[Lee Jones]

Hi folks -

As many of you are aware (and some certaintly not), I am the new cardroom manager at Cake Poker. You can read the announcement here.

One of my most important responsibilities is to stay in touch with the player community, so I've fired up this thread as a way for you to ask general questions about the site.

A few groundrules before we start:

1. Please read this article before posting, particularly if you have a tendency to go off when writing emails or forum posts. Let's keep the conversation civil and constructive. That doesn't mean you can't complain. In fact, I count on your input to let us know where we're coming up short. But if you say "Cake software is a piece of $|-|1+", that doesn't help me understand your problem, and it doesn't help the quality of the discussion, either.

2. Please don't post basic customer service issues here. For instance, "I requested a transfer X weeks ago and still haven't gotten it." We are not going to do customer support through this thread - that's why we have support@cakepoker.com. First, it's not a good way to do customer support, and second, it's wholly inappropriate to discuss a specific customer's concern in a public forum.

3. Please understand that I am the cardroom manager for Cake Poker, and not other network partners of the Cake network. Any questions, comments, concerns about those partners should go to directly to the partner site.

With those (minimal, I trust) rules in place, we're ready to. Bring on the cards and letters - I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
Lee Jones

Cake Poker Cardroom Manager
lee@cakepoker.com

[Appst08]

4max 10r 50r 100r Gtd

im not sure if u have 4max right now, but i would love to see a site add a 4max gtee with different levels Low,Mid,High and call them whatever you would like.

[chicagocards1]

a bigger nightly tournament besides the 30r maybe some 109 50k or something bigger

[RJA87]

Anyway to change the minimum amount to cashout via check? Especially when they don't really have other options..

[MattyDaCobra]

It would be nice if table-sizing at Cake were more in line with other sites. Right now they don't shrink down as much as others do, which can make tiling tables a little difficult. Also change it so you can click and drag from one corner and resize from that corner only instead of the funky way it currently does it, where all the sides move all crazy-like. Also, don't have all lobbies pop-up everytime you click on a table.

[ronkend]

 

Originally Posted by Appst08

4max 10r 50r 100r Gtd

im not sure if u have 4max right now, but i would love to see a site add a 4max gtee with different levels Low,Mid,High and call them whatever you would like.

this is retarded.

You need some solid 9pmish type freezeouts. 55$nl and a 109 somewhere in there would be good. Also the schedule is need of a 3r with a solid guarantee

[UhhMee]

 

Originally Posted by Appst08

4max 10r 50r 100r Gtd

im not sure if u have 4max right now, but i would love to see a site add a 4max gtee with different levels Low,Mid,High and call them whatever you would like.

wtf you're asking for a 4-handed 100r? lol?

[MUPokerPlayer]

I am a midstakes tourney player. Name 10 reasons why I should deposit $500.

[Chazley]

1. Upgrade the Shop. Make gear WAYYYY easier to get (who doesn't want free advertising?) and make other items way lower priced. It basically useless now.

2. Connecting.... bug. 'nuff said.

3. More guaranteed freezeouts, less bounties.

4. Better deposit options.

5. Better cashout options. 500 minimum for check is ridiculous, without even mentioning the 35 dollar fee if you do it more than once per month.

6. Bring back the Sportsbook players to high stakes. Please.

7. Lastly, yet most important, for the love of god PLEASE upgrade the software. Every person I've ever known that has played on Cake has complained about the buggy software. I know you don't want to hear anymore about the quality of the software, but it is BY FAR the most pressing issue in regards to upgrading Cake Poker overall.

Good luck Lee, I appreciate you stepping out into the public forums on p5's and 2p2 to listen to players concerns. I love this site and I hope it only improves under your guidance.

[jsamps]

Make the $10 rebuy later (3pm pst too early)...say 5pm or 6pm PST

Make the $5 rebuy earlier...say 7pm or 8 pst

Add a $3 rebuy

Get some better freezeouts with a guarantee in the evening

Don't mix up the tourney schedule so much

Add tourney dollars

Overall the nightly schedule needs to be adjusted for West coast players.

Fix the software so that the information in the tourney lobby doesn't just disappear

Lately sometimes I have issues seeing my cards hidden behind my name on the table

Sometimes when I try to rebuy I get an error message and can't rebuy. The window that pops up just is an error message.

Will post some more when they come to me

Thanks Lee!!

[Appst08]

 

Originally Posted by UhhMee

 

Originally Posted by Appst08

4max 10r 50r 100r Gtd

im not sure if u have 4max right now, but i would love to see a site add a 4max gtee with different levels Low,Mid,High and call them whatever you would like.

wtf you're asking for a 4-handed 100r? lol?

i love 4-max and enjoy it mtt wise. sorry, just saying my opinion, didn't know i would be getting flammed for my OPINION

[Aaryn]

Give something to the tourney players, I grind SnG's all day long and never have a shot at gold card promotions. Give us more FPP's or something to make up the difference.

When one person is registered for a SnG make a new one start.

Thanks Lee

[yoyogipark]

please find a way to turn off volume while playing. makes it really hard to watch a movie at the same time.

[MattyDaCobra]

 

Originally Posted by yoyogipark

please find a way to turn off volume while playing. makes it really hard to watch a movie at the same time.

Use your computer's sound mixer.

[Puggy82]

Table size is my main gripe - it is the only reason i don't play there on a daily basis.

[mikechr23]

I know you said you are not in control of other skins but this has something to do with Cake also.

I signed up to * when I received a postcard about rakeback a couple of years ago. But in the fine print there was a minimum monthly rake that had to be paid in order to keep getting the rakeback. So when I took some time off from the site I lost my rakeback.

I then sign up for the Cake skin about 8 months ago and connected it to my current rakeback account. I played 3 days with no problems then got an email saying that I couldn't have rakeback through two different skins and my Cake account was closed and unaccessible. I had to (through many emails to cake and some friends) transfer what was left in my cake account to a friend and was told to play on the skin that I was getting rakeback on in the first place.

So now I am not receiving rakeback with * and had my cake account closed. I have no intention of EVER playing through the Cake skin again unless there is something that can be done to get me rakeback. If there is anything that can be done to change this policy I would love to play on Cake in the future. Thanks Mike

[scarface_79]

I have very high hopes for cake and i think it can grow very fast with the right changes and strategy especially with the hire of lee jones, definately a huge step in the right direction.

I'll be more thorough when i have more time, but off hand i'd definately like to see cake pay top 10% of mtts instead of 20%. Also, in the past and apparently currently there are alot of bots, particularly in the limit holdem games. There are others, but i dont have time to mention them all now. gl cake

[Phi aka tennisee]

1. PLEASE REFORMAT YOUR SOFTWARE. I am being 100% serious and not triyng to go off......but it has been buggy for the past 1 1/2 years and is garbage imo....truly my honest opinion. I mean they used to tell me that I couldn't use Mozilla as my main browser and had to use IE cause it messed w/ Cake software and that is just rediculous. The software takes up WAYYYY too much memory and makes it so difficult to multi-table It's almost like every table is like having a webpage up. I don't know the software specifics but I know pokerstars is not like this. I have literally probably received over $2,000 in refunds from Cake Poker from software issues, until recently its been like pulling teeth to get a refund when the software freezes so I stopped trying.

2. Scrap the 10-man SNGs. They simply DO NOT fill like they should. PLEASE Change these to 9mans and pay out Top 3.

3. Add TURBO Double Up's. Cake coined this style of SNG play....they should be up to date.

4. Add 7-Card Stud already. If your goal is to be a Top Tier On-line Poker Site you need to cater to every form of poker. That tab has been there forever but no tables.

5. When joining waiting list for a cash game tables it is super annoying to have to "Submit a Request". When I hit "Join Wait List" I should automatically be added.

6. Why can only cash game players get Gold Cards? With the current FPP system being rather weak I think it would be a huge bonus for SNG players to be able to get these. And while we are at it....drop these "Gold Chips" completely and run off of just an FPP system. Why even say you earn FPPs then get "Gold Chips?" Makes no sense to me.

7. Create a VIP system. I know most are getting rakeback but it would be great to be rewarded in some way by grinding on that site full-time.

8. The SNG lobby is extremely laggy. After I register for a SNG it sometimes takes quite a while for a new SNG to appear. This is extremely annoying for a mass multi-tabler like myself since it stretches my $/hr. Actually, you need to make it to where when a particular SNG is registered for a new one automatically pops up allowing me to say register for 20 SNGs at a time if I wanted to.

9. The "Tile Table" function is extremely flawed. For people like myself who run off of multiple monitors it always throw the tables halfway off the screen and does not recognize my dual resolutions or monitors for that matter.

10. Lower the minimum cashout. I can only assume this is a huge turnoff for the low limit occasional $50 depositer who I would assume makes up a substantial amount of your marketing target. I realize the longer they have to play to be able to cashout the more rake you guys earn but I mean...come on? REALLY? $500?

11. Create a lot more guaranteed tournaments. Hell you dont need to make the guarantee high by any means.....but give it the double stack. I'm sure you have seen the stats for non-guaranteed tournaments on cake. The traffic for these is laughable. I am currently looking in the lobby and there is a $2 MTT w/ no guarantee starting in 36 minutes and there is currently not one single person registered. It is 4am EST but still. Guarantees will make players happy and increase volume aka your rake.

12. Create a TLB or SNG Leaderboard. Promotions Promotions PROMOTIONS! MARKET YOURSELF!

13. If/When you decide to re-format the software it needs to be WAY more multi-tabling friendly. This will bring over full-time professional grinders and make you a massive amount of money in rake. I was once playing full-time on Cake a year ago to take advantage of the rakeback and soft players but the CONSTANT software issues and not being able to 20-25 table turned me off and now PokerStars receives my $50,000 in rake a year.

14. When a SNG pops up it automatically sits you out....if you do not click sit in you miss hands. This is annoying. Scrap that!

15. When you open a 6-max cash ring game the players seats are just randomly placed on the table. I just opened one and 2 people are sitting on the left side of the table and 4 people on the right side. This just looks ugly and is annoying. Fix please.

16. The HH Reviewer is ugly. VERY ugly. Please Fix.

17. Add more backgrounds. I know the pictures of the people look all cool but its really not to a serious player. I could care less about being able to chose between an old grandmother or a big breasted women, or a kid w/ a hoodie. Real players just want a smooth running interface that is not sore on the eyes. Maybe make it customizable? I know the simple background was added buy its still quite ugly and an eye sore.

18. Why is every cash game table at its respectable limits names the same thing? Ex. all $.50/$1 tables are "Chelsea". This makes it extremely difficult to find tables/players.

19. Add a search feature for players?

20. Limiting me to 1 Player-To-Player Transfer per day is annoying. Fix please.

21. When 2 players are All-In both of them are shown as "ALL-IN" even though one of them may have more chips than the other. This is EXTREMELY annoying. I would like to know which player is at risk of elimination when they are "ALL-IN"

22. There was a bug for a while where the hand after a player has been "ALL-IN" the software does not show the current chip stack until another hand is played. This may have already been fixed. If not please do.

23. Adding-On to your stack in cash games is annoying. It gives you some stupid error message if you accidently do it twice and if you do it while in a hand it will not process even if you have room to add.

24. Make the card image sharper when in the smallest mode aka minimized down as far as it will go. The cards tend to get blurry as you make the table smaller.

Ok I am going to stop here. I could seriously go on FOREVER AND EVER. Feel free to hire me and fly me out and with the help of me and a few regs we can have Cake Poker Top Tier in no time (kidding....kinda....PM me lol)

I spent soooo mch time a year ago going back and forth with Customer Service reprentatives over MULTIPLE software issues/glitches and never got anywhere w/ my recommendations so I left the site. I am very glad that you have taken the job as Card Room Manager because I always thought that Cake Poker had a lot of potential and w/ someone with your experienced in there I hope that some major positive changes can be made.

My fingers hurt.

Love,

phi

[Jennifear]

Thumbs up to Lee Jones for this thread, and for setting good ground rules to ensure that the thread stays on-topic.

Phi's post is awesome. I can't compete...but still I'll try.

Problems with Cake as a site, in no particular order of importance:

1. Payouts. There is nearly never a legitimate reason to pay out more than 10% of the field. Cake sometimes pays out as much as 22%. Let's get this number between 10-15%, and at that, closer to 10% than 15%. This is a huge priority.

2. The rake of the $1+.20 SNG is way too high. 10% is the max rake for one-table SNGs that does not constitute ripping people off. Of course, Cake is not alone here, as almost all the other sites are guilty of this as well.

3. All turbo MTTs are six-max? Why? Change most of the turbo MTTs to 10-max tables.

4. The tables don't resize as small as the tables from other sites.

5. When I have Cake up and I'm not registered for anything, an annoying pop-up shows up in the bottom right hand corner of my screen asking me to register for a trny, about once every five minutes. Please make this stop. It makes me want to kill kittens when it covers up another table and there's no way to turn it off.

6. Tournament lobbies are inconsistant with the actual goings on in the tourney. Sometimes you can't find the payouts.

7. Final table dealmaking please.

8. Synchro breaks please.

9. Please keep the bet pot button and never lose it.

10. Keep Lee Jones if at all possible. He listens to his customers.

That is all.

[Phi aka tennisee]

 

Originally Posted by Jennifear

5. When I have Cake up and I'm not registered for anything, an annoying pop-up shows up in the bottom right hand corner of my screen asking me to register for a trny, about once every five minutes. Please make this stop. It makes me want to kill kittens when it covers up another table and there's no way to turn it off.

OMFG HOW DID I FORGET THIS! lol this is soooooooooooooo annoying.

 

Originally Posted by Jennifear

6. Tournament lobbies are inconsistant with the actual goings on in the tourney. Sometimes you can't find the payouts.

Another huge bug I forgot to mention. Thanks for adding that Jennifear since this is definitely a very common bug.

Seriously Lee......I think you should take 2-3 people who are regulars in Cash, SNGs, and MTTs to come in and consult and add suggested for a re-formatted software. I'll go ahead and volunteer myself and Jennifear for SNGs! :)

[truesyalose]

is there any timetable for letting Kentucky residents play again. I can play on every other network available to Americans but not Kentucky, why is that?

Fix the tables so you can make them as small as other sites.

[iatetheredcrayon]

The tourney schedule is incredibly random, doesn't offer a variety of stakes, is clustered to starting at certain times of the day and is geared towards European players, hence there is nothing for me to play in the evenings after work in the eastern time zone. 20% payouts are just ridiculously dumb, you aren't helping the fish out with this, only hurting the regulars. 10% payouts ftw.

[timdog]

Remove all the Chinese bots at the low limit DONs

[bbbbb33]

i love you lee (we shared a cab once in prague).

i cant really comment on cake poker cause its impossible for me to deposit. i know these days its hard but i think your #1 concern should be trying to be the industry standards in deposits/cashouts.

[zander anomaly in his crotch]

Thank you for doing this sir, it's good to know that someone with skillz is taking over.

Some suggestions for improvement...

1. The payout structure is awful. 10% only please. Bigger cuts of the prizepool for top spots. And there's no way in hell 4 players should get paid in a single table tournament.
2. Please switch over to 9-handed. It's the industry standard and I think most people are with me in despising 10-handed play.

3. The naming thing has already been mentioned I believe but each cash table should have a different name, yet all tables at same game/buyin have same name = mucho confusing.

4. Tournament lobbies are awful, very slow to update standings/actual payouts/etc and generally quite inaccurate.

5. I lose way too many flips. Doom switch off plz.

6. The items in the cake store are so ridiculously overpriced... i pay like 175 bucks in rake and i'm 1/5 of the way to a t-shirt.

7. Let me make your tables smaller for multitabling.

8. Only move tables to front and beep when it's my turn to act, not every time a sng that already popped up on the screen is "starting"... wait til the cards are dealt and i have them plz.

9. There are like no midstakes tourneys with guarantees between 10 and 50 dollar buyins... occasional $33 bounties, but that's pretty much it. How about a couple $25 5-10k gtds daily?

10. The rake in the double or nothings is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay higher than it is on stars, to the point that they probably aren't very profitable. Lower this plz.

11. Have gold cards come up periodically in tournaments too? So that tourney/sng players get a shot at one of your few promotions as well.

It's a decent site, but 9-handed play and better rewards system/midstakes gtd tourneys, coupled with fixing a few bugs and issues like table sizing/payout structures, would make it much better. One time Lee...

[7DeLuX]

 

Originally Posted by Jennifear

4. The tables don't resize as small as the tables from other sites.

5. When I have Cake up and I'm not registered for anything, an annoying pop-up shows up in the bottom right hand corner of my screen asking me to register for a trny, about once every five minutes. Please make this stop. It makes me want to kill kittens when it covers up another table and there's no way to turn it off.

6. Tournament lobbies are inconsistant with the actual goings on in the tourney. Sometimes you can't find the payouts.

7. Final table dealmaking please.

8. Synchro breaks please.

10. Keep Lee Jones if at all possible. He listens to his customers.

Just those..

[dansteele]

i don't remember seeing this in this thread but if it has been mentioned i am sorry. please open a new sng every time someone registers to one at those limits.

[Nate Avenson]

I play on a different skin, but have all the same issues as those on cake. Jennifear and Phi pretty much covered the most important ones.

I see lots of suggestions for new tourneys in the schedule. I think most players are just looking for garantees. They don't have to be massive, and they don't have to have overlays. Look at your traffic #'s and choose a buyin and garantee to match. If 300 players are in the $30r, you can probably get atleast 200 in a $100 FO near the same time. But make sure to have plenty of low and midstakes gaurentees as well. Like I said, they don't have to be excessively large, they just have to be there.

[Nate Avenson]

One more thing. Kudos for this thread Lee. I have suggested to another second tier site that it is in their best interest to have someone become a P5's member specifically to create a thread like this one. They don't seem to think that is necessary. Hopefully they will see how positive/helpful/valuable/etc. this thread is, (I know they lurk here) and decide to do the same.

(Come on other unnamed second tier site, if Lee Jones can do it, so can you)

[LarsonLarsen]

On top of all the other very well said things...well not even on top of because its been said multiple times...

Please drop the $500 minimum for a check!!!