32 red £20k 'freeroll'

[vinylweatherman]

I can’t see a decrease in the number of continues happening, not without increasing the cost of continues or turning more prizes into bonus money. The rule in place is that the first will win some and that can only change for the worst, meaning nobody will win, like the other big tournaments in other casinos. The duration is exactly what they think is necessary for all continues to be used, but not too much to make one bored.

The calculations assume that the tournaments work properly, and when they do there is some healthy competition for the top, although it's still a fact that first place is "bought" rather than "won" because it's IMPOSSIBLE to score at the level needed purely from the "free" entry round.

Playing 999 continues is like having a full time job, so whilst competitors might not get bored, they might get frozen out due to having to work and have some "family time" left over. I was retired early long ago, before I even got into online casinos, and I am single, so time is not that much of a problem for me most fortnights - hence I almost always end up going all the way.

What IS a problem for me is when the technical issues are so overwhelming that I can't play, or have persistent problems (like excessive spin lag), over several days.

I am currently managing to play in Dash, but the spin lag that suddenly kicked in earlier is still there. It has taken nearly an hour to play a mere 10 continues. Such slow play is also very boring and I tend to let it run on autoplay whilst I do other things. The issue is the lag between the autoplay sending the spin request to the server and the result returning to the client. This can be several seconds, but it should be virtually instant, as it is when playing games in the regular lobby most of the time. This points to a severe connectivity problem between the 32Red client and the tournament server, and the tournaments not loading or being unavailable is simply a worsening of this connectivity issue, as is being able to play and then getting booted mid session.

If this connectivity issue was sorted out, many of the other problems may well end up being resolved.

 

[nikantw]

it's IMPOSSIBLE to score at the level needed purely from the "free" entry round.

But it is possible to get 40-50 bonus money without continues, and that makes them (from my point of view) the best tournaments out there. Best combination of format / number of competitors / number of players / prizes.

 

[sscrabble]

Perhaps a different format is needed, one that puts less strain on the servers (and the players). Maybe 500 continues instead of 999, or have each tournament last a whole month with the 999 continues. With fewer continues or more time to play, the days when the server is having trouble will be less important a loss to players as it will be easier to make up for lost availability in the following days as opposed to being faced with 500 continues to play in just 2 days because of a whole load of problems that had prevented play earlier.

I like them as they are (when they are working - I am still having the same problem) - but maybe a variety would be good - 5 day 200 game tournament,, then a one week 500 game , a 2 day 100 game -- a bit of variance to suit a wider range of people. You would presume the casino want to keep them - six to eight hundred people play at least the 'freebie' game --- and they seem to make a decent profit on most - everyone in this Immortal game from 3rd position to thirteenth is going to lose a fair bit - and then they should get a good profit from folks playing off their bonuses in the runners-up places ---- so I hope Mark and co make every effort to keep them going.

 

[09237653]

If it's any consolation I'm having no problems playing these on any site
Have a decent RTP as well but don't have £2500 spare laying around to spend on addons, seems pointless though as most of the front page will be making a LOSS as they do every fortnight anyway.

 

[vinylweatherman]

If it's any consolation I'm having no problems playing these on any site
Have a decent RTP as well but don't have £2500 spare laying around to spend on addons, seems pointless though as most of the front page will be making a LOSS as they do every fortnight anyway.

You might do if you tried playing all the continues. Often they work fine for several hundred continues, then it's like someone throws a switch and they are buggy for days on end, and then suddenly it's all fine again.

Although it's possible to win a small bonus just from the free round, 32Red only stand a chance of making money if people buy continues, and it's these players that 32Red needs to keep happy so that enough of us buy sufficient continues to make running these tournaments financially viable.

If it's SO buggy that the top few can't get anywhere near 999 continues, 32Red could end up losing money. Naturally, if it's clear that many players are having problems, this can be included in any tactical plan to win, or at least score a profit, hence players who have no problems may still not buy 999 continues because they only have to get ahead of the other players for the prize, not score a certain amount.

The top 2 are on 9 million, which is around the 700-800 continue mark, and they are sat there, not battling each other. The next level is around the 6 million mark, so there is a £2000 prize up for grabs just above this score level, which at around the 600 continue mark makes third place even more profitable than second place after all 999 continues.

If one is not having problems, the full £2500 is not going to be needed to score a decent profit this fortnight, unless a fix is delivered in time to spur the rest of us into having a binge on the last 3 days and playing hundreds of continues.

 

[vinylweatherman]

I have managed to have a decent spell for nearly 2 hours, then this very peculiar error message popped up, and as soon as I clicked to dismiss it, everything froze, the lobby and the tournament tab. The client did not terminate as it should have done, and this had to be dealt with in the task manager.

I have also noticed before that during play the lobby sometimes terminates at random, the lobby tab vanishes, and the tournament alone is left running. The other thing I have noticed is that the lobby "turns black" and nothing at all works.

It would appear that there is a very serious underlying software issue that has been recently introduced into the main client, and it seems to be affecting the tournament tab as well. I have often seen everything just freeze up mid play in the tournament, but rarely has this thrown an error message.

 

[nikantw]

I have managed to have a decent spell for nearly 2 hours, then this very peculiar error message popped up, and as soon as I clicked to dismiss it, everything froze, the lobby and the tournament tab. The client did not terminate as it should have done, and this had to be dealt with in the task manager.

I have also noticed before that during play the lobby sometimes terminates at random, the lobby tab vanishes, and the tournament alone is left running. The other thing I have noticed is that the lobby "turns black" and nothing at all works.

It would appear that there is a very serious underlying software issue that has been recently introduced into the main client, and it seems to be affecting the tournament tab as well. I have often seen everything just freeze up mid play in the tournament, but rarely has this thrown an error message.

Today Agent Jane Blonde tournaments went HD. Has something to do with the error I think.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Today Agent Jane Blonde tournaments went HD. Has something to do with the error I think.

Wouldn't surprise me - any tinkering by MG seems to bugger things up.

Had the freeze again earler, went into task manager and began the process of shutting everything down, but as I shut the first instance of "casinogame" which happened to be at the top as it was using most CPU, the lobby disappeared and the remaining tournament tab suddenly woke up and entered free spins. I didn't carry on shutting things down, and I have now spent the past couple of hours playing a lone tournament tab with no lobby "casinogame.exe" process running, and nothing has gone wrong (so far).

Here is the "black lobby" error. I was playing but ran out of funds so went back into the lobby to deposit £400. I then decided to move the lobby focus to the games view, and this is what happened! (The whole thing was then irrecoverable and had to be fully shut down in task manager).

 

[vinylweatherman]

I found this in the event log for one of these Dash casino freezes earlier today. Might be useful for Mark and MGS.

Faulting application name: casinogame.exe, version: 25.0.0.12127, time stamp: 0x509b9a1d
Faulting module name: HsSrv.dll, version: 1.0.10.917, time stamp: 0x4c930239
Exception code: 0x40000015
Fault offset: 0x00017aaf
Faulting process id: 0x1494
Faulting application start time: 0x01d213c8a75a4613
Faulting application path: C:\Microgaming\Casino\Dash\casinogame.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\HsSrv.dll
Report Id: f09fe7b2-7fcc-11e6-90c0-83ea2240e549

 

[vinylweatherman]

Here's another one.

The symptom was that when playing the current Hitman tournament, there was a brief flicker and the lobby tab disappeared, leaving ONLY the Hitman tournament tab running (which it carried on doing just fine).

Faulting application name: casinogame.exe, version: 25.0.0.12127, time stamp: 0x509b9a1d
Faulting module name: libcef.dll, version: 1.1453.14366.0, time stamp: 0x547f86e7
Exception code: 0x80000003
Fault offset: 0x009232fe
Faulting process id: 0x145c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d2163a992c7db8
Faulting application path: C:\Microgaming\Casino\32red\casinogame.exe
Faulting module path: C:\ProgramData\MGS\Cache\SxS\Assembly.libcef.1.0.0.6\libcef.dll
Report Id: 9606a1d4-8230-11e6-901c-f62d2a17084e


casinogame.exe
25.0.0.12127
509b9a1d
libcef.dll
1.1453.14366.0
547f86e7
80000003
009232fe
145c
01d2163a992c7db8
C:\Microgaming\Casino\32red\casinogame.exe
C:\ProgramData\MGS\Cache\SxS\Assembly.libcef.1.0.0.6\libcef.dll
9606a1d4-8230-11e6-901c-f62d2a17084e

It's just done it again! I am doing other things whilst playing, and just saw a flicker, and sure enough, no lobby tab.

This seems to be a repeatable error and happens after a period of play, rather than right away. Something must be happening in the background that finally gets too much and the casinogame process that runs the lobby aborts, leaving any tabs running on their own.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Major failure

Another major failure about 2 hours ago. Reels suddenly started spinning endlessly and now for the past 2 hours it has been impossible to reconnect to the 20K at Dash. The tournaments are actually showing, but they can't be loaded. In addition, the usual prompt to go to the tournament when logging on doesn't show.

This is the SAME PROBLEM that happened during the last event, where we were assured it had been passed to Microgaming and then supposedly fixed.

Since Dash has no Flash lobby, I am unable to test this as I could when 32Red failed, but in the last failure the Flash lobby also would not load the tournaments.

These are lengthy outages that are taking place, not simply a blip that can be fixed by exiting the client and logging on for a fresh session. These are not related to the client crashes above, this is a loss of connectivity at the Microgaming/32Red end with the tournament servers.

I cannot check as it won't load, but last time it seemed that not all players were unable to play during the outages, so there is something regional about this.

 

[Brockie]

Another major failure about 2 hours ago. Reels suddenly started spinning endlessly and now for the past 2 hours it has been impossible to reconnect to the 20K at Dash. The tournaments are actually showing, but they can't be loaded. In addition, the usual prompt to go to the tournament when logging on doesn't show.

This is the SAME PROBLEM that happened during the last event, where we were assured it had been passed to Microgaming and then supposedly fixed.

Since Dash has no Flash lobby, I am unable to test this as I could when 32Red failed, but in the last failure the Flash lobby also would not load the tournaments.

These are lengthy outages that are taking place, not simply a blip that can be fixed by exiting the client and logging on for a fresh session. These are not related to the client crashes above, this is a loss of connectivity at the Microgaming/32Red end with the tournament servers.

I cannot check as it won't load, but last time it seemed that not all players were unable to play during the outages, so there is something regional about this.

I was then going to reply to say that I could play this morning without any problems but low and behold mine has just most likely developed the same fault that you have there.

I am though playing at 32red so I am able to try the browser versions and these do not load up either.

From the viper client I can still see where I am in regards to the leader board, and It does seem that a few other players may be in the same boat, maybe!

 

[sscrabble]

I was then going to reply to say that I could play this morning without any problems but low and behold mine has just most likely developed the same fault that you have there.

I am though playing at 32red so I am able to try the browser versions and these do not load up either.

From the viper client I can still see where I am in regards to the leader board, and It does seem that a few other players may be in the same boat, maybe!

Mine was ok as well until half an hour ago like you and then went - so I presume that maybe this is them working on it ? --- strange that it happened on dash two hours earlier - but surely that gives them a clue as to where the problem lies - as they might have done some kind of refresh on one then the other - so it might point to a particular server ? It was going so well up to now - no problems at all.

 

[sscrabble]

Its back - they must have sorted it !


It did not even time out - still got my minutes left from half an hour again - so they must have frozen it then done the fix.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Yes, it's back again.

I managed to watch TWO one hour documentaries, have lunch, and even have a short nap.

How long will it stay back though, and what is the underlying problem that just keeps on causing this, seemingly being an issue that MG cannot fix properly.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Not fully fixed.

The existing 20K is working at both 32Red and Dash, so I thought I would have a go at the Midweek Moolah, only to find it's a "dead link", the same problem that I had trying to play the previous 20K at 32Red, and which prompted me to play it at Dash instead.

It seems that this "dead link" issue is also recurring, so what has come back is access to existing tournaments already in play, but the ability to join tournaments is still down.

 

[xxshepxx]

Just the usual for me,

Doesn't open, it's dead, then I get the message that the Viper client has stopped working and is unresponsive.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Just the usual for me,

Doesn't open, it's dead, then I get the message that the Viper client has stopped working and is unresponsive.

Not quite dead then, just enough life in the link to crash the client, but not load the tournament. I am seeing this also, as well as random freezes of the game, mid spin, mid pick bonus, even mid launch. It's a random freeze as though I was watching a video on youtube when the connection just dropped. These freezes often crash the client, but not always.

With the tournament freeze, I hear the "ding" which is the link responding and trying to load the tournament, but the tab briefly flashes up then disappears again, and then I get the "...is not responding" and then Windows takes over with "look for solution" (there isn't one) or "close program".

Something has made the Viper client highly unstable recently, more so than usual, these problems are random and inconsistent, they cannot be reliably reproduced through a set sequence of actions. It seems to be across all brands, not just at 32Red. The tournaments are the most unstable thing of all, but with an unusually unstable Viper client as well, it's probably no wonder that the tournaments are in real trouble now.

A mere 32 players were registered for the Midweek Moolah when I failed to join. It's 34 now.

 

[vinylweatherman]

This is a complete joke


What actually needs to be done to make Microgaming get a grip


Two continues in this morning, and the connection drops again, the reels just spinning and spinning. An hour later, log back in and get the popup to take me to the tournament, click on "continue" and my £2.50 is taken but everything freezes, the "continue" purchase button greys out, but then nothing happens, the game does not launch.

This could cost 32Red thousands in revenue as the scores are pretty weak (apart from sscrabble up top) compared to other runs, and there is plenty to play for in the final 2 days. If the problems persist, players will accept that there isn't sufficient time to compete any longer, so will concede positions that they could probably improve upon over the final 2 days.

 

[vinylweatherman]

20K again!

Is anyone else having trouble with the current 20K (Loaded)?

I am registered, but the game won't load, the loading screen just sits there. It also seems from the lobby view that only 144 people have registered and so far no one has scored a single point.

Support have told me that I am the only one to have reported this issue, and they can't replicate it at their end.

 

[hedgehok]

Is anyone else having trouble with the current 20K (Loaded)?

I am registered, but the game won't load, the loading screen just sits there. It also seems from the lobby view that only 144 people have registered and so far no one has scored a single point.

Support have told me that I am the only one to have reported this issue, and they can't replicate it at their end.

Works fine at my end too. Both with 32red and Golden Lounge.

 

[sscrabble]

Fine here too. 644 players.

 

[vinylweatherman]

This is what I am seeing at 32Red. It's the same on different PCs and also the same if I use the 32Red browser platform or old Flash lobby, so this rules out an issue with my PC.

The ONLY thing they all have in common is the internet connection.

I did think of trying on my phone to check whether something in my internet connection was selectively blocking this tournament, but they are not available on mobile.

 

[sscrabble]

About 10 am they obviously did some kind of fix - --- the reels started spinning non-stop ---- now I cannot get into the game ! - it just does nothing when I click on the game .

 

[vinylweatherman]

About 10 am they obviously did some kind of fix - --- the reels started spinning non-stop ---- now I cannot get into the game ! - it just does nothing when I click on the game .

Maybe we have been swapped around, perhaps it's my turn to be able to get in now


Let CS know, because they think everything is fine and I am the only player to report not being able to get in.

Incidentally, now that you can't get in, what do you see when you select the tournament link and try to look at the number of players registered and the current scores.

I sent Mark a PM about this last night, he may (hopefully) see it today.