Avoiding Merge b/c of Lobby Lag

I will no longer play real money at any Merge site until they fix the lobby lag problem. So much of tourney play is dependent on knowing what the whole situation is, that losing the basic info necessary to make good decisions is unacceptable.

As a US player, this is a tough decision, cutting my options severely.

I will play freerolls.

Since intertops works for me, even tho they too have terrible lobby updates, I guess I am stuck there for real money play.

I don't get it. Until recently, no sites had lobby lag, then Cake started and now merge sets a whole new low.

As a tournament player, I agree, it is frustrating.

I also find the time zone issue very frustrating. I thought that the time zones were just inaccurate by one hour... but my problem is that my lobby time is one hour off from the tourney start times. So when my lobby clock says 21:15, it's super tilting to go reg the 21:15 tourney that has been running for an hour.

Mentor said:

As a tournament player, I agree, it is frustrating.

I also find the time zone issue very frustrating. I thought that the time zones were just inaccurate by one hour... but my problem is that my lobby time is one hour off from the tourney start times. So when my lobby clock says 21:15, it's super tilting to go reg the 21:15 tourney that has been running for an hour.

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There's also the problem of tourneys with the wrong DATES. For example, it's 21:50 right now, and I can see a tourney that's dated TODAY 2:00, registration starts in 2 hrs . That doesn't make any sense. 2 in the morning is not today, it's tomorrow. This makes arranging the tourneys by date really confusing.

DJ, I noticed ta other night that if I closed the tourney lobby each time after looking at it, each time I reopened it it was updated, if I left it open it wouldn't update.

Kenzie 96 said:

DJ, I noticed ta other night that if I closed the tourney lobby each time after looking at it, each time I reopened it it was updated, if I left it open it wouldn't update.

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I thought I was seeing that also. I was hallucinating. There is a point in bigger tourneys, like half way thru the final table, when the updates almost come fast enough.

So, merge will not get rakes or tourney fee's from me, and I will win freerolls from them...... Till this is solved...no half ass fixes.

Works for me, although halfway through the final table, I'm not quite sure what information the lobby might have that be unavailable to you at the table.

Kenzie 96 said:

DJ, I noticed ta other night that if I closed the tourney lobby each time after looking at it, each time I reopened it it was updated, if I left it open it wouldn't update.

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This ^ (I noticed that as well... just 'x' it out then re-open & most of the time it would be updated).

Kenzie 96 said:

Works for me, although halfway through the final table, I'm not quite sure what information the lobby might have that be unavailable to you at the table.

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Aside from making decisions based on ICM/pay jumps but I'm pretty sure the lobby hasn't had any problems with payout amounts.

dj11 said:

So much of tourney play is dependent on knowing what the whole situation is, that losing the basic info necessary to make good decisions is unacceptable.

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I'm not sure I understand what is so crucially important with the info. in the lobby for a regular MTT? (unless it's a smaller field MTT & you're not sure if there's 5 tables left or 3 left & say 20 players get paid or something).
In a satellite it can obviously be a huge pain in the azz not knowing how many players are left in the tourney (& also not being able to see chipstack sizes of shorter stacks, etc.). In a regular MTT though I personally don't see it as such a huge problem? I'm typically basing my play off of the size of my stack in relation to the size of the blinds & the stack sizes of the players on my table. The lobby doesn't really have a whole lot of relevance to me (defnitely not enough relevance to keep me from playing).

fwiw, the lobby problems they were having on iPoker a few wks ago made the ones on Merge seem non-existent.

Mentor said:

As a tournament player, I agree, it is frustrating.

I also find the time zone issue very frustrating. I thought that the time zones were just inaccurate by one hour... but my problem is that my lobby time is one hour off from the tourney start times. So when my lobby clock says 21:15, it's super tilting to go reg the 21:15 tourney that has been running for an hour.

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THIS. This is super annoying/tilting. How can this possibly be messed up???

Like I said, I will avoid real money play at merge till this problem is solved. We have been complaining about Merge for the past year, they made a change that does pretty up the place, and I like the lobby changes, but to ignore the functional aspects of the 'upgrade', defies logic.

They know this lobby lag needs fixing, What's keeping them from doing it?

FWIW, I have br's at Carbon and BCP. Not large, but they are making fees/rake off me. But won't till this is solved.

Excuse me, I have to go register in a merge freeroll.

I hate the lobby. At most merge sites I get a usuable lobby, with columns of choices. But at FeltStars I get a completely unsuable bit of crap that does not allow navigation. The only way to find a private tournament is to type its name in search. I have written FS support about this twice, no reply other than the standard "we got ur email". i have searched setting options and see no where to change it. This upgrade gets a big fat zero. the only plus is that now I can read the balance amounts of players at the tables.

LeanAndMean said:

I hate the lobby. At most merge sites I get a usuable lobby, with columns of choices. But at FeltStars I get a completely unsuable bit of crap that does not allow navigation. The only way to find a private tournament is to type its name in search. I have written FS support about this twice, no reply other than the standard "we got ur email". i have searched setting options and see no where to change it. This upgrade gets a big fat zero. the only plus is that now I can read the balance amounts of players at the tables.

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I don't see this problem Ruth. I just checked my FS client and it seems to work the same as the others.
At the top of the listings area, near the search box and funnel icon, make sure that you have the list icon selected. Then select Tournaments on the left and in the second column at the btm is Private

Hope this helps

How they could roll this out with these basic flows in the software that are not related to network issues really shows how poorly this was implemented.

poker d player said:

How they could roll this out with these basic flows in the software that are not related to network issues really shows how poorly this was implemented.

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thought merge has always had network issues... can't count how many times i registered to a 6man sng (before upgrade) and it was already full when the lobby showed 2 players in.
perhaps the upgrade has caused more problems but lobby lag has always existed on some level.

Client upgrades today, and the lobby still sucks.

Here is the criteria I will use to determine when the lobby is fixed;

When, in a hand, I can get accurate info about the tourney I am in, and use it in that hand. Without using my clock hoping it will update within whatever time I have left on my clock.

Mentor said:

As a tournament player, I agree, it is frustrating.

I also find the time zone issue very frustrating. I thought that the time zones were just inaccurate by one hour... but my problem is that my lobby time is one hour off from the tourney start times. So when my lobby clock says 21:15, it's super tilting to go reg the 21:15 tourney that has been running for an hour.

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I switched my time zone to display the GMT -XXX zone, since there are over a dozen of them. At worst it displays -xxx, which is a lot less frustrating than seeing the wrong time zone heading every time we glance at the lobby.

What the upgrade to 6.0 has made clear is that none of the skins are acting uniquely.

Unfortunately, we are forced to gripe via the existing skins, and we have no idea what they are passing along as urgent.

I do notice freeroll participation has dropped by almost half. This shows me that there is large number of players who are acting like I am. Not bothering with tourney's till they feel better about the situation. If US players can't gulp down the bs in freerolls, what should we think they are doing about real money tourney's?

Fix this already Merge!

this with timezones i noticed to i thought it was just me. atm playing a sng its frozen in the middle of game. what do you do? you get money back?
holy flook. hole software is frozen cant even exit. lame. rofl

seqas said:

this with timezones i noticed to i thought it was just me. atm playing a sng its frozen in the middle of game. what do you do? you get money back?
holy flook. hole software is frozen cant even exit. lame. rofl

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Before the last update of the Carbon Poker software, i could not play a Sit & Go $ 5.00 Double UP, because of errors that were crashing the software every time i tried to make a move.

I sent an email to support at Carbon Poker, with a print of the screen locked, and the details of the tournament i was trying to play and buy-in money was credited to my account.

It is bad I agree. But nothing can be as bad as my experience playing at Cake yesterday - their software has to be the worst of the 2. It is so bad it affects your game. Would rather be missing lobby info than that.

Would rather play at pokerstars boohoo.

advoghado said:

Before the last update of the Carbon Poker software, i could not play a Sit & Go $ 5.00 Double UP, because of errors that were crashing the software every time i tried to make a move.

I sent an email to support at Carbon Poker, with a print of the screen locked, and the details of the tournament i was trying to play and buy-in money was credited to my account.

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thanks for reply
i believe now tho it will come auto back my did, but stil i took a screenshot as well with how it looked and typed time and date in a txt document if any probs would be.

i hope they fix this ASAP, how can they even release such software with major bugs and lags in aint they supposed to be the "technicians" lol.

@dakota-xx aww, im sorry to hear that :/ i did see you wrote some about it in the topic with 10k tour played i think it was. pokerstars is tough tho.

but for good players like yourself then it would be the obv choise of course.
wonder if they open up for US players again some time. when reading around the net then its being said (i think) that poker is legal in states, but why does sites choose to exclude us players making it hard for you people, simply dont understand that.

I have had 2 semi-good experiences of late. The lobby lag is almost resolved. Still not up to the standards we want, but nearly useable after training one's self how to use it right.

Still hesitant to join STT's or MTT's so will hold off a few more days, before re-evaluating once again.

Merge has showed me they are trying, so I won't dis them all that much.