Author Topic: What's Missing  (Read 7831 times)

PTL

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What's Missing
« on: August 26, 2006, 06:47:53 AM »
Corey,

Here are some things that make it hard for me use TD2.0


Seating Management

When someone comes into Poker Room.  I used to Buy Them-in then Randomly Seat them immediately so they could take their seat, with TD I can't do this.  I have to buy everyone in and then seat them which makes it a little hard for all the 20+ players in the room moving around at the same time.  Additionally is someone calls and lets me know they are going to be late we aren't going to hold the game for them but I couldn't seat that person.  Another issue is if I have 2 tables open and I have 10 seat at each table but only 9 players I probably still want them at 2 tables, TD will randomize only at 1 table unless I drop the seat count below the # of players.  The last issue I have with seating is when randoming seating players it fills the seats in numeric order, say I have 10 seats open on a table and there are 6 players per table, instead of randomly seating seats 1-10 it will randomly seat 1-6, again this is for late comers I don't want them always getting seats furthest from the button.


Add-on

Can we get the ability to purchase an add-on before the tournament starts?  I use the add-on as the method of payment for the league. If they purchase the add-on then they get their results tracked and are eligible for free at the end as well as getting additional chips.  Makes it hard to go in and do after I start the tourney.


Scrolling Screens

Make it stop :)  I'm sure this is probably a feature already but I tried to make it stop scrolling different screens during the tournaments.


Payouts Not Right

I tried to use the automated payout and did round to the nearest $10 but the System said to pay out $10 more then was in the prize pool :x  That wasn't a happy situation  :o

History

Whoops! Dumbass eliminated the wrong person.  How do I go back and change that?


Default Settings

Can I load default settings so I don't have to load all my options every time?



I'm sure you probably have solutions to some of these problems already but I wasn't able to figure it out.  Thanks for providing us with such great software Corey


Chad


« Last Edit: August 26, 2006, 06:50:00 AM by PTL »
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Corey Cooper

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2006, 12:25:57 PM »
Seating Management: What makes your suggestion (seating players immediately upon buy-in) difficult for the TD is that you probably know how many players will be playing, but at that point in time, the software does not.  Therefore, how can it know how far out amongst the tables you have defined it can spread those players?  The seating algorithm is always attempting to minimize the seating - moving players as close together as possible to eliminate unnecessary seats and tables.  This also hits the situation where you have 9 players but want to seat them at 2 tables (of 10 seats each).  This just makes no sense to the seating algorithm.

Here's how you work around all of this: Buy all of your players in before-hand, but do not mark them as "Paid in full".  Once they are bought-in, you can seat them.  As players actually arrive and pay, you can mark them "Paid in full".  Once you are ready to start the tournament, remove those who are not "Paid in full" (the Undo Buy-ins and Remove Players dialogs both have shortcuts which will select only those players who are NOT "Paid in full").

As for seating 9 players at two tables, you can either do it yourself (drag and drop players), or reduce the number of seats at those tables.  Double-click the table name and changing the number of seats.  Quick and easy.

Add-ons before the tournament starts: I'll add this to the to-do list.

Scrolling screens: http://www.thetournamentdirector.net/faq.html#faq21

Payouts not right: rounding to the nearest will always literally round to the nearest.  If this causes the payout to be too large (bigger than the actual pot), you'll probably want to round down.  Then set which of your prizes will get whatever is leftover (share leftover pot).

Here's an example: Pot is $150, prizes are 1st place 70% and 2nd place 30%.  This works out to 1st place $105 and 2nd place $45.  If I want to round to the nearest $10, rounding takes the amounts to $110 and $50, for a total of $160.  Exactly as you described.  How do you resolve this?  Probably one should be rounded up while the other is rounded down.  But which one?  Both prizes are technically equally eligible to be rounded up.  Different people will have different opinions of this.  So this is where the software says "I've done what I can, you have to make the final call".

You can round them down and set one of them (probably 1st place) to be the recipient of whatever is leftover.  Which would make the prizes $110 and $40.  Or you can simply override the amounts to be whatever you decide they should be.

History: On the Players tab, double-click a player.  From there you can edit the player's history (edit the buy-in, any add-ons, rebuys, and bust-outs, and undo some of them).  Up-coming version 2.2 will allow you to do much more, including inserting add-ons, rebuys, and bust-outs into a player's history.

Every aspect of a tournament can be saved individually in template files.  You can also set a saved tournament file to be your "default" tournament.  On the Preferences tab, press the Config Files button.

PTL

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #2 on: August 26, 2006, 02:53:26 PM »
Corey,

Thanks for the response I will try the software again this evening.

The seating is a big problem for players showing up late.  Can the seating algorithm be based upon total number of seats based on number of tables and not players?  I've used other software and it works great for Buying in /Seating Our game isn't huge it's only 20-40 players but it really helps me if I can just buy-in then seat them.  When dealing with 40 people usually some people don't show, maybe some don't RSVP that show and other are late.  I will be spending way to much time at the start of the game just trying to seat people.

Say I have 3 Table with 30 people.  I go ahead and do the Buy-in for everyone, now I either have to seat them all randomly or after I do a buy I have to switch to the seating tab and seat them.  If I have to continue to go back and forth between tabs It will take forever to get everyone bought in and get them their chips.  If I seat everyone before hand, I will still have to switch or to tell them their seat and say 3 people don't show and they all got sat at the same table it's a problem.

Is it possible to develop a page that is kinda of an overview?  Players seat, Boughtin, etc etc.

Thanks Corey I really like your software it's very visually appealing.  Thanks again for all the hard work you put forth on this!
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Corey Cooper

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2006, 11:40:48 AM »
This is kind-of what I was attempting to describe.

If the software seats players as they buy-in, then either (a) players will not be seated in a random fashion because the algorithm would seat based on the number of players bought-in at that time, meaning they would begin filling up one table at a time; or (b) the players will be seated randomly but because there are players that didn't show up the seating isn't balanced.

We definitely don't want (a).  But we're going to get (b) whether the players are seated as they buy-in or they are pre-seated and we then have to remove players from play that didn't show.

So either way, once you're ready to start, you'll probably need to shuffle some players in order to balance the tables.  This is better than a mad scramble for everyone to find their seats all at once.

So, again, I suggest buying everyone in before-hand.  Then, as players arrive and pay, marking them as Paid in Full.  When you are ready to start, open the Remove Players dialog (or Undo Buy-ins dialog).  Click the "check not Paid in Full only" link to check players who didn't show (and hence you didn't mark as Paid in Full), and press OK.  Now balance the tables.

You can perform buy-ins, undo buy-ins, mark players Paid in Full, and balance the tables from any of the Tournament screens, the Player Rankings page, or the Seating Chart page, as well as the Players tab on the Settings page.

So you can either (a) do all of this from the Seating Chart page, or (b) add the seating chart to one of your Tournament screens (<seatingchart> token).

By default, Ctrl+B opens the Buy-in Players dialog, Ctrl+U opens the Undo Buy-in Players dialog, Ctrl+F opens the Set Players Paid in Full dialog, and Ctrl+T opens the Balance Tables dialog.

CasinoCalgary

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2006, 07:03:00 PM »
Rebuys And Add On's

With the Tournament I run in my poker room I do Multi rebuys as the tournament is going on. It would be nice to see instead of having to put each rebuy in one by one to have a place where you can put all the rebuys in at once. Sometimes there are over 200 rebuy's. The Same goes for the add on's. Players care more about how much is in the Prize Pool then would did how many rebuys. This would make it alot faster to enter in the amounts

Additional Rake for Charity

My Casino is Sponsored by a Charity that takes a % out of the prize pool. The program needs a % removed for this reason for people running Poker Rooms
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_Hithere_

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2006, 11:20:07 PM »
PTL, I have a bit to add to Corey's response:
add-ons pre tourney:  for now, allow 1 second to tick off the clock before start-up and pause it, then you can do add-ons to your heart's content.  :)
Default settings:  Load TD, set up a tournament til you reach a point where you want to start every time, save that tournament (I recommend sticking it in the templates file) then redirect teh default tournament on the preferences page to that file.  Now when you load TD, the tourney is set up the way you pre-configured it.  (Make sure you do a save-as to a file in the saves directory first, especially if you are using the autosave feature.)
History: if you catch this before someone else busts out, you can undo the bust-out without having to mess with the history file.

Xtcnsx:  If you are adding that many rebuys, you should export the players list, then edit the rebuys in excel or a text editor, then import the players list back to the tourney, that way you can put as many rebuys as you want per player in an efficient manner. 

The program already supports rakes, even multiple pre-defined ones, but if these aren't getting it for you, just assign a prize (either displayed or not) that is the 5% charity rake.



Corey Cooper

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #6 on: November 08, 2006, 11:25:46 AM »
Quote
The program already supports rakes, even multiple pre-defined ones, but if these aren't getting it for you, just assign a prize (either displayed or not) that is the 5% charity rake.

Excellent idea... I hadn't even thought of that.

hawklight

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2006, 05:44:39 PM »
Indeed it is - that's exactly what I ended up doing when I asked Corey this some time back  :-)

KrazyKlondike

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #8 on: January 29, 2007, 02:27:43 PM »
I have the same concern as xtcnsx regarding add-ons. It would be very convenient if I could designate the amount of add-ons a player is buying. I allow up to 5 add-ons per player at a cost of $X per add-on and each add-on receives X amount of chips. So when a player wants to buy 5 add-ons I have to open the add-on box 5 times to accomplish this. This gets pretty time consuming when I have multiple players adding on at the same time. In the future could an input control be added so that this quantity can be specified at the time of buying the add-on and then the total cost, rake and chip quantity be automatically updated. This would also help with accurately tracking points as players are awarded points based on the quantitiy of add-ons.

Thanks for your help

Pokertini

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Seating Management
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2007, 08:57:23 PM »
I purchased TD2 a couple days ago and have been completely engrossed in setting it up.  I've done a lot of reading and fine tuning and am very pleased with the result.  Great work Corey.  I was familiar with version 1.3.4 and was reluctant to purchase TD2.  I'm very glad I did.

As a new user of TD2, I found the whole buyin process very confusing.  After reading through the online help and the thread here, I think I have it figured out.  I suspect most new people to your program are equally confused (the "Paid" and "Paid in Full" fields scramble my brain).  I had to type it out initially so I could understand it.

Summary of Buyin process (sorry to repeat, but it helps me make sense of it all)

Rationale: Ideally everyone shows up to a poker event 15 minutes early and pays their entry fee.  They are marked as "paid" in TD and their seats are randomly generated.  Unfortuantely, people either show up at the last minute, show up late, or forget to hand over their entry fee in a timely manner, thus causing a dillema. 

Option 1: We can wait until 1 minute before tournament, then collect money and randomly seat.  This option allows the TD software ro randomly seat the entire field but almost assuredly causes the tournament to start late.

Option 2: Buy people in early that we expect to attend, generate random seating then remove the people who end up not showing.  This has a small added benefit of allowing for unexpected guests, they can simply take the seat of someone who didn't show.  This option isn't without its drawbacks, namely how should you know to collect money from someone which you've already designated as "paid" when they had not yet arrived?

Thus, we have 2 PAID fields (paraphrased from Online Help)
PAID: Whether or not the player has "bought in"  This denotes whether the player has bought into the tournament.  If he has "bought-in" he can play (IE be seated)  The PAID field can be completed at any time, but once the player is designated "PAID" they may be seated and play in the tournament.
PAID IN FULL: A convienience field to denote that players have actually paid the entrance fee.  PAID IN FULL does not affect game play.  That is, PAID IN FULL is just for record keeping (to help track those who have actually paid and those who have not).

Observation

Intuitively, the process seems reversed to me and the terms are confusing (Paid vs Paid In Full)  I would think it would be clearer to rename "Paid" with "Reserved"  IE Player A has a reserved seat.  Reserved seats can can then be randomly distributed.

Then, rename "Paid in Full" with "Paid".  Once the player hands over the money, they are allowed to be dealt a hand.  The "Seating Chart" could reflect names in black as "Paid" and those in red as "Reserved", but not yet paid.  Cards aren't dealt (tourney doesn't start) until the un-"Paid" players are removed OR a seat can remain in a Reserved state and the person's stack blinded until they show up, but they physically don't play a hand until they've handed over their buyin.  If any players without Reserved seats show up, (IE - unexpected guests) they could then buyin (be marked as "Paid") and assigned to a Reserved seat (of someone who didn't show).

Just my 2 cents, I thought it might make it clearer to new users of your software.  Of course, it'll probably end up confusing the hell outta the people who have become used to the current system.

Aaron
« Last Edit: January 30, 2007, 09:13:32 PM by Pokertini »

hawklight

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2007, 03:52:13 AM »
I agree - it's just a little confusing having "paid" used twice when it only means "paid" in one case. "Reserved" is a good alternative I think - or even "Registered" - so someone can be registered for a tourney, i.e. they rang you to say they are on their way so please put them in - but they haven't paid yet.......

Corey Cooper

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #11 on: January 31, 2007, 12:59:54 PM »
Understandable.

First there was the idea that you should be able to add any number of players to your tournament beforehand.  Some may play, some may not.  But people like to do this, and removing all of the people who didn't show up for a tournament before you can start the tournament became a hassle.

So, the concept of "Paid" was added.  Add any players to your tournament that you want, but only those who have "Paid" (bought-in) participate in the tournament.  Therefore the software really only "sees" those players that have Paid.

Next, you can't seat a player who hasn't paid.  This made it difficult (as you noted, Pokertini) to get a tournament started on time, since players arrive late and you don't know where they'll sit until you've bought them in, etc.  Hence, the "Paid in Full" addition was added.  This is a convenience field only, and allows you to seat a player and still keep track of whether or not that have actually paid the entrance fee.

Finally, I plan (hope) to add the option to seat players who have not Paid (bought-in).  Seated players who have not bought-in will essentially be treated as "unavailable seats".  That is, no one else can sit in their seat (obviously), but they won't be balanced with the other players - they will remain where ever they are.

Where does that leave us?  Does the Paid in Full field mean anything anymore?

By the way, one thing you can do is change the name of the "Paid" column on the Players tab to be "Reserved".  Press the Column Names button to change it...

Ghostinz

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #12 on: February 10, 2007, 11:25:29 AM »
We used to have an issue with seating as well, with players showing up late. We finally decided that we weren't going to take anyone who showed up late, unless someone else who was present bought them into the tournament. This might seem a bit harsh, but it isn't fair to the majority of players who were on time to have to wait for people. Hey...a casino is not going to wait for them. You can always buy in a late person if you have an open seat. Lets say your running 8 person tables and you have 29 players. You still have 3 spots open to manually seat a late player. We used to run 10 person tables, but it got to crowded, so now we do 8 person tables until we get to the final table, which is 10.

_Hithere_

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #13 on: June 06, 2007, 09:13:54 PM »
We accept call-aheads and blind players stacks off if they are going to be late to a non-rebuy event.  We also only allow a late player who hasn't called ahead to buy in late if there are rebuys and then only at the end of the rebuy time frame.  This was necessary to allow the player directing the tournament to play during the rebuy period instead of constantly handling late arrivals.  It has worked well for us.

Phaze

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Re: What's Missing
« Reply #14 on: June 07, 2007, 03:58:34 PM »
I agree with Ghostinz... at some point, the real life tournament director has to take responsibility to how a tournament is ran, and not the program. I have always used the idea that everyone must come at such and such a time (lets say 7:00) and the tournament starts right at 7:30. Seating starts at 7:25 and if you aren't there you don't play. It may not be fair to the individual but the reverse is true: its not fair to the group that came on time. Furthermore, I give the option that if you phone en route, we will create a spot. If you don't show then I know a few big guys that will come break your arms for your $5.00 buy in (heh heh, jokes)