New client 888 - now available to the masses
It doesn't take seven spans in the forehead to grasp the simple truth - one of the biggest factors in the popularity of the online gambling industry leader - Pokerstars is by far the best client software on the market. High user friendliness, customizability, pleasant appearance - all this determines the immense popularity of the room, despite the controversial decisions of marketers for the benefit of the poker environment.
It is believed that it is the antiquity and inferiority of the partypoker client that largely neutralizes the huge efforts to promote its platform and form a real competition for the monopolist of the poker industry.
The poor financial performance of 2018 served as a good incentive for 888 to work on bugs and inspired to make long-awaited changes in the rather archaic software of the poker room. Recently, all users have the opportunity to try out a new client (before that, the software was in a state of long-term testing and running-in).
What's new?
A nice feature of the transition to the new "Poker 8" client was ... its softness and similarity to the previous version. It is not known for certain whether this smoothness is caused by a lack of funding or by the wisdom of people who have decided not to radically change their usual way of life. In the end, the players are satisfied - they received a large-scale revised version of the software, but without the need to acclimatize in a new place. The lobby has not changed at all.
In the meantime, there is no need to worry about it. ”
But the appearance of the tables has been significantly improved. One of the most pleasant events that have long been asking for, but have not been implemented before, is the collapsed default chat. A decent number of players disliked the chat, which occupied an unreasonably large area of the gaming table and distracted from playing poker.
Player avatars have been redesigned to be minimalistic, giving the new 888 client a slight resemblance to the older version of Full Tilt Poker (pre-Black Friday). The function of throwing tomatoes at persons you dislike is left for the amusement of amateurs. However, disabling animations and player avatars using the settings has not disappeared anywhere. Glamor and style to the new 888 poker client adds a beautiful time-bank demonstration solution. Now it is reflected not in the form of a countdown, but by the shortening edges of the frame of the window with a nickname. Added the number of card backs and other visual settings. The function of demonstrating equity percentages for all-in situations has been added. The window with bet sizes and choice of action options has become more refined and visually appealing. A pleasant improvement in the settings menu for the size of bets is the ability to set an atypical sizing by entering the entered numbers as a percentage.
In the meantime, there is no need to worry about it. ”
What about the poker auxiliary software?
One of the pleasant sides of a smooth software update is that there is no need to sit and engage in tedious reconfiguration of the poker software or to be tediously waiting for the life-giving patch, without which the programs generally refuse to interact with the client of the poker room. Both 888Caption and Poker Tracker 4 worked without a single tambourine dance. Hence, 888Poker hand histories can also be studied to maximize EV.
Tar spoon
In the new version of the client, it was not possible to find a useful button "go to sit-out before the arrival of the BB". The previous version of the 888Poker client contained it. An alternative version of this flaw - the developers of Poker 8 listened to the eternal complaints of the players, which boiled down to the construction "I ticked a sit-out and in the last hand I got KK in late position, I made a 3-bet, I got a 4-bet ..." and secured them from a sudden cooler at the end of the poker session. Let's not discount the excess of the performer.
Summary
888Poker have reasoned sensibly and made the right conclusions about their archaic software and its inconsistency with the current poker reality. As always, we can say that we are a few years late, but better this way than nothing (or than the Ongame poker network, which died a few years ago, among other things, due to backward software). The client became prettier, began to look like a pleasant platform for a comfortable pastime. They did without sudden movements in the form of a ban on the use of poker software. In the current realities - already great news. Still, the rake was made less extortionate and one would expect a moderate, but at the same time, steady growth.