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

We’re live!

There’s bound to be some bugs, so let me know. I’ll do my best to sort them out.

I’ll be working on trying to prevent people from playing at the same table with multiple players.. I see you doing this already. Yeah you.

UPDATE: I took away images in the profiles, hand advice, bad beats and comments yesterday so that I can fix that up a bit. I’m going to give you some new settings so it’s easier to customize your profiles without having to hack the code.

UPDATE 2: Sorry for the slowdowns, we’re doing some work on the server and it’s slowing the site down. It’s temporary.

Cheers,
Ryan

UPDATE: Sorry, I keep thinking things are better than they really are. We’re cleaning out some junk files right now and not sure why but it’s been slow. I’ll flip the switches back on pretty soon now. Regards to updates, cash tourneys and monthly championships will come in the next week. They are working but now we have to make some changes to the site to show results, new balances, upcoming schedule, stuff like that.

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Ok I finally have good news. Everything has been moved over to the new servers, and we’ve tested the site and it looks like it’s ready to go. I just changed the DNS over, so it’ll take a few hours before everyone will be able to get to the new site. To keep it fair, I just turned off the site and once enough time has gone by I’ll turn it on so that most people get in at the same time.

Haha, good heat in the comments. I wish I had tournaments ready so you guys could work out your ISSUES. Now that the server is moved the new tournaments will be ready pretty quickly – we’ll run em for free at first to make sure there are no problems. I’ll also look at getting rid of folding at the all in table so we can get some better competition.

I stand by what I said before. I can’t be responsible for going through the chat logs and muting and banning people for foul language. How could I possibly do that? What a mess that would be. Before long every single one of you would be banned and all that would be left would be a boring site full of people afraid to say anything. Just try to tone it down people – if you want Poker Underworld to grow and have lots of people to play against, then stop offending each other too badly. Trash talk all you want just don’t be toxic.

I can’t believe we’re still waiting for this upgrade. I guess you can’t either.

Unfortunately it takes 24 hours to restore each chunk of the database. We’re on the last chunk now so it’s supposed to be complete by this evening. We’ve restored it twice now but each time there’s been missing data. We should be live by late tonite.