Software Update
Friday, February 27, 2009 - ProductMan
It’s too bad 2009 isn’t a leap year. While you’ve probably never met anyone who dreams of an endless February in this hemisphere, we could certainly use an extra day sewn onto the calendar, if only to catch our collective breaths. We’ve been working around the clock, firing on all our digital cylinders, prepping our latest release. It’s chocked full of useful new features that will easily enhance your next trip to our tables. Take a look at our latest changes and let us know what you think.
Blinds Now In The Title Bar
You spoke and we listened! For your convenience, we have started displaying blinds directly in the title bar for Ring Games and Tournaments. Now you’ll always know the stakes, since they’ll be staring right at you.
Tournament Dollar Fix
If you win two satellite seats to the same tournament you’ll be credited with Tournament Dollars. If you win an entry in a satellite and the event is not designated “must play,” you will be able to unregister and receive a credit in Tournament Dollars.
Although most events are now listed as “must play” events, we’ll be making changes over the next few days so that most events on our schedule will no longer be listed as “must play” events. Our latest update also allows you to use your Tournament Dollars to enter ALL tournaments. Now you can play satellite tournaments, knowing that your wins will be rewarded to your advantage.
Don’t forget that if you buy into an event you can still unregister and get your buy-in back in the same form that you bought in with.
Railbird Chat Settings
A little play-by-play and color commentary can enhance the flow of the game, but not when the script is hijacked. Lately, some sketchy characters have been logging onto our site and spamming our tables from the sidelines.
To prevent this from happening, players will be unable to railbird chat unless they’ve already made a deposit. Players will also be blocked from chatting if they do not have enough money to sit at the table. As an added precaution, players will no longer be able to paste text into the chat window and we’ve disabled HTML links in chats, which will put a stop to sinister phishing schemes. We are also completely removing railbird chat from our play money tables.
We’ll be rolling out tons of tweaks and changes over the coming weeks. Keep your eyes peeled right here to see what we have in store. We always welcome your feedback, so don’t hesitate to make your own suggestions directly below.
Tags: blinds in title bar, new software release, Product Team, railbird chat settings, Software Update, tournament dollar fix
Comments (1)
Thursday, January 22, 2009 - ProductMan
Our engineers might not have the cure for the winter blues or whatever flu bug seems to be spreading like wildfire this week, but they definitely have the prescription for those recent snags in our software. Thanks in part to your valuable feedback, our diligent development team has ironed out a few of those annoying minor glitches. You can take advantage of the fixes outlined below by installing our latest software update.
Special Characters:
You might not be a special character, but if your name features special characters outside the bounds of the standard alphabet, you may have experienced difficulties registering your name correctly. Our servers will now accept names that include a space, hyphen, or apostrophe. If your surname is O’Brien, Zeta Jones, Parker-Bowles, or anything else for that matter, we’ve now got you covered. You shouldn’t have to give up your roots and change your name—and now you don’t have to.
Tournament Listings:
You might have noticed that information for some completed tournaments was displayed incorrectly. Despite being completed, some tournaments erroneously showed remaining players and active running times.
We are pleased to report that details for all completed tournaments are now up to date and will be accurately displayed in real time.
We’re dedicated to making sure our poker software is second to none. If you experience any issues or have any suggestions, please do not hesitate to let us know. Feel free to contact support or post your comments below. We always welcome your valuable feedback.
Tags: Product Features, product updates, software updates
Comments (7)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - ProductMan
As tempted as I am to get a head start on my new year’s resolutions, I’m still clinging to at least 2008 delusional dreams. I don’t have an official to do list that I’m still toying with, but I know that fresh starts usually involve discipline at the expense of fun and the biggest party of the year is only hours away.
Even though the calendar is set to strike ’09 at the edge of tomorrow, I won’t be contending with reality or officially dismissing the holiday season until Monday. You know how those midweek celebrations usually deliver pandemonium right into the weekend. Luckily, the product team isn’t slacking.
Next week we’ll be adding the convenience of tooltips to each of the options in the Game Options window. Tooltips are those small text boxes that magically appear when you run your mouse cursor over certain parts of the screen. Without having to click your mouse, tooltips display valuable information about the particular option. You’ll no longer have to go searching for definitions and explanations of each menu choice, which will make it even easier to customize your game. As we get set to roll out tooltips, you can take a look at all our handy options below.
• Hot Key: Keyboard shortcuts for common poker actions. (F1: Fold, F2: Check, F3: Bet, F4: Call, F5: Raise, F6: Double Raise, F7: Double Bet, F8: All In, F9: Bring In)
• Sound Effects: Enable or disable all sounds.
• Display Bet amount: Show or hide the numeric chip amount next to chip stacks on the table.
• Rabbit Cam: Displays the next card that would have been dealt after the hand has ended. Only available on some holdem ring game tables.
• Display Chat bubble: Display or hide chat bubbles on the table when players chat.
• Full Animation: Display or hide the full table animations such as dealing of cards.
• Show Pot Value: Displays the numeric pot amount.
• Show whole dollars only: Show or hide cents from chip counts, bets and pots.
• Show Ultimate Points: Display or hide the number of UltimatePoints [FAME Credits] earned after each hand has completed.
• Disable Enter to Bet: Prevents the keyboard Enter key from placing a bet.
• Disable pop to front: Prevents the table from popping in front of other windows when it is your turn.
We’ll be ushering in the new year with tons of other new and handy features. Keep visiting this space for all the latest news. As always, we welcome your feedback.
Tags: game options, menu choice, new years resolution, poker options, poker software, Product Features, Product Team, software options, tooltips, year end
Comments (1)
Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - Aciator
We are committed to ensuring you have the best poker playing experience in the world, and that commitment extends to all of our Payment Processing products as well. As the Christmas season is upon us, we would like to hear your 2009 Wish- List of New Cashier features!
Below is a non-exhaustive list of features we’re considering for addition in the new year. Please let us know your thoughts on these suggestions. Which ones do you like and why? Also, feel free to submit your own ideas!
- 1-Click Cashier – Deposit directly from the table
- Improved Account History- All transaction records consolidated in one area
- Memorize most used deposit methods- Eliminate inputting credit card/ eWallets numbers
- Request Deposit Limit increase- For all methods, directly from the Cashier
- Document Upload system- Send the Security team your Identification Documents directly from the Cashier.
- Currency Management- Manage your balance in the currency of your choice.
- Other- Please Elaborate (Free text entry)
We look forward to offering you more features and functionality to make your money management better and more efficient in 2009. Seasons Greetings, and Good Luck at the tables.
Tags: account history, cashier, currency management, Deposit, deposit limit increase, e-check deposits, Payments, Software Update
Comments (2)
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - COO
On Saturday, December 20, 2008 we were alerted to a problem with a hand involving PHILHELLMUTH and DOUBLEBALLER.
We realize that this issue is of great concern to UB’ers and the poker community. Since we learned of the problem we have worked tirelessly investigating and fixing the software issue that was responsible for the incorrect payout. We have now released an official statement, which you can read it on our corporate site tokwiro.com.
I became aware of the problem on Saturday evening, shortly before I made my original post on this blog. I must admit that the information on twoplustwo was very helpful to me in getting up to speed right away.
I know many of you wanted information immediately after the incident happened. I did make a post on the UB blog to let everyone know we were aware of the problem and the seriousness of it. At the time I did not comment further because I wanted to make sure that we had all the facts before we made any public statements. I would hate to say something that is inaccurate or even false because I rushed it out before understanding the problem completely.
The problem is truly and honestly just a software malfunction. I do realize this issue caused a great deal of concern because Phil Hellmuth, a spokesperson for the site, benefited from the malfunction and that is quite the coincidence. For this reason we are providing the public with as much information as possible and hope that by doing so, and answering as many of your questions as possible, you will be reassured that our site is a safe place to play.
The Issue:
As we explained in our press release, the incorrect payout was caused by a software malfunction. The software malfunction occurred when the winning player was disconnected from the hand at the precise millisecond the software was determining whom to award the prize. This in conjunction with the “player’s state” data being cleared from memory caused this extremely improbable incident to occur.
Originally we were unable to reproduce the error in our test environment, until we programatically forced a disconnect to happen at the precise millisecond the hand was being awarded.
We have never had an issue like this reported previously and we have reviewed all of our database and application logs for December and November and have been unable to find any historical occurrences. We are continuing to go back further into the historical data to ensure no hands from the past need to be corrected. Analyzing this data takes time but we will continue to go back further and further into our history to ensure no one else was affected.
The second, related issue:
During the weekend we released an update to our game servers which included new business logic to prevent the first incident from ever happening again. The new update unfortunately created a new logic issue resulting in 36 hands with incorrect payouts. The 36 hands affected were lower limit razz, stud, and hold’em hands. Upon learning of this problem, we were able to addressed it quickly and the affected players were refunded immediately. We are extremely confident that everything has been corrected and order has been restored but we’re continuing to monitor the system and are performing extensive tests to ensure there are no incorrect payout or disconnect issues in the future.
An unrelated issue:
Another player made a comment on our blog (Mark) and emailed our support team about a tourney (2120428) where 700 chips were mysteriously deducted from his stack mid tourney. What happened was his chip stack was reset to his starting chip amount (3000 chips). This happened because he won a satellite into the very tourney he was already playing in . This uncovered the unrelated problem, where the system reset his chip stack to the starting amount. This software issue was addressed immediately and Mark’s account was refunded.
Our company takes a lot of pride in our work and i think it’s safe to say we are embarrassed by these issues. We have an amazing software development team who have accomplished so much this year. I assure you they take this very seriously and I’m confident they have dealt with these issues professionally and I do not expect anymore problems to occur.
Our company is committed to being the most transparent site on the net and to providing our players with a personal touch that other sites do not. I speak to many players myself, I grant a lot of interviews, we offer phone support and our security team speaks with players on a daily basis. We hope that you start to notice the improvements we are continually making to improve our service and transparency.
I will try to blog and respond to your comments/questions the best I can over the holidays.
Happy holidays everyone!
Cheers,
Paul Leggett
Tags: 2+2, Cereus, Phil Hellmuth, Two Plus Two
Comments (27)
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - ProductMan
When I was in elementary school, I used to love the days when our regularly scheduled curriculum was conveniently interrupted by some random video screening. Although many of my classmates complained upon discovering that the VCR wasn’t loaded with the latest Hollywood blockbuster, I couldn’t resist the diversion. I’m fairly certain that I slept through most of those educational videos, but I do remember various productions that kindly advised us not to talk to strangers, which was apparently all the rage in the late eighties.
The world has surely turned on its head since then. These days, connecting with strangers on social networking sites, in forums and chat rooms, and by instant message is encouraged. There is probably no better way to consort with strangers (and perhaps your future friends) than by playing online poker.
With UltimateBuddy, it’s easy to keep taps on all your favorite strangers, friends, and foes whenever you hit the tables. Based on the same instant messaging technology used in popular chat clients including AIM, Yahoo! Chat, and Windows Live Messenger, this handy applet lets you quickly and easily see when your friends are online and where they are seated. All it takes is a few clicks and you can add friends to your list of favorites or take a seat right at their table. You can even make notes on all your contacts to help you get up to speed at every encounter.
UltimateBuddy won’t let you down. It’s highly secure and you can custom tailor it to meet your needs. You can easily fly under the radar and stop other people from tracking you. Handy sound effects keep you in the loop, letting you worry about your hand and your bankroll.
You’ll also be pleased to know that UltimateBuddy is now built-in to our standard gaming software. That means you no longer have to download and install a separate application to take advantage of all these useful features.
The Product Team
Tags: Instant Messaging, Product Features, Product Team, Social Networking, Software Update, table chat, Ultimate Buddy
Comments (3)
Friday, December 19, 2008 - ProductMan
I’ve always been fascinated by time travel and I know I’m not the only one. A few years ago, Santa was kind enough to leave an engaging read underneath my Christmas tree. The book, whose title escapes me at the moment, basically explained how to build a time machine. Even though the author took the liberty to dumb down the theoretical physics with cartoons, I really haven’t made any progress in the laboratory inside my mind. I’ve mostly been reminiscing about DeLoreans, cosmic telephone booths, and robots that look curiously like the current Governor of California.
Time travel technology would definitely ignite my poker game and set the whole blogosphere ablaze. If I could rewind the game and change a call on a whim I’d be invincible, but that isn’t going to happen. Luckily, UltimateBet gives everyone the tools to learn from their mistakes and relive past glories. By accessing your hand histories, you can quickly see how you’ve played over time and use that info to shape the future. You might want to take advantage of countless online tools that help you evaluate your gaming strategies, or even compete with other players on various leader boards and rankings at different levels.
In addition to the instant replay option available at the tables, there are two ways to retrieve your hand history from our game client.
Hand History Files:
For your convenience, your computer automatically records all played hands from Poker Cash Games, Sit and Goes, Multi Tournaments, and Black Jack games, for both fun and real money. You can access these hands either by browsing the files on your computer or directly from the game client using either of the options below.
1. Click on the Hand History button at any game type table.
2. Click on My Account / Hand History / Open My Hand History Files
Request Hand History via email:
We will be happy to send your hand histories via email. You can request hand histories for ring games or tournaments from the past month. The requested information will be sent as a single file.
To access this option, select My Account / Hand History / Request Hand History via email.
Good luck in the future, but maybe I mean the past.
Tags: Hand History, poker software, Product Features, Product Team, Software Update
Comments (0)
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 - ProductMan
There’s no better way to feed a full house than with piping hot pizza. Whether you host a weekly game at your pad with your buddies or prefer to logon and trounce the tables of the world, you need to eat. Don’t settle for inferior frozen pizzas when all it takes is a phone call to get proper pies delivered to your door.
I also recommend conferring with your crew and any respective stomachs before dialing up the grub. You wouldn’t want to foul up the game with anchovies or something equally revolting. What’s the deal with anchovies, anyway? I can’t think of a better way to taint a culinary masterpiece than with the addition of putrid fish. Although most people find bait as a pizza topping disgusting, some people love it. It pretty much appears on every menu around here, which means that it is all the rage in many heads. The truth is that some people make horrible and unpopular decisions. The real trick is to make sure they don’t have the final say.
At UltimateBet we occasionally release features that we think are awesome, but we quickly learn that some of our players beg to differ. It’s worth taking the time to send us your suggestions and feedback so that we can tailor the game to meet your needs. We’re here for you and always want to hear from you. Check out some of our recent tweaks and enhancements below.
Bad Beat Jackpot at the tables
We love watching our Bad Beat Jackpot balloon every second, but some of you have told us that you find this distracting. There’s no need to get mesmerized against your will. Now you can hide the Bad Beat Jackpot using the Options Menu at the tables.
Did you close a table by mistake?
Who doesn’t get carried away on their computers? If you like multitasking, you know how easy it is to accidentally close a window. We always ask you to confirm whenever you close a table… just in case.
Text at the tables
Resizing your tables shouldn’t reduce the text and image quality. Whatever table size you choose, you can count on crystal clear visuals.
Tournament Lobby details
Did you notice that some tournament information wasn’t refreshing quickly in the lobby? We have fixed this minor issue that affected some of our players. The prize pool, number of players, and additional details, which appear as tournaments progress, will always be displayed accurately and in real time.
Post your comments below. Tell us what’s on your mind and help us improve our game—and yours!
Tags: poker software, Product Features, Product Team, Software Update
Comments (11)
Friday, December 12, 2008 - ProductMan
I can’t believe it’s going to be 2009 in two and a half weeks. This decade is almost out of steam and they don’t even have a name for it yet. For the record, I’m not willing to call the years between 2000 and 2009 the zeros, the 2000s, or the naughts. At the rate things are going, maybe remaining nameless is a great call, although I am open to worthy suggestions.
I really thought things would be different by now. Even though I can easily store and listen to every song ever recorded on a device smaller than my wallet, technology seems to be slightly behind schedule. Where are the hoverboards, flying cars, robot butlers, burritos that don’t drip, and plans for world peace? Maybe all this stuff has already been invented except it is merely being held back because the public isn’t ready.
At UltimateBet, we’re always ready to embrace the latest technology and we want you along for the ride. When it comes to security, no one has time for even the slightest glitches. That’s why we not only make use of cutting edge security tools, but we regularly review and update our security procedures.
Hackers are no match for our custom 256-bit encryption algorithm. Whether it comes to banking security, data security, or gaming security, you’re automatically covered. Your personal information always stays under wraps thanks to our secure database and privacy policy.
Put your mind at ease and take our latest release out for a test drive. We always love feedback. Bring your ideas into the blogosphere and help us deliver the future of poker today.
Tags: Product Team, Software Update
Comments (0)
Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - ProductMan
December might seem like a great time to unwind, but we’re actually kicking things into overdrive on our end. Although it’s only been a little more than two week since the Cereus launch, that’s pretty much the digital equivalent of eternity.
We listened to your feedback (the good, the constructive, the ugly, and even the downright nasty) and our programmers and developers have been working around the clock pouring your ideas into our brand new software update.
If you’ve been playing with us for a while, you know that we constantly tweak our offerings to meet the needs of our players. We’d like to think of it as the natural evolution of the ultimate poker room, rather than a work in progress. Check out some of the changes we’re ushering in with our new update:
Game Speed Increase:
Our update runs faster and smoother. We’ve reduced the pauses between hands from two seconds to half a second. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made the game noticeably faster.
More Buddies:
Tell all your friends! We’ve also made an update to Ultimate Buddy. We’ve increased the number of Buddies you can have from 500 to 2,000.
Heads-Up Kick Off Limit
Heads-up cash game players will notice that we’ve applied a new 5-minute rule to the ‘Sit Out’ function. This means that you won’t be waiting around forever for players to rejoin a game. After five minutes of sitting out at a heads-up ring game table, players will be removed from the table.
Disable Enter to Bet:
You can now disable the ‘Press Enter to Bet’ function to avoid accidentally betting when you press the ‘Enter’ key while chatting or using other applications. To disable this feature, visit the Options window and deselect the “Enter to Bet” checkbox.
Disable Blackjack at a Table:
You can now disable blackjack directly from individual tables instead of having to disable it globally. You can access this feature from the lobby under the My Account menu and select Hide Blackjack.
We’re only getting started. Be there as we roll out more updates over the coming weeks. We’ll be refining our software and introducing exciting new features.
This is your chance to give us feedback and comment on our software. If you have any ideas or suggestions for new features you’d like to see, this is the place to post them.
Help us build your dream software or at least bury the things you can’t stand.
Tags: Product Features, Product Team
Comments (4)
