Fun With Full Tilt Support

Here’s a sad but humorous exchange I had with FTP support today. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure I would have folded the river anyway, though that’s hardly the point:

I just played a hand in the $1000 NLHE FTOPS event in which I activated my time bank, for what I believe to be the first time in this event, on the river. Within seconds, my hand was folded. Could you help me to understand what happened? I looked back through the chat log and couldn’t find a previous instance of my having used the timebank. Why did i have so little time available. I ended up folding a good hand in a big pot because my time expired, so I’d like t understand what happened. Thank you, Andrew

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for contacting Full Tilt Poker Support.

Your time bank offers you that little bit of extra time if you need it while playing at the tables.

Here’s how it works. When you’re almost out of time, the colored bar beneath your avatar will start counting down, and a
blue “Time” button will appear above the betting slider on the lower right side of the table window.

If you click the “Time” button, your time bank feature will begin counting down after the colored bar runs out of time.
You can tell that other players are using their time banks when a black box appears and counts down in the time bank spot.

You have a separate time bank for each open table, and each time bank is only applicable to that table.

The amount of time available in your bank varies depending on how long you’ve been seated at the table and the type of
game you’re playing. Your time increases with each hand played, and after every tournament break. You’ll also accumulate
extra time in your bank when you reach the final table of a tournament.

In addition, you have a separate Disconnect Time Bank, which gives you 90 seconds of total disconnect time per 24 hour
period.

If our server detects that you’ve been disconnected, the other players at the table will be automatically informed
through the table chat window. When you reach the end of your allotted decision time, your Disconnect Time Bank will be
displayed and begin counting down.

The Disconnect Time Bank continues counting down until you reconnect to the game and take an action. If you don’t
reconnect to the game before the Disconnect Time Bank runs out, your hand will be folded.

For more information about time banks and the Disconnect Time Bank, please visit our website at: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/table.php

Good luck at the tables, and if you have any further questions, please let us know.

7 thoughts on “Fun With Full Tilt Support”

  1. You probably won’t get much more help beyond the form letter form support, so here’s my 2 cents. By far, the most likely explanation is a laggy internet connection. I think you can get hosed if the server doesn’t receive your timebank request prior to timeout, even if you click in time on the client side.

    • I’ve had that happen before, but that’s not actually what happened here. The timebank did activate, I just had only about 3 seconds remaining it. The most likely explanation is certainly that I’d used it on a previous hand, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t. It isn’t something I do often, it was only about 10 minutes into the tournament, I had no recollection of it, and I scanned back through the chat log and saw no mention of my having requested time.

  2. I used to run a help desk and we had canned responses – saves time. HOWEVER, you have to read the e-mail that was sent to you and tailor your response to fit — it doesn’t appear the person who replied actually digested what your message.

    • Speaking from experience…

      When an organization becomes large enough, it’s almost inevitable that the mission of the frontline CS personnel will shift, without anyone realizing it, from solving customer’s problems to just getting tickets closed. There are various reasons why that happens, and they vary by organization, but it almost always happens and is very difficult to prevent.

      The wording of AB’s emaill gave him no chance at all. Asking for help understanding a problem just gives CS an excuse to blow him off with a boilerplate response, even if they know it’s probably a real bug. They get to close the ticket, which makes their numbers look good and keeps them from getting yelled at by stressed out techies and programmers who already have a pile of bug reports to deal with, and they know most customers won’t follow up.

      I would have put “Time Bank Bug” in the subject line, and in the body written something like “I had not used my time bank prior to this and should have had the full allotment. This bug may have cost me a lot of money.” I’ve found with both PS and FTP that you have to use scary words like that to get them to forward this stuff to the people who actually know how to deal with it. Otherwise you just get the boilerplate dustoff.

      • Makes sense and interesting read, thanks! Not that I’ve read it, but this reminds me of what I understand to be the premise of Sklansky’s new book, “DUCY?”: always consider the motivations and incentives of anyone you’re dealing with.

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