Harrier's Blog - Mixed Games & Mixed Drinks

Originally posted by Harrier88
I have written an email to support, since this is still possible without any verification. I imagine they are getting tons of them right now.

We are not there yet...

Ohhhhhh dear...

This email address is no longer active. If you have anything you want to ask us, contact our Support team.

They are available anytime on our 24/7 Messenger Help channel. All you have to do is log into your account and go to our help center.

Website/Mobile: Account → Help → Contact Us

Desktop: Help → Contact Us

Yes, and that requires me to have a verified account...

However, I tried entering the Pokerstars client without logging in, and managed to reach a chat support service agent. My experience with Pokerstars support has been superb so far, and this one seems to be no exception. I was linked to a contact form about this issue where I was able to upload the documents without any problems.

Hopefully, this will be the end of it, and I will be back at the tables this weekend.

Still, what a mess...

Originally posted by Harrier88
I tried entering the Pokerstars client without logging in, and managed to reach a chat support service agent. My experience with Pokerstars support has been superb so far, and this one seems to be no exception. I was linked to a contact form about this issue where I was able to upload the documents without any problems.

Hopefully, this will be the end of it, and I will be back at the tables this weekend.

Still, what a mess...

No reply yet concerning my documents and the verification process from Pokerstars, one day after I sent them in through that contact form.

I will try again tomorrow if nothing has been cleared up by that time. First through the conventional way, hoping that the technical difficulties have been ironed out by now, and if that doesn't work, I will drop support another line.

Not sure how it is with other people, I haven't checked the DE forum yet and don't plan to do it today.

Still no reply, only one day left until my account gets allegedly suspended, and the standard verification process still won't work.

Best to contact support again before it's too late.

Well, we can only hope. He also confirmed that even in the event that my account briefly gets suspended anyway, either through a misunderstanding or an automatic process, at least my funds should be safe. It will not be possible to play until the verification process has been officially completed, though.

It's a quite inconvenient situation, both for the players and for the support staffers who have to deal with them. I imagine they are not paid all that well for it either.

The situation with Pokerstars may be worrying, but we can always drink our worries away, right?

Just kidding, I don't recommend it. But I will share the cocktail I mixed yesterday when Primrose was visiting, as you can read about here. Our meetup had a bit of an underwater theme, and we just returned from some aquatic challenges at the local pool, so I wanted to make a drink that fits the theme.

There are several choices, and we may get to the other ones too, but yesterday, I made the Deep Blue Ocean, a quite sweet, tropical tasting longdrink involving blue curaçao, Hpnotiq and coconut rum, 60 ml (2 oz) each.

The idea is to layer the liquors, with blue curaçao at the bottom, Hpnotiq in the middle and coconut rum on top, to get an effect like with ocean water, which gets a progressively darker shade of blue the deeper the water is.

I must have forgotten to take a picture of just the blue curaçao at the bottom... You would keep adding more ice cubes (ideally more or at least bigger ones than I was using), and then pour in the drinks layer by layer off the back of a spoon. No need to bother with the spoon when you pour in the curaçao in the beginning, of course.

At this point, I had added Hpnotiq to it as well:

And now some Malibu coconut rum too. The layering works to an extent, at least, though I think I could have done better. Especially the middle layer can be tough to pull off in such a tall glass.

Two drinks for two Trolls. Primrose approved.

But... alternatively to any of the above, you can just watch this video, which is where I got my instructions too. This guy did a better job with the drink anyway.

.

New cocktail idea: The "German Pokerstars".

Get a 5 liter keg of lager and a one liter bottle of Jägermeister and attempt to pour all of it into a shot glass. Then look at the mess on your bar counter - it's a good representation of the mess at Pokerstars DE right now, after attempting to process such a large amount of German players in a short time, like you just attempted to pour such a large amount of German liquor into a short glass.

Alternatively, this recipe could represent the ambitious grinder who is trying to get through the verification process as well.

I'll try one on our next cruise

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I'll try one on our next cruise

I hope you are referring to the "Angry German" that I linked to, not the "German Pokerstars".

Then again, if you're having them on a cruise, you're not the one who has to clean it up...

.

What an outstanding mess... I think I will wait a day or two before bumping this up to support once again. My account is probably temporarily suspended by now anyway.

It is in their interest to get this solved. If they chase away their German player pool after kicking out the Russians last year, they have pretty much committed suicide.

No poker in the last few days for obvious reasons, and no mahjong either. Also no help from yesterday's freeroll.

There's really not a lot of point to this side challenge anymore, but I will dutifully finish the month, at least. I already have another non-poker side challenge prepared... but right now, the main poker "challenges" are what we need to worry about.

It's frustrating... I want to post updates about MTT runs and SNG streaks here, not updates about whether or not I am allowed to play today because other people are not competent enough to process my documents.

The idea of taking poker vacations has been brought up a few times here. I guess that's what we're having now, except that it's more of a lockdown than a vacation.

Cocoa of the... Week??

Oh dear... this series has been completely neglected.

When I got all of those coffee glasses last fall, my plan was to keep introducing new coffee variants over time, as well as a new cocoa version every weekend. My bad work hours made this a little tough back then, and by now, it's just about time for the colder drinks.

Still, I should use up that bar of Toblerone that I once got for this purpose.

I was never a big fan of that chocolate. Its iconic shape is a little impractical, and the chocolate itself has too much stuff that sticks to your teeth.

Maybe it will work better as a hot cocoa? Let's cut it up.

We have about 100 grams worth of chocolate in that Toblerone bar, so let's use 250 ml of water.

Here's the finished drink:

It still had several chunks of nuts in it, I didn't necessarily mind. It was pretty good overall.

Some cold cocktails should serve us better now, though.

We're Back?

...are we? I have not received any reply yet about my verification process, so I tried logging on to my Pokerstars account to see how things are going, expecting a message about my account being temporarily suspended.

Instead I received no message at all, I was just normally logged in. I had a look at the Cashier window, and the option to verify my account was gone.

Does that mean that my documents got accepted? I don't know, I have not received any official confirmation, except for what the live chat support agent said on Saturday.

To check, I tried registering for a SNG... and speaking of which, looks like Courchevel and 8-Game are back (still no Stud8, though).

I picked an 8-Game, because I knew that this one wouldn't fill up anytime soon - and sure enough, I showed up in the lobby. Only my avatar was still missing for some reason.

Are we back? I hope so. I guess I will try playing a normal session tonight.

Still, I prefer to stay cautious until it has been officially confirmed that my account is in the clear.

Yes, looks like we're back. No success in my session after the forced break, which was not very surprising, but at least we can play at all.

I had to manually re-enter most of my settings, I'm sure there is a better way.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Yes, looks like we're back. No success in my session after the forced break, which was not very surprising, but at least we can play at all.

I had to manually re-enter most of my settings, I'm sure there is a better way.

There is a file in the PokerStars settings folder called "user.ini"
If you save that before a forced update, you can put it back after, and your settings will be intact.
That doesn't help if you user.ini file is gibbled.
In that case you can restore it section by section using a text-only text editor like Notepad or better yet Notepad++ (FOSS)
Some of the settings are human-readable, but for something like favourites, they aren't:
(but you can still copy/paste the section into the new user.ini file)

I've had to do this myself when the user.ini became corrupt.
PokerStars support has a procedure for it, but I could not find the link

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
There is a file in the PokerStars settings folder called "user.ini"
If you save that before a forced update, you can put it back after, and your settings will be intact.

Thanks, I heard something about that file before. I will try it, after making some backups of both versions, just in case.

Will this import player notes and labels too? If not, is there another way to do it?

Originally posted by Harrier88
Will this import player notes and labels too? If not, is there another way to do it?

Note and labels are in a file called
notes.<username>.xml

You may already know this, but I forgot to mention that the easiest way to find the settings folder is from the client.
Click the help button, then in the window that pops up there is a "Open My Settings Folder" button on the left hand side.

Enjoy

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Note and labels are in a file called
notes.<username>.xml

You may already know this, but I forgot to mention that the easiest way to find the settings folder is from the client.
Click the help button, then in the window that pops up there is a "Open My Settings Folder" button on the left hand side.

Enjoy

I did not know that - and I had a hard time locating those files before using that option. Turns out they were in the Appdata folder, not the installation folder.

Looks like everything is all set up now, thank you very much!

Is there anything else I might need from my old installation? Because I assume it would be better to uninstall the EU client.

Played another session, everything seems to be in order now, with the exception of my (old) avatar, which still seems to be pending approval.

I'm also not sure if the notes and labels have been imported properly, I didn't catch any of those players. Honestly, the only label I care about is the one for players that I personally know, so I can easily spot them in a tournament lobby.

Results-wise, Badugi bricked, but three out of four Five Card Draw SNGs cashed, unfortunately without any 1st places, I didn't quite get the hands when it mattered.

The currency situation is still a bit weird. EUR is now the standard after the account migration, I used USD before that. It seems like my old bankroll is still kept in USD, while any winnings from after the migration are paid out in EUR, resulting in situations like these:

Note that buy-ins and prize monies are still listed in USD, which is one of the reasons why I preferred to have my bankroll in that currency.

I previously stated on Prim's blog that there may be an option in the cashier to change the preferred currency, but that doesn't seem to be the case, I don't see any way to change it.

There is an option to convert currencies, but this will only let me access the fistful of Euros I won post-migration. I'm pretty sure that future winnings would still be paid out in EUR.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Is there anything else I might need from my old installation? Because I assume it would be better to uninstall the EU client.

Not that I know of

.

Correct it's related to regulation.

Well, German regulations are rarely supposed to make sense.

My personal tracking will still use USD, which is not a problem because that's what is used in the games too. It's a bit inconvenient for bankroll goals, however, which would need to be adjusted - not that I was on good pace to begin with this year.

The DE regulations were much worse at the beginning and they've rowed back on some significant stuff since the beginning but yes any form of regulation tends to be baffling.

Ireland is less strict but is looking towards regulations in the near future.

I'm sure poker operators will suffer as a result with other gambling forms being untouched.

I imagine deposit limits will be strict but you can still walk into a shop and buy lottery tickets or scratch cards with no restriction other than age.

That sort of stupidity grinds my gears no end!