December Software Issues
Thursday, January 8, 2009 - COO
We recognize that the community wants more information regarding the software malfunctions that occurred on the CEREUS Poker Network in December 2008. We hope that the information we are providing satisfies everyone who is interested.
I would like to restate that the players affected were all refunded and that the malfunctions were corrected in the software. This investigation has been our top priority and we have enhanced our automated and manual quality assurance procedures as well as our system monitoring to prevent future incidents from occuring.
On December 20th, PHILHELLMUTH and DOUBLEBALLER were involved in a hand where PHILHELLMUTH was awarded a pot incorrectly. DOUBLEBALLER noticed the malfunction and reported it to our Customer Service department.
Our investigation has concluded that a software release on December 10, 2008, introduced new business logic that caused the pot to be incorrectly awarded to the losing player. The offending business logic that caused the malfunction was introduced in order to force a player from a heads-up table after 5 minutes of inactivity.
Our system incorrectly disconnected/”stood up” DOUBLEBALLER from the heads-up table at the time the system was awarding the pot, which caused the incorrect payout. The disconnect was caused by our server and not the player’s connectivity.
We immediately began looking for other occurrences of this malfunction while we were investigating the software. Initially, we were unable to identify other incidents. However, after we understood the problem and cause better, we did find additional hands that were affected.
4 other occurrences of incorrect payouts caused by the December 10th software issue
These 4 hands did not have identical results as the PHILHELLMUTH/DOUBLEBALLER hand but they were caused by the same problem with the software.
#1154990093: Holdem (1 on 1) No Limit $0.50 – 2008-12-15 09:59:56.015 (ET)
#1158960646: Holdem (1 on 1) No Limit $1 – 2008-12-18 00:23:11.000 (ET)
#1159338828: Holdem (1 on 1) No Limit $1 – 2008-12-18 09:26:12.009 (ET)
#1165721853: Holdem (1 on 1) No Limit $2 – 2008-12-22 16:25:16.010 (ET)
Additional Software Issues
Through online poker forum twoplustwo an additional incorrect payout, that occurred on December 2, 2008, was brought to our attention.
#1136089263: Holdem No Limit $0.50 – 2008-12-02 03:48:49.007 (ET)
Our investigation has determined that the root cause of this incorrect payout was a game server transfer. For a variety of reasons we transfer player sessions from one of our game servers to another. Shortly after the launch of the CEREUS Poker Network, our software development team transferred players on one of our game servers to another. This transfer was the root cause of this malfucntion/incorrect payout.
We are currently enhancing and testing our game server transfer fucntionality and will not employ it’s use again until we are certain it is ready for our production environment.
On December 22, when we released new software code to address the previous issue, we introduced a new malfunction that caused incorrect payouts in 35 additional hands.
This malfunction involved players who selected “wait for the big blind” in Holdem, Razz and Stud ring games. The malfunction had different results based on a variety of variables. In the 35 cases the end result was either all or half the pot being awarded to the “waiting for BB” player.
Hand Histories
We have made all Hand Histories available for the community to review here.
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January 9th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
this is why i went with pokerstars. I find this suspicious, i have tried UB in the past and the software seemed buggy at best back then. If the software is no good, dont expect anyone to play there. Fire those idiot software engineers and hire some people that know wtf they are doing. Put in some QA before releasing software updates. This is real money, real people. Get it right or get out.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
When will the list of all the superusers be released? When will you be pressing criminal charges? Do you really expect anyone to believe a word you say until these simple things are done?
January 10th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Hi Tim,
I think pokerstars software is the best on the net. Their mac version is pretty much the best client application I have used.
We have moved off the old UB software because of many problems we have had with it and we are currently investing heavily to improve the CEREUS Poker Network.
I am confident that we can get it right and we look forward to the challenge of proving that to you and the rest of the poker community.
We are embarrassed that these issues occurred and we are doing everything possible to ensure they cannot reoccur.
Chrz,
Paul