888 Poker Addresses Connectivity Issues

888 Poker is one of the few online poker networks experiencing growth in its ring games over the past few years.  The growth helped spark the online poker room to climb to the #2 spot in the PokerScout ring game traffic rankings, where it seems to have a firm hold.

This doesn't mean the online poker operator hasn't experienced its share of hiccups as well.  Over the past year, at times 888 Poker has had connectivity issues, which has led to the cancellation of tournaments.  This has been even more frequent over the past few weeks.

These connectivity issues are well known and 888 Poker is believed to be working on the problem.  A rep from 888 Poker commented on the TwoPlusTwo poker forum, "We would like to assure you that resolving these issues is our top priority and we are working with our partners to ensure the interruptions come to an end."

While 888 is working on getting its connectivity issues resolved, last week the online poker room introduced a new "pause tournament" feature to improve things for tournaments players.  This feature is just as it sounds.  If 888 is experiencing connectivity issues, instead of cancelling tournaments, it will instead pause them to give the network an opportunity to resume play if conditions improve or cancel the tournament if they do not.

888 Poker announced these changes with an official statement that read in part, "Tournament clocks will standstill during this pause – same as in the hourly break of tournaments. We will resume activity once the network returns to normal behavior or cancel tournaments altogether, ensuring players are automatically refunded in accordance with 888's disconnection policy.  We appreciate your patience and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused."

When a tournament is paused, it will work similarly to a tournament being on break where the clock stops moving and the blind levels stay the same.  The only inconvenience for players is waiting around to see if the tournament itself will resume and that the time to complete the tournament will now be longer.  These inconveniences, however, are an improvement for many players over cancelling tournaments straight away.

While this new feature should benefit many tournament players, it will not improve things for cash game players.  TwoPlusTwo poster "ontheupandup" was one to express his frustration asking the 888 rep, "What about your cash game players who are getting repeatedly screwed over by these disconnects?"

It doesn't appear that 888 has an immediate fix ready for cash game players, however, the rep did suggest in this case that "if you were materially affected by the disconnections, you should contact support with the full details of your case."

Visit 888 Poker for more details.

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