FT Upgrade and other info

[jillaj]

Looks like they now have t$ so you can withdraw from tourneys that you sattelite into. FTPDoug had a big question an answer post on 2+2. I will just paste it in here. Also sounds like there is a 200 dollar bonus for a lot of people out there. Check you bonus offers.



First I'd like to apologize for the disconnection issues we experienced last week. I know support is still going through many individual cases and should be getting back to people who wrote in soon.

To clarify something I saw posted a lot in the threads: It was never our servers having trouble. Our servers have actually been quite stable for many months now, and I hate seeing the hard work our server team did with regards to stability and performance get blasted when it really wasn't the server. We never "crashed" during these outages. That being said, the connection issues were taken extremely seriously and we had everyone working non-stop on the problem.

In the future I'll try to be more active in those threads, if only to assure people that we're working on it and give any best guesses as to how long it might take to be resolved. We'll also try to make sure we have better messaging of the situation sitewide, and not just on the forums. Of course, the ultimate goal is to never have a need for any of that.

On to happier news...

The "big update" is here! Lots of good stuff, here are the bigger items:

A) Tournament Dollars - Most people know what this is, so I won't get too into it. It does mean that you will be able to unregister from just about every tournament you satellite into and get T$ credited to your account.

B) Auto Top-Up - This was all you guys. Just go to "Options->Set Buy-In Preferences..." and you'll now see a checkbox under Ring Game Auto-Rebuy for Auto Top-Up. If you have it checked, you will be "topped up" to your preferred amount should you fall below it at the end of a hand.

C) Sit Out Next Blind - Or, more accurately, Sit Out Next Big Blind. Only found on Speed tables, and does just what it sounds like it does. We also changed the sit back in behavior on Speed tables so you no longer have to perfectly time your return so as not to post blinds out of position. Now when you click "I'm Back" you'll be put into "waiting for big blind" mode. So, if you haven't been playing the Speed tables for either reason, you should definitely check them out again.

D) Player Color Codes and Notes - The great feature suggestion by EWS87 in this thread has been implemented. You now see your color coded notes for players from the lobby. If you hover your mouse over a player you also see any specific notes you have on them. We also fixed the problem of losing notes if your client isn't shut down gracefully. When you click Save and Exit now on your note, the note actually saves right then and there. What a concept.

Other, less obvious, changes:

a) There is now a 12 hour self-exclusion option. AKA the "I'm totally drunk" option.

b) Satellites now end when the top prize has been reached! No more playing a satellite out for absolutely no reason.

c) You now have a little more time to post your blinds.

d) Three new chat policies have been implemented. The biggest and most obvious is that you can no longer chat while a player is all in and there is still action in the hand. We will also now be turning off observer chat for the final table of many of our larger tournaments (red pros excluded, we wouldn't want to deny de Wolfe the pleasure of berating everyone). And finally, in many of our satellites we will be turning off all chat as the bubble approaches.

e) Some windows have been revamped. You'll immediately notice the Cashier. The Bonus window and Buy In window have also had a facelift. You might notice slightly different behavior, hopefully for the better, in both.

There's probably some other stuff I'm forgetting, but those are the highlights. For some pretty pictures and possibly a little more explanation of the larger features, you can check out

The questions:

1. When do the WSOP Bracelet Races/Qualifiers start?

- You might notice a new "Series" tab in the Tournament lobby...

2. I do not have the old [bathrobe] but have heard that the old ones were velour.. this just feels like an oversized beach towel.

- Hmm. Might just be a case of expectations set too high.

3. Please reduce minimum for bank wires from 20k to 10k or 5k. If you take a fee, I don't see why you can't execute a bank wire for 5k or 10k.

- I've heard something along these lines is still in the works. I don't know of any timeline, though.

4. Lag, still hoping for improvement. Biggest priority imo. I know you think you've solved it, but I still see people timing out autoposting blinds now and again (happens to me too). I know it's your server when the problem is only on one table.

- I never said it was solved. I said the server lag people were experiencing in late December/January was fixed. Lag is definitely still an issue for some players. However, as I tried to clear up (probably not to everyone's satisfaction) in detail a couple of threads ago, it isn't our servers. It's somewhere in between the player and the server.

That means two things, the game on the player's machine (the client), and/or the connection from the game to the servers. Both are being actively worked on from our end. The former with a large project that should improve the responsiveness of the client, the latter being an ongoing project to improve how well the game handles poor connections.

5. Would like to see the cash table list in the lobby not jump around so much. Would like option to suppress where it sorts by the number of people on the wait list.

- Yeah the jumping around can get annoying. We definitely still have some work to do with the ring game lobby. I'll be sure to try to address the jumping around when we indroduce more ring game filters (hopefully within a few updates).

6. Hi Doug. Now that you've got medals -> points automated, what's the timeframe on the bigger medals -> points item?

- Should be pretty soon. There was some work that needed to be done before we could add any more Iron Man store items. I believe as of this update that work is done.

7. Seriously, is there something really [bleep]ing hard about tournaments summaries that have kept them just over the horizon for two years?

- I asked that question myself. Turns out there's some weird dependence on some other project, and that project has been very slow to get moving. I'm going to keep pushing for it, but it probably won't be in the next couple of updates.

8. Just a thought for new item for the store... How about some good Computer Chairs, so that we can sit in front of the computer even longer!

- I'll pass it along to the store. I like it.

9. How about showing current # of Iron Man medals while browsing the Ironman store?

- Seems like a reasonable thing to expect. I'll ask.

10. Make the last hand window so that you can copy and paste the hand history right from there without having to click options, then change chat to everything, then find the hand in the chat, then copy and paste that.

- You can actually just ctrl-a ctrl-c and you'll have the whole thing copied straight from the last hand window. I'm not sure why there isn't the right click option to copy, I can see if that can be added to avoid confusion.

11. this may have been addressed before but make the hand history go back more than 50 hands.

- That's one of the improvements I'd like to see to that window, too. I'm not sure when the project for improving it will happen, but it's definitely planned.

12. What about HU Matches tourneys? Are they coming soon?

- Yes, for some definition of soon. They're on the schedule, hopefully before summer.

13. Be able to adjust the clock in the lobby to your own time zone

- We're definitely thinking about that one.

14. Any chance of getting a direct cash bonus for Full Tilt points like Stars has?

- There's always a chance. Nothing is planned, though, and it's unlikely to be coming any time soon.

15. I agree that this is an example of where "No" should be the default choice in a prompt. However, in other programs where the default is "No", the software uses 'Y' and 'N' as shortcut keys for the two options as to not require that we switch from keyboard to mouse or hit an extra key to make our desired choice. The least that the Full Tilt programmers should do is adhere to that precedence so that it feels natural to anyone who is familiar with Windows programs.

- I agree with this and will try to get the 'Y'/'N' options added. Are you sure that tabbing between the options doesn't work, by the way? I just had someone test it and they said it did.

16. I like to use my Happy avatar when I'm on FT. I wish FT would save the Emotional settings when you choose your avatar so it doesn't always default back to "Normal" when joining new tables.

- What happens if you're happy on one table and angry on another and then you join a new table?

17. What are the chances of getting 90 man SnGS with rebuys? Non turbo

- Unlikely any time soon. We aren't touching the multi-table SNGs for a while.

18. How long is a week or two? I'm up to 360,000 Full Tilt points and could really use a good laptop.

- I'm told that there was some delay, but it's just about ready to go in. I'll say "by the end of next week" and then apologize if that isn't true. I think it is, though!

19. Is FT going to get an instant eCheck deposit/withdrawal method like PokerStars has?

- Yes, it's currently in beta. We hope to expand the offering to lots more people soon.

20. Why does FT charge a fee for ePass

- I'm not sure what you mean. I could be wrong (this isn't really my department) but I don't think we charge any fee for epassporte. They may charge a fee, but as far as I know we don't. Could you tell me exactly what you're doing when you get charged and how much and I can look into what's going on?

21. For the Knock Out tournaments, can we please get a tally of how many people we've knocked out?

- Yeah, I'll try to get that added to the "Tournament History" page you get to from the Requests menu.

22. I have a whole bunch of FTP points that I have no plans on using. What I would like to do is turn those points into a donation for a charity.

- That's a good idea. I'll bring it up.

23. How does FTP detect multi-accounts?

- Pretty well, thanks. And they're getting better all the time.

24. What is FTP's "official" word on what action they take when they discover multi-accounts?

- From rule #2:

"Players are not allowed to create, use, or deposit to more than one account. Players who are found to have multiple accounts or to have allowed multiple users to access their account may face account suspensions or revocations, and forfeiture of their accumulated Full Tilt Points and real money balances."

25. Why are the pro's allowed to follow a different set of rules?

- They aren't. The one case I know of where something like this happened and was allowed for a time was with David Benyamine. He had multiple accounts and wasn't consolidated until he became a red pro. This was definitely a questionable exception, but was allowed because he wasn't doing it to hide his identity (everyone he played with knew it was him) or to get rakeback, or for any of the "normal" reasons people create multiple accounts.

26. I won a satellite token on Tilt - how do I convert that into cash? Alternatively, how do I even view what tournament I qualified for?

- You can't convert a satellite token into cash. To see what tournaments you can use the token on, though, you can just go to the tournament lobby and sort by buyin. If you have a $26 satellite token, you can use it on any $24+$2 tournament.

27. i didnt follow any of this thread, but when are we getting those FTP points that were double for a period of time. It was said they were going in at the beg of feb..

- They were all paid out in January. If you think you didn't get yours, write to support and they'll look into it.

28. remove the break in FTP 1-table sit&gos

- We'll think about it. The "I'm Ready" button does make it possible to skip the break, so I'm not sure how badly it's needed. I could see improving the "I'm Ready" button so you can go back to being unready if it's obvious someone isn't going to click it and you want to step away without chancing the game starting back up without you.

Doug