PM Poker – True Vegas Style Poker with Bitcoin (New)

[dooglus]

Hmm. So, I'm not the only one with Wine problems?

I installed Wine on Fedora today. To be clear, I've never used Wine before. I tried opening PM Poker and it would make it as far as the log in screen, where it asks me whether I want to log in as guest or as a real user. Then I clicked guest and that was it. Nothing else loaded. I assumed Wine was just junk and so I uninstalled Wine. Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge Wine if it's actually PM Poker software. Although I am worried about getting malware through Wine. Can anybody alleviate my fears about malware through Wine?

I've had good success with WINE in the past.  Some programs work 100% fine with it, and some don't work at all.  What's weird is that pmpoker worked great in WINE until yesterday...  I guess I should try something else that I know used to work great in WINE and see how that works now.  It that's messed up too then I should stop posting here, since it's clearly a WINE issue.

The thing is, I expect lots of people with Bitcoins don't use Windows.  Windows is notorious for being targeted by viruses and other malware, so it makes sense to avoid it and use something more secure if you're going to be dealing with Bitcoins.  I'm not sure a Windows-only Bitcoin poker site is going to fly at the moment.

I'm no expert on malware, but I would expect it's less likely to be able to thrive in a WINE environment than on a real Windows box.  Specially crafted programs could probably cause you some trouble though.  I believe programs running in WINE can see your whole filesystem, not just your ~/.wine.

[Daily Anarchist]

Yeah, I tried to get the developer of PM Poker, and other Bitcoin poker sites, to create Linux installations. Windows is such F'ing trash I really don't know why anybody caters to it anymore, especially if your target clientele are Bitcoin users. Oh well. Going to have to wait this one out, I guess.

[dooglus]

I guess I should try something else that I know used to work great in WINE and see how that works now.  It that's messed up too then I should stop posting here, since it's clearly a WINE issue.

I just installed PokerStars from an old .exe I had lying around.  I ran the .exe in WINE, it told me there was a newer version available, offered to download it, downloaded it, installed it, let me log in, and everything looks fine:



So WINE still works for me like it used to, except not with pmpoker.

I hope somebody makes an HTML5 poker site some day, using the same kind of technology as http://bitzino.com/ uses.  Those guys know how to make a gambling site that works for everyone.  No need for Windows, Flash, etc.  Just use your browser, and it just works.

[dooglus]

You're not going to believe this, but I just shut down Linux and booted into Windows 7.  My laptop came with Windows 7, but I've never used it before other than for 5 minutes to see what it looked like.

I went to pmpoker.com and downloaded the .exe installer again, and ran it.  I logged in to my dooglus account, and everything happened the same as in WINE.  First I got an access violation error, then a bunch of bigger messages with JSON in them.

Here's a screenshot:



Note the bog standard ACER wallpaper - it's a real OEM Windows 7 install that came pre-installed on the laptop because I was too lazy to try to find a "No OS" laptop this time.

So maybe the issue is with my pmpoker account, but it's definitely NOT with WINE!

[Junko]

I'm getting the same thing dooglus is getting.

Google Chrome
Windows 7 32 Home

PS - omg, dooglus. I'm jelly. I miss PokerStars soooo much

[dooglus]

I'm getting the same thing dooglus is getting.

Google Chrome
Windows 7 32 Home

PS - omg, dooglus. I'm jelly. I miss PokerStars soooo much

Sorry, I was being inconsiderate.  I forgot about the whole "no US players on Stars" thing.

Did you ever use WINE to play pmpoker?  I'm wondering if that somehow messes up our accounts, stopping them even from working from Windows.

My Windows 7 is 64 bit Home Premium I think.  It says "Home Premium" when it boots, and it's a 64 bit processor, so I'm assuming they put the 64 bit version on.

[Junko]

I'm getting the same thing dooglus is getting.

Google Chrome
Windows 7 32 Home

PS - omg, dooglus. I'm jelly. I miss PokerStars soooo much

Sorry, I was being inconsiderate.  I forgot about the whole "no US players on Stars" thing.

Did you ever use WINE to play pmpoker?  I'm wondering if that somehow messes up our accounts, stopping them even from working from Windows.

My Windows 7 is 64 bit Home Premium I think.  It says "Home Premium" when it boots, and it's a 64 bit processor, so I'm assuming they put the 64 bit version on.

dooglus - I don't even know what "WINE" is, so I think no.

Got the crazy pop ups again today. Same as dooglus has described - error messages popping up faster than I could close them. Had to exit (end task in task manager) the client and log back on. When i did, everything seemed ok.

[dooglus]

I signed up for the 11am freeroll at my house, then took my laptop to the neighbour's house at around 10:55am and got back online.  I had left pmpoker running, but when I got back online it didn't seem to notice.  The player list showed me as the most recent sign-up even though others had signed up after me.  I tried clicking around all over the client, but nothing seemed to make it check whether there was an Internet connection or not.  Previously, it's woken up and noticed it was disconnected when I click around.

I closed pmpoker and started it again.

It came up and logged me in (no updates to apply), then showed 1 or 2 error boxes (I think about memory violation errors, or whatever it's called when you deference an invalid pointer) but after that worked pretty much flawlessly.

I saw only one thing that looked like a bug.  A couple of players showed their hold'em hole cards.  One guy had only 1 card, and the other had 4.  I don't know if he was keeping some up his sleeve, or what was going on, but it looks suspicious.    The 2 popups in the top right are IM alerts from a different program.  I blurred their content.



Overall the game ran much more smoothly than I've seen it before.  It was fast and smooth and almost bug-free!  A vast improvement on yesterday at any rate.

[dooglus]

Just as the next tournament started, I got a bunch more errors - notice the last one, which seems to indicate a coding error.  0x60 isn't a valid address to be trying to write to, so it looks like a pointer got corrupted:



I've seen similar messages on Windows (I'm back in Linux now, using WINE).

[dooglus]

I killed pmpoker and restarted it.  I have it set to auto-login, remembering my password for me.

While the splash screen was still up, and before any other GUI showed up, I started getting errors, starting with the 'access violation' you see in the bottom right corner.  It seems to always be trying to write to address 0x60, which may be significant:

[dooglus]

I killed it and tried again, and got much the same result:



However, I then found a workaround for the bug.

If I'm very quick, and click 'ok' to the access violation error box before all the JSON error boxes start appearing, then the table I'm sat at appears, and no other errors show up.

It's as if the access violation error box is blocking the table window from opening, which is leading to the players table not being initialised, and so none of the messages trying to update the table work.  Maybe.  I'm guessing with very little to go on of course.  But anyway, I'm able to play again now, by clicking 'ok' very quickly to the first error box.

[creativex]

I get those too, on win7 x64 and win8 x64 preview. Hope this can be patched up, I really like it otherwise.

[cambda]

Got the crazy pop ups again today. Same as dooglus has described - error messages popping up faster than I could close them. Had to exit (end task in task manager) the client and log back on. When i did, everything seemed ok.

Exactly the same (and solution) I got 2x in 2 sessions out of three, so relatively often

I saw only one thing that looked like a bug.  A couple of players showed their hold'em hole cards.  One guy had only 1 card, and the other had 4.  I don't know if he was keeping some up his sleeve, or what was going on, but it looks suspicious.    The 2 popups in the top right are IM alerts from a different program.  I blurred their content.

I though it was a bug too and in fact it shows everytime when level 5 starts. It is a game to distribute odd chips that will be not in play anymore, like in offline poker tournaments. But it is so quick and uncommon for online pokerroom, it looks like a bug. It also explains why we cant bet odd chip amount as we are used from online pokerrooms 

[dooglus]

I though it was a bug too and in fact it shows everytime when level 5 starts. It is a game to distribute odd chips that will be not in play anymore, like in offline poker tournaments. But it is so quick and uncommon for online pokerroom, it looks like a bug. It also explains why we cant bet odd chip amount as we are used from online pokerrooms 

Oh, yes.  I meant to post about that myself.  Steve from PM Poker called me and we talked about the bugs I was seeing, including this one.  It turns out that this isn't a bug at all, but is how odd chips are fairly shared out when the blind levels go up.  I hadn't even noticed that it's written right across the table: "coloring up $5 chips"...

Apparently this is common in real life poker tournaments, and PM Poker is aiming to be as close to real poker as possible.  Hence disallowing 'silly' bet amounts, sometimes dealing a hand with no small blind (when the person who would have played small blind was just knocked out), etc.  The website will hopefully list these differences when it's unveiled (soon, I'm told) so that those of us who only really know online poker will know what to expect at PM Poker.

Here's another example of "coloring up", involving 8 players:

[Junko]

I signed up for the 11am freeroll at my house, then took my laptop to the neighbour's house at around 10:55am and got back online.  I had left pmpoker running, but when I got back online it didn't seem to notice.  The player list showed me as the most recent sign-up even though others had signed up after me.  I tried clicking around all over the client, but nothing seemed to make it check whether there was an Internet connection or not.  Previously, it's woken up and noticed it was disconnected when I click around.

I closed pmpoker and started it again.

It came up and logged me in (no updates to apply), then showed 1 or 2 error boxes (I think about memory violation errors, or whatever it's called when you deference an invalid pointer) but after that worked pretty much flawlessly.

I saw only one thing that looked like a bug.  A couple of players showed their hold'em hole cards.  One guy had only 1 card, and the other had 4.  I don't know if he was keeping some up his sleeve, or what was going on, but it looks suspicious.    The 2 popups in the top right are IM alerts from a different program.  I blurred their content.



Overall the game ran much more smoothly than I've seen it before.  It was fast and smooth and almost bug-free!  A vast improvement on yesterday at any rate.

What the?! You could see my hole cards? So that's how you beat me when we were heads up.  

EDIT: When chips are colored up (the small denomination chips are converted/consolidated into higher denomination chips - a different color, hence the term, 'coloring up' as the blinds increase to bigger whole round numbers) there is a high card draw for the extra chip. And for each extra $5 chip you have at this point, that’s how many cards you get for the high card drawing for that $25 chip. In the image above, one of d3bil’s Jack(his highest card) beat my 5, so he gets the $25 chip. Once all the $5 chips have been consolidated into $25 chips, all the $5 chips are removed from the tournament.

Why they would need to do this in online poker, I don’t know. This is done in live poker tournaments so that there aren't a million small denomination chips towards the end of the tourney.

[dooglus]

Why they would need to do this in online poker, I don’t know. This is done in live poker tournaments so that there aren't a million small denomination chips towards the end of the tourney.

I think the aim is to make the game as much like 'real poker' as possible.  In real poker you can't make a bet of 1999 chips when the blinds are 100/200, so you can't in PM Poker either.

I meant to post this link earlier: http://casinosmack.com/blog/how-to-color-up-chips-correctly-in-poker-chip-race-round-up-and-rounding/ for people (like myself) who didn't hear about "coloring up" before...

And I think the reason I beat you heads up was because you folded every time I bluffed, and called every time I didn't...  Just unlucky I guess.

[dooglus]

However, I then found a workaround for the bug.

If I'm very quick, and click 'ok' to the access violation error box before all the JSON error boxes start appearing, then the table I'm sat at appears, and no other errors show up.

I think the 'access violation' error happens at the start of each tournament.  Perhaps every time the client tries to open a table for me.  I left the client running after the 1pm game ended.  At 3pm I saw the error dialog pop up, but I was typing at the time, and as soon as I hit the spacebar the error dialog disappeared.  Then the table opened, and I could play normally.

This is quite different to the 1pm game where the dialog popped up, but I didn't dismiss it in time, and then was met by hundreds of error boxes telling me about JSON errors, or some such.

So I need to be quick to dismiss the "can't write to 0x60" box as soon as it appears at the start of each tournament.

[Junko]

And I think the reason I beat you heads up was because you folded every time I bluffed, and called every time I didn't...  Just unlucky I guess.

Ahhh, so you zigged when I thought you zagged and zagged when I thought you zigged. I'm on to you now.  

[dooglus]

Here's a new issue...  I noticed my laptop was running very hot.  When I run 'top' to see what's causing it, I see PMPoker.exe using the whole of one of my CPU cores.

In the following screenshot, it's my turn to act, so it really shouldn't be doing much more than waiting for me to click something, but it's running the laptop flat out.  It happens the whole time I'm playing (but not when I'm not at a table), no matter whose turn it is.  It's too hot in here already, and I could do without the laptop heating up and making annoying fan sounds while I play.  Also, I'm running off solar power, and it's winter, so there's not really enough power to waste on whatever the poker client thinks it's doing.

Is this a WINE issue, or does the client use the whole of one CPU core on Windows too?

[dooglus]

I noticed there are left and right arrows in the top right corner of the chat box's title bar.  I couldn't figure out what they're for.  I guessed maybe it's for moving through the tabs.  But there's only one tab.  Could it be that you can private-message people, and have a tab for each?

I tried clicking people's names in the chat, hoping to get a context menu, "pm this person" or something.

All it did was move the text cursor in the chat box, so that future messages didn't appear at the end, making a mess: