eventually the balances will get so high that it won’t be possible to run the games anymore without technical problems. I’m pretty sure eventually the balances will get so high you’ll get bored, and any new players who come to the site will be so overwhelmed starting at 2000 that they will leave. I would be willing to put the old rules back, but then I’d have to reset the balances every month (banking them into a lifetime total).

My solution is to bring back real Poker rules, and legitimate prizes in SnG tournaments. We’ll be holding nightly qualifying tournaments for the Championship tournament, and those qualifying tournaments will have seeded jackpots, just like a real Poker tournament would. I will also be adding trophies and challenge prizes to your profiles to show what you’ve won. Is my solution too idealistic?

Let’s have a discussion about this. Keep posting your thoughts. How can we keep things the way you like them, and not have the problems I’m talking about?

The tournaments have now been updated to the new payouts, and the leaderboard has been updated to only reflect games played after the changes were made. It’s exciting to have a November leaderboard to see who the best player this month will be.

There will be people who like the changes and people who don’t. These changes were made to make the site more competitive, and more changes and additions to the site will come. I’ve started with tournaments at 70%, 30% so that the stakes are high, and the winners receive a good prize, even if there are only 3-4 people in the tournament. I will be adding other tournaments with different prize allocations, but this is where we’re starting.

The Champion of Poker Underworld qualifying tournaments will start soon – I’ll write another blog to update you.

As I promised, the lifetime leaderboard is still available.

On Sunday, November 1st at midnight, the Sit n Go tournament prizes will change as follows:

1st – 70%
2nd – 30%

There will also be a 5% point rake to match the other tables.

Obviously, this will make it much more difficult to win credits, and will give an advantage to the currently leaders with large balances. Starting November 1st, the leaderboard will default to show monthly winnings. The lifetime leaderboard will still be available. Balances will not change at this time.

A little while ago I took away some cool hacks that some people had made to their profile to display images and backgrounds. Today I added the ability for you to set the background image on your profile page, and I’ll be adding some more in the future.

Go to your Profile and click Page Settings to try it out.

Uploading of avatars has been fixed. Go ahead and try it.

You can also now change your password on your profile. Don’t do this while you’re playing.

Thanks for all of the great comments here. I read all of them, although I don’t respond to them directly, and all of the suggestions are going into the new features here.

I’m glad the new “no fold” table is popular, but unfortunately I can’t easily change the timeouts. I’ll see what I can do. There are bigger things coming up, so while “no fold” is fun, I don’t want that to be the only style of holdem we play here. Soon, your balance will not be the only way players are ranked.

There have been a few small updates today.

1) Avatars should be fixed now.

2) There is a new “no fold” NL 500,000 tournament table. Let me know how this works out. This is a temporary fix as I’ve been working on completely new tables with new graphics.

That is all.

Oh, BADTAXIMAN — lol, sure yeah the site is rolling in money now!!!!!! Those offers are definately free, they’re just also annoying. I completed the survey one for 3 credits myself yesterday and it took me about 5 minutes to complete it. All I had to do was set up a new email address so they won’t spam me later. It took about 1 hour for OfferPal to credit me properly. It does work, and it didn’t cost me anything.

It looks like the migration worked without many problems. I’ve been trying to fix whatever bugs I can find on the website, so let me know if I’ve missed any. Problems with avatars, the leaderboard, and updating profiles seem to be fixed now.

Tournament Credits
Yesterday, I added a new balance to your profile called Tournament Credits. Tournament Credits will be used to enter qualifying rounds for the Champion of Poker Underworld tournament, as well as most other tournaments we run. Tournament Credits can be purchased for $1 each, or can be earned for free by completing survey and responding to advertisements.

Upcoming Tournaments
We will be running our first tournaments next week. The first ones will not cost Tournament Credits, since I’ll need to make sure there are no problems. There will be a Tournament History page which will tell you the history of our past tournaments, the list of qualifiers for each Champion of Poker Underworld tournament, and past Champions.

For anybody who has bought or earned Tournament Credits, hold on to them because you’ll get to use them soon. Tournament Credits won in tournaments will be redeemable for cash.

Moderation
This is the last time I’ll say it – Poker Underworld will not be moderated. Please, be competitive but try not to cross “the line” (whatever that is). Most of all, please do not complain about it. If you’d like, I can give you the option to disable your chat.

Tables & Balances
For now I’m not touching the balances, just because I want to get the tournaments ready. I’ve added a new 500,000 SnG table, and the server can handle a few more so let me know what else you’d like to see.

Ryan