UB Troubles But I'm Playing Tonight

Since I started playing poker online, UB has always been my home base. With some success over the last six months, I've branched out to other sites and now has small bankrolls at Party, PokerStars (just a bit), FullTilt, and Paradise (and probably some BR at a few other sites like pokerroom, which I did just to play in some special event). But UB has remained home. I know a lot of the players (some of poker buds, some I just know how they play), plus I prefer the software and the blind structure for tournaments.

About twice a year, UB has big time software trouble, often during upgrades to their servers. Being in the Internet business, I know a bit about this and understand the problems they are going through. They are currently in a very long stretch of down time, software bugs, crashes, etc. During previous outages, I got angry at them and thought about moving to other sites for good but came back when the problems were fixed.

This time, maybe because I've been so busy on PokerXFactor, I've been much more relaxed about the outage. When they are back, I'll be back. Right now they are running huge freerolls with 2500 players and I've been hitting boards, checking standings -- it all seems zippy to me. Definitely faster than before.

So I'm going to play in their $200 tonight if they run it. If it crashes, it crashes ... I'll just hope they'll get it right soon.

Why do I have more patience this time? Because I honestly believe Ultimate Bet must improve to survive. Party just released a big upgrade that is pretty darn good and includes software improvements, bigger starting chip counts, and better blind structures. Paradise now has better blind structures and has improvements like auto hand history saving (something UB doesn't have yet). PokerStars just improved their blinds structure.

There are a bunch of UB players who are part of the PocketFives community who have recently become part of "Team UB." They are saying that this big server upgrade had to happen first, THEN more software upgrades will come.

For me, the main software changes I want are earning bonus dollars with tournament play (currently it's just bonus points for cash games), saving hand histories automatically, and unregistering for tournaments you satellite into (meaning you get credits on your account that can be used for any other tournament). Just these three things could be big for the site. But the "UB Team" have been collecting suggestions on P5s for months. I hope they get through this upgrade and keep going. Let's hope!