Alternative to Tournament Clock on the table

[michaelmlevin]

First, let me say that I LOVE this product. It's making the difference between getting severe cabin fever and having my weekly poker tournament to look forward to. Thank you, Kent, for the great work.

My ideas about the tournament clock:

I understand from reading numerous prior threads about this that space on the table is the primary issue. So I came up with a couple of approaches that get the job done without compromising the little space on the table.

1). Strictly on the server side, add automatically generated chat messages, from the admin (or dealer, or whatever) that read:
NOTE: Blinds will be going up to **/** [with a * ante] in one minute.
NOTE: Blinds are now **/**.

Same thing for breaks:
NOTE: Break will start in one minute.

(I realize there is already a message that says the break will start at the conclusion of the hand. This would be sent one minute prior to the scheduled start of the break).

I believe that implementing this would only require work on the server side and there is probably already a framework for doing this since it sends out other informative messages.

ON THE CLIENT SIDE

Add an option for "Display Tournament Clock" in the client which would launch a second client which would be JUST the tournament clock. I agree with prior posts that it should include all of the following information:

Current level #, big blind, small blind and ante (if appropriate)
Time remaining in this level (count down clock)
Next big blind, small blind and ante (if appropriate)
Total elapsed play time (exclusive of breaks)
Players remaining out of # who started
Average chip stack (simply total chips in play divided by players remaining)
Next break
During breaks it would say BREAK instead of levels and the clock would count down the break.

Basically, what I'm describing above is a generic tournament clock. But if it's implemented as a separate client, launched by the existing client, it eliminates the issue of space and can be made to look like a casino tournament clock.

WHY? The other issue raised is who needs it? You can get the information from the Statistics. If the statistics were refreshed at the conclusion of each hand, that would probably suffice. But the only way to refresh is to close the window and open it again. That makes it clumsy to use for that purpose.

The ONLY gripe we've had from any of the players that have signed up to our site thus far is the absence of that information while playing. We're having a game tonight, and what I'm going to do is I've inputted the entire tournament structure (including breaks) into a poker clock program that I'm going to start simultaneously with the tournament. That way, I figure I'll be pretty much on the money as far as where I am in the tournament. But I'm not the average user. Even trying to explain that concept to non-tech-savvy players is like talking to someone in a foreign language. I've attached 3 screenshots from that program: display during a level without antes, display during a level with antes and display during a break.

In sum, I REALLY HOPE that you'll consider implementing this because your product is awesome and this is about the only area where people are comparing it less than favorably to play money private tables on commercial sites.

[Kent Briggs]

If the statistics were refreshed at the conclusion of each hand, that would probably suffice.

The Stats tab does auto refresh while open. Now it obscures the table in mobile mode but can sit right next to the table in desktop mode.

[michaelmlevin]

Great to know! ! I would SWEAR that's new to V6.16 (unless I'm mistaken, I tried that last week in a tournament with V6.15 and it DIDN'T work that way). But that's a BIG plus.

What about the possibility of adding the chat messages into the server? That seems like it would be relatively painless to do on the next release. At least think about it?

Finally, would you consider putting the level number next to the blinds instead of the hand number? The hand number appears in the chat for those who need that information anyway, but there is nothing that indicates the level #. If somebody asks, it would be nice to say you're at "level 8" or whatever.

But thanks for the info about Stats.

[cchervit]

Great to know! ! I would SWEAR that's new to V6.16 (unless I'm mistaken, I tried that last week in a tournament with V6.15 and it DIDN'T work that way). But that's a BIG plus.

What about the possibility of adding the chat messages into the server? That seems like it would be relatively painless to do on the next release. At least think about it?

Michael,

The Stats tab definitely updated the information after every hand in the 6.1.5 release. That was the only way to see the time remaining in the level!

All the chat messages from every game/tourney are logged in the individual Hand Results log files. Not sure if that's what you mean by sending chat to the server, but they are there and recorded.

And like you, we all love the software, too! It's helping out a lot of us during this time! Thanks again, Kent!

Chad

[michaelmlevin]

What I meant about the chat is to have the server send System chat messages saying blinds going up to ##/##/# in 1 minute and then again to say they went up. Do it in red or blue and it warns the players.

Also would like to add to the wishlist providing a capability for Re-entry tournaments. Now, if the player is knocked out during the late registration period, the player is locked out and cannot Re-register. I’d like the option of specifying how many times they can re-enter: -1 ( unlimited) 0 (no reentry) or # (# of times player can re-enter.

[hxe]

OH MY GOD YOU JUST GAVE ME AN IDEA.

https://www.briggsoft.com/docs/pmavens/ ... amples.htm

But instead of ads, you insert a tournament clock.
The problem is that this would only work for one table/tournament with no one playing cash games (or they'd see a clock too) but it'd work if you're doing a single unified tournament instead of 4 different groups.
You'd have to write an actual timer but that should be achievable.
You might even be able to Callback your way out of it so it triggers when the tournament starts.

[michaelmlevin]

Or use the stats feed. It’s specific to the tournament. If the information is in that feed(at least some of it is) you can reset the countdown clock when stats updates at the end of each hand. The clock would be doable. If the information about the next blind or break were there, that could get displayed too. As could players remaining out of players started (that’s already there). I’m willing to go in on a custom
HTML5 client.

Something we’d need Kent’s input and blessing with.

[hxe]

Or use the stats feed.

OH MY GOD I didn't even realize this was in here as an API function under TournamentsStats.
It's messy and a hack, but this might be somewhat doable.
As an interim I could just poll the stats API every minute and and broadcast that into the tournament chat. It still wouldn't be down to the second accurate, but it'd be better than nothing, especially for mobile players.

Obviously native would be better (especially down to the second resolution like a normal clock) but this might work for now.

[michaelmlevin]

Unfortunately, the stats API only returns the following:
{"Result":"Ok","Number":30,"Time":"1:22","Entrants":10,"LateRegs":1,"Playing":9,"Removed":0,"Rebuys":1,"AddOns":0,"Smallest":18425,"Average":30555,"Largest":121275,"Prizepool":0,"Payouts":0,"Payout":[]}

What we need is the level number, blinds, next blinds. This only gives us time, average stack size, payouts, number of entrants and remaining players. Which is a lot, but the basic info for a tournament clock requires the current level number, blinds (and antes) and next blinds and antes.

Now, that being said, the structure is contained in the TournamentsGet API: example:"Blinds":"100\/100\/0, 100\/200\/0, 100\/200\/25, 200\/400\/50, 300\/600\/75, 400\/800\/100, 500\/1000\/100, 600\/1200\/100, 800\/1600\/200, 1000\/2000\/200, 1500\/3000\/300, 2000\/4000\/400, 2500\/5000\/500, 3000\/6000\/600, 4000\/8000\/800, 6000\/12000\/1200, 8000\/16000\/1600, 10000\/20000\/2000, 15000\/30000\/3000, 20000\/40000\/4000, 30000\/60000\/6000"

So that could be parsed if we knew the current level number.

NOTE TO KENT- Is that information anywhere in the API? If not, could it be made part of the API in an upcoming release? If so, I could see developing a free-standing app that would act as the tournament clock. All you'd have to do is tell it the name of the tournament (and of course put in the info to get to the game server site) and it would just do its thing. I THINK.

[Kent Briggs]

NOTE TO KENT- Is that information anywhere in the API? If not, could it be made part of the API in an upcoming release?

I've put that on my to-do list.