UPDATE: I apologize, as the upgrade did not go successfully.  We will be trying the upgrade again tonite from 12:00AM-1:00AMET.  Once the upgrade is successful, I will reschedule the chat session.

UPDATE 2: All I’m going to say is if somebody on the site is claiming to work for PokerUnderworld, or that they own PokerUnderworld, they are not being truthful.  Don’t listen to them, and move on.  I only come online as thenotself and it’s very rarely.  Nobody else on the site is affiliated.

I am ready to release some upgrades to the PokerUnderworld tables which will solve some long running issues.  I will be installing these upgrades this evening between 12:00AM-1:00AM ET.  During that time the Poker tables will be offline.

1. “Blocking” chat – this should be fixed in the upgrade.  People won’t be able to stall chat anymore.
2. Sitting out – I’ll be limiting the number of hands a user can sit out for before they lose their seat at the table.  I’ll start with 5 hands.

As you’ve probably noticed, I added a $2,500,000 NL table and a $5,000,000 NL table yesterday.  I see that everyone is on those tables now, and even the $1,000,000 NL tables are empty.

Contrary to rumours, there is no plan to reset bankrolls right now here, however, the bankrolls do create a few problems.  A big one is that new players find it far too challenging to build up to the levels of people who have been here for over a year.  This makes PokerUnderworld too much of an “old boys” (sorry for the term ladies) club.  The original concept of PokerUnderworld was that players would level up as they build their bankrolls, but since most new players join and find all of the low stakes tables EMPTY, they leave.  A monthly balance reset would help solve this, because every month you’d start at the low stakes tables and work your way up to the high stakes.  For that reason, I want you guys to think about monthly balance resets again, with a lifetime leaderboard.  You won’t lose your chips each month, they’ll just be added to your lifetime score.  Think about it.

PokerUnderworld isn’t a profit making website, so it’s been hard to devote time to keeping it up the way I should.  I’ve committed myself to spending time improving the game this month.  I’m interested in having a group chat with any players that are interested so we can all talk together about how to make changes that will make the game more exciting.  If you’re interested, I will create a private chat and give out the password here on the blog.

Originally, PokerUnderworld would do monthly resets, and let you use your lifetime bankroll to buy virtual prizes to show off on your profiles.  This is pretty cool because you can decide what you’d spend your huge fortunes on if you really did earn all of this cash.  The prizes would be on your profiles and listed next to your name in the poker rooms.  Think about it.

As for tourney credits, I didn’t finish this plan, but I’m willing to try again.  The idea here would be that you could buy or earn tourney credits which would get you into weekly multitable tournaments.  Each tournament would have 3-5 cash prizes depending on how many people entered.  This would also allow PokerUnderworld to make some money that would help pay for moderators, upgrades, and bigger prizes.

Respond in the comments if you’d be interested in having a group chat this Saturday, August 7th at 12:00PM ET.

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.