The Pokertropolis software is custom developed just for PokerTropolis, as far as I can tell at least. They would have been a lot better off just buying a standard software – this client isn’t good at all.
The lobby contains the usual list of tables with tabs to change between different games. One thing that is different about this list is that the text is rather small but since the contrast with the background is good there are no problems with readability and you fit quite almost twenty tables in one page so you have a good overview. Furthermore, the lists can’t be sorted and this is probably the first client I have seen where this very basic functionality is missing. Another thing that is different is that no zeroes are displayed, the entry is empty instead. I can’t decide whether I like this or not – on the one hand it is more aesthetically pleasing but on the other hand it is easier to get lost when there are a lot of empty entries. That is, it might be hard to directly see to which column that lone 8 in the bottom of the list belong. No big problems here though. You don’t get a whole lot of information about the tables, no view flop percentages and no additional stuff like rake or maximum number of players. There is no drop-down main menu but instead a row of buttons below the list view. Beneath this row of buttons there is a large lacuna that could have been used in some way I think. I suspect it is there for design reasons but I personally don’t think it adds much in that respect. In the bottom right corner you have some buttons that will take you to other services such as a sportsbook.
You kind of suspect to find the tournaments in the list view somewhere but they are instead reached through a button located together with other functions that are not logically related such as waiting list, cashier, support and so on. Sure, the label is quite appropriate – “Tournaments” – and there are no other buttons that it might be confused with but it’s not where you first look for it. The tournament facilities are not as good as they could have been, or, to put it more bluntly, they are very poor. I will go into the very frustrating thing that happens when you close tables later and will instead delve into some other shortcomings in this paragraph. When you find the tournaments and bring up a list you expect to get some kind of additional information when you click at a tourney in the list. Well, in tournaments that are running or finished you do get information but not quite the information you would expect. You get the ranking of players but not their chip amounts. You also get some kind of weird numbers in the min and max information for the tables. For example, it said “$80” max and “$10” min which made no sense since this was a tournament with 100 players with only one table left. Finally I realized the “logic”: if I clicked the table I could see a list of what they had: $80000-something max and $10000-something min. About tournaments that are not yet started you don’t get any info about payouts or how long it is until it starts (you only get the time and it’s not at all clear which time zone they are in even). Furthermore, the relation between the “Multi-table” and “In progress” lists is very unclear. When I looked, the “In progress” list showed one tournament and the “Multi table” list had one where the list contained a lot of tables with odd stack sizes. This tournament must have been running but it didn’t show up in the “In progress” list – and the one in the “In progress” list didn’t show up in the “Multi-table” list. I don’t get it. The controls are also extremely confusing. If you look at a tournament in the “Multi table” list it has a button to left that either says “Signup” or “View”. If you click “View” you might expect a lobby but instead you get a table. Which table is it? The first in the list? A random table? Anyway, I wanted to look at a specific table and double clicked one in the list – next surprise: nothing at all happened.
Another thing that I find problematic and that I suspect might turn people with less computer experience off is that a lot of the external functions such as the cashier appears to be located as ActiveX components on the local hard drive. Thus, on most computers today, there will be a lot of security warnings when you try to access these functions and if you have a pop-up blocker some of them won’t work. There is a text that informs about the pop-up blocker problem but I saw nothing reassuring about the other warnings. There should at least be some kind of instructions here. Also, for some reason, when you minimize the lobby it (at least on my computer) shrunk to a small thing in the bottom left corner. As a programmer I know this is what child windows inside applications usually do so it is a bit strange that the lobby does this. For example this has the effect that clicking its tab in the activity bar has no effect: it just activates this minimized version of the lobby and this confused me a lot. To bring the lobby up you have to either click the “view lobby” button at a table or click the restore window button on the minimized version in the corner. This, if it always does this, is unnecessary and confusing. In general this client has some irritating features that didn’t have to be there. Another one is that if I look at the tournaments in the lobby and leave a table, the lobby snaps back to ring games. The same is unfortunately true if you look at a tournament table and then decide to look at another one: when you close the table you’re back in the ring games and have to navigate all the way back to where you were again.
A maximum of two tables can be played at the same time and this is too few in my opinion. I can live with a three tables limit but two is too few. In fact you can’t even view more than two tables while many other clients with limitations will only stop you from sitting in. Thus, if you want to check how your friend is doing in a tournament while playing two tables: forget it unless you want to see it badly enough that you think it’s worth leaving the game. Playing is however not too bad an experience: the controls are a bit small but they work. Another weird and unnecessary detail here though: the actions buttons appear to be reversed. I expect to find the most passive action to the left and the most aggressive to the right. Here, however, it’s the other way around. This could really become a problem if you want to play additional tables at other rooms at the same time. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to review the big bet structure controls (sliders etc.) because I haven’t been able to find a no limit or pot limit table in action. Playing the two tables that you are allowed to works rather smoothly, the focus passes between the tables as it should although the player turn could have been more clearly indicated.
The graphics are not bad and the same goes for animations. Apart from that, however, this client is not very good and the tournament controls are bad almost to the point that they are impossible to use. My guess is that the communication between the developers and those that ordered the software hasn’t been very good.
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