Gaming Club Poker -- some positives and some negatives

[Abe]

My comments for the Zoo - and also the GC guy:

I sure did not intend or plan to play at GC. It was the generous bonus offer, the many posts here, the special deal for us, and also I was trying to pay cup back some taf $ I owed him.

POSITIVES:

The many bonus offers worked fine. Won a (very) little on the site. Cashout back to Neteller took 2 days.

GC guy participation on this forum was a plus - answering questions and asking our opinions. The OIC contest and the other 2+2 players added a lot to the games. The other players (many Danes and Swedes) were great fun to talk with. Seemed like the Swedes were always polite and the Danes were sometimes a little cranky.

Game selection was a mixed item. Limit holdem usually had only 1 or 2 tables of full ring games, but the variety of other games was unusual. Had never seen Pot Limit 5 card stud before.

E-mail support was ok. Usually a prompt "auto-response" then a real response about a day later. These were usually helpful and did address any concern or question.


NEGATIVES:

I sure did not like the software. Realize this is a "Prima or a Microgaming" issue and not the fault of GC. The sign us process and screen was cumbersome. Once in, the screens were slow to load. Very time consuming to get from screen to screen. The "waiting list" and "go to table" was also a little tough to work with. The game screen and options were a little clunky. The little buttons, etc. I'm sure GC has a big list of these things to work on with Prima.

Cash out was a confusing adventure---as mentioned on the forum a few times. When trying to cash out I would try to get to the "Bank" screen, but would always get the message; "Setup in progress--Please be patient". Then nothing would happen. Once in, I was trying to cash out (in?) back to neteller. But---it made me fill in some form as though it would mail a check. Confusing, but I had seen it discussed on the forum. And the Neteller payment did come through.

All-in abuse was very obvious to me once so I reported it and told them the hand number. Received a response the next day but not what I expected. The abuser was NOT a GC player - he was signed up from another Prima site. All GC could do was say they were going to report it to Prima.

Raked hands calculation was my biggest negative with the GC site and this is probably a Prima issue too. I am used to the counting a player IN for a raked hand if he is dealt in. Thats how Stars, Paradise, UB, Party(etc) and True calculate it. I had specifically NOT signed up at WSEX because of their way of counting only "contributed" hands. (too tight pre-flop, too tight pre-flop, yes, I know) Well, obviously now we know that GC uses some method of "contributed to the pot" calculation to count a player in for a raked hand. I personally hate this method, and will not play at another site that uses it. But, it sure took GC a while to honestly answer all our questions about how they were counting these.


So, there's my comments. Now GC guy, does this disqualify me from a couple of those snazzy GamingClub Poker chips when you get them?

[CrackerZack]

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Raked hands calculation was my biggest negative with the GC site and this is probably a Prima issue too. I am used to the counting a player IN for a raked hand if he is dealt in. Thats how Stars, Paradise, UB, Party(etc) and True calculate it. I had specifically NOT signed up at WSEX because of their way of counting only "contributed" hands. (too tight pre-flop, too tight pre-flop, yes, I know) Well, obviously now we know that GC uses some method of "contributed to the pot" calculation to count a player in for a raked hand. I personally hate this method, and will not play at another site that uses it. But, it sure took GC a while to honestly answer all our questions about how they were counting these.

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Strange. If your only goal was bonus whoring, then I could see this as being annoying and not want to whore, but if you're actually interested in playing at the site, who cares? This actually explains to me why my raked hands on the OIC leaderboard was so low as I had played quite a bit.

[HavanaBanana]

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Raked hands calculation was my biggest negative with the GC site and this is probably a Prima issue too. I am used to the counting a player IN for a raked hand if he is dealt in. Thats how Stars, Paradise, UB, Party(etc) and True calculate it. I had specifically NOT signed up at WSEX because of their way of counting only "contributed" hands. (too tight pre-flop, too tight pre-flop, yes, I know) Well, obviously now we know that GC uses some method of "contributed to the pot" calculation to count a player in for a raked hand. I personally hate this method, and will not play at another site that uses it.

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Personally I like this kind of counting of raked hands better than the ordinary one. But I would like it even more if the winner of the hand was the only one getting counted for raked hands.
The reason for this is that it would (depending on a reward for number of raked hands) encourage more 'loose' plays (Some players don't need much of an excuse to stay in a little longer).
Now even if the tight players don't like this much, we all know that fish filled waters are bound to bring in lots of sharks and sharks wannabees.

If you are a Bonus Whore, it doesent matter much how long it takes to finnish the bonus as long as the games are good.

[tiltboy]

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Cash out was a confusing adventure---as mentioned on the forum a few times. When trying to cash out I would try to get to the "Bank" screen, but would always get the message; "Setup in progress--Please be patient". Then nothing would happen. Once in, I was trying to cash out (in?) back to neteller. But---it made me fill in some form as though it would mail a check. Confusing, but I had seen it discussed on the forum. And the Neteller payment did come through.

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After giving TGC good marks previously because my first cashout to Neteller went fast I have to agree with you. In my second cashout I'm shown a message that says 'we have no record of a previous withdrawal...' or something to that effect. WTF? Then I'm made to choose between check, ACH, and something else and I pick check. I hope this is just for backup and my withdrawal goes back the same way it came in via Neteller but it is confusing as hell.

[ZeeJustin]

I had the same problem, but worse. I never bought in to TGC. I just used the $50 for the OIC. I tried to cash out, and got the same screen you did. I then emailed support and they basically told me I had to buy-in first to cash out.

For the record, TGC software is horrendous (regardless of who is responsible for upkeeping it). The players there are very stainy, and if the software wasn't soo bad, I would probably play there, but until they fix the software, I have no intentions of playing another hand there.

[Gaming Club]

Abe,

Thanks for the feedback - very much appreciated. Here's a few comments / responses:

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GC guy participation on this forum was a plus - answering questions and asking our opinions.


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Thanks for the appreciation on this and the other positives [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I sure did not like the software. Realize this is a "Prima or a Microgaming" issue and not the fault of GC.


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You're largely right that Prima are responsible for this, but we do play a substantial role in pushing improvements thru as and when the need for them is identified. This is in large part because of all the feedback we've solicited and received here on the zoo. Of course some of the bigger changes will take a while to get done, but we can assure you that most of what you've mentioned is already being worked on, and the rest will eventually follow as well.

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The sign us process and screen was cumbersome. Once in, the screens were slow to load. Very time consuming to get from screen to screen.


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Speed issues would probably be because the screens are web-based and have to load from the server each time. We're not aware that this is a common problem, since over most internet connections the pages should load very quickly -- or are we blind to this issue? Have other players also found these pages slow?

Re "cumbersome", was speed the main issue or is there more to it than that?

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The "waiting list" and "go to table" was also a little tough to work with.


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Not sure what you mean -- any specific ways to improve on these would be appreciated.

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The game screen and options were a little clunky. The little buttons, etc.


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This one we're well aware of. Improved playing interface is being worked on as a very high priority.

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I'm sure GC has a big list of these things to work on with Prima.


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Indeed, thanks again mainly to you guys.

As an aside, we always knew that there were going to be issues with some aspects of the software, but together with Prima we took a conscious decision to rather go to market with with less than perfect software, rather than hold back and try to get it perfect.

Some players have questioned the wisdom of this, to which our answer has always been that we'd rather be out there learning from our mistakes, than holding back trying to predict them all in advance.

We and Prima could have tried to build the perfect interface before launching, but it's a virtual certainty that there would still have been things players didn't like, and we would have lost time in building the liquidity of the network. Better therefore to launch faster, ask for feedback and act on it.

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Cash out was a confusing adventure---as mentioned on the forum a few times. When trying to cash out I would try to get to the "Bank" screen, but would always get the message; "Setup in progress--Please be patient". Then nothing would happen.


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Based on this and your difficulties at sign-up, it sounds very much like you're struggling with connection speed to the servers. How does navigating these pages compare speed-wise with ordinary web surfing? If you see a marked difference then we certainly have an issue in this area (altho even if you don't then we still do since we wouldn't want even a small minority of players to struggle with sign-ups and cashouts).

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Once in, I was trying to cash out (in?) back to neteller. But---it made me fill in some form as though it would mail a check. Confusing, but I had seen it discussed on the forum. And the Neteller payment did come through.


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We're expecting an improved interface in this area in the next few weeks at most. We've taken a lot of flak (rightly so) on how messy this process is, so it's been redesigned and Neteller is being properly incorporated.

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All-in abuse was very obvious to me once so I reported it and told them the hand number. Received a response the next day but not what I expected. The abuser was NOT a GC player - he was signed up from another Prima site. All GC could do was say they were going to report it to Prima.


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We've heard a few other complaints about all-in abuse, so we're happy to keep receiving notification of such situations. You're right tho that if the player is not from our site then we have limited ability to act on them. We do however chase up Prima so that they can act appropriately in the circumstances.

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Raked hands calculation was my biggest negative with the GC site and this is probably a Prima issue too.


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You're right that the definition is currently network-wide. We're told that early in the new year we'll have the ability to set our own definition, so possibly we'll change it then. We do however find it interesting that the feedback on this issue is so mixed --- certainly there's no shortage of players who say they have no problem with it, but we nonetheless understand that if nothing else this is an issue of compatability with the established industry names, and possibly it's not all that wise to try and rock the boat on this score.

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But, it sure took GC a while to honestly answer all our questions about how they were counting these.


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It did? Nothing to hide here, so if we were slow in this area then apologies -- certainly no intention on our part to slowplay this issue.

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Now GC guy, does this disqualify me from a couple of those snazzy GamingClub Poker chips when you get them?


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Not at all [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Gaming Club]

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tiltboy
After giving TGC good marks previously because my first cashout to Neteller went fast I have to agree with you. In my second cashout I'm shown a message that says 'we have no record of a previous withdrawal...' or something to that effect. WTF?


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That's meant to tell you that there's no cashout still awaiting to be processed, not that your previous cashout has disappeared. If you query your transaction history via CashCheck, you'll see your cashouts listed there.

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Then I'm made to choose between check, ACH, and something else and I pick check. I hope this is just for backup and my withdrawal goes back the same way it came in via Neteller but it is confusing as hell.


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You're right it's confusing, so it's being fixed. If you purchased via Neteller your refund will by default go back that way, but in the revised interface the option will be there to specify it anyway so as to save any confusion.

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ZeeJustin
I had the same problem, but worse. I never bought in to TGC. I just used the $50 for the OIC. I tried to cash out, and got the same screen you did. I then emailed support and they basically told me I had to buy-in first to cash out.


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We used to allow cashouts to Neteller from people who hadn't previously purchased that way if the player just emailed us their Neteller details, but we found this process to be full of problems (in particular because more than a few players emailed us details with typos).

Se we started asking for the player to make a minimum value Neteller purchase ($20) and then just add that amount to their cashout immediately thereafter. That way we could be certain that we have the correct details in order to process the cashout properly.

We do understand your irritation in this regard (esp. since this ties up $20 of your money for a couple of days), but in fairness given that you've turned a profit on our money it shouldn't be too much to ask for a little bit of help in making sure the process runs smoothly.

All of this is anyway a temporary fix since the new interface with Neteller as a cashout option will solve the problem when it comes out shortly.

Nonetheless, until then we'll see if we can't find a way to make the email process work. We'll report back here if we can find a way to do this.

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For the record, TGC software is horrendous (regardless of who is responsible for upkeeping it).


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Ouch. Honesty appreciated tho -- any particularly egregious "features" you want to list so that we can make sure they are high on the priority list (if they're not already)?

[mongeron]

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As an aside, we always knew that there were going to be issues with some aspects of the software, but together with Prima we took a conscious decision to rather go to market with with less than perfect software, rather than hold back and try to get it perfect.


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Actually the 2003 edition of the Microgaming software was a downgrade compared to the earlier version. Ladbrokes poker had been using Microgaming software for quite a long time, and when the 2003 edition was introduced, many players stopped playing there because the software got so much worse. This happened in June this year.

So, perhaps a better choice would have been to use the older version of the client software, and work up from that. I'm quite certain though that Microgaming wouldn't have agreed to do that.

- mongeron

[Gaming Club]

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Actually the 2003 edition of the Microgaming software was a downgrade compared to the earlier version. Ladbrokes poker had been using Microgaming software for quite a long time, and when the 2003 edition was introduced, many players stopped playing there because the software got so much worse. This happened in June this year.

So, perhaps a better choice would have been to use the older version of the client software, and work up from that. I'm quite certain though that Microgaming wouldn't have agreed to do that.


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This is very interesting feedback for us -- if you can list some of the ways in which the newer version amounted to a downgrade (or perhaps point us to posts here that discussed them) then we can certainly take that to Prima. They would very much be interested in the reasons why players stopped playing altho you're probably right that moving back to the old client most likely wouldn't be feasible (for one thing it probably doesn't support some of the newer features they're currently working on).