Improbable windfall

Over the course of time, I've identified several design flaws in the PokerStars software. I've long been aware of the most dangerous one, and have often wondered if I'd ever fall victim to it. Well, I finally did, but the result was not what I expected. It's like this ...

The PokerStars client has a great time-saving feature where you can provisionally "act" before it's your turn to act; in the majority of cases, your provisional action will still be valid when it's really your turn to act, and the PokerStars software will promote it to your official action at that time, with no additional action needed on your part. You can make a provisional action at any time before your official time to act; also, you can change your mind and undo your provisional action at any time before your official time to act. So far, so good.

If someone makes a bet, and you want to provisionally call it, you click on a provisional "Call" button which contains the amount of the bet you're calling. If someone else makes a raise before it's your turn to act, the PokerStars client automatically rescinds your provisional call, since the raise rendered it obsolete. Still, so far, so good.

Here comes the really nefarious part. The PokerStars software uses the same screen location for the provisional "Call" button displayed whenever a bet or raise is made; it simply changes the amount being called. If you're very unlucky, when you're about to click the button to call a bet or raise of one amount, someone who acts before you can make a raise just before you actually click, so you can end up provisionally calling a higher amount than you thought you would be. To make matters worse, you might not have enough time to undo the provisional call before the PokerStars software promotes it to a real call. In the worst case scenario, someone can go all in just as you're clicking, and you end up calling a huge bet you never would have called were it not for this diabolical provisional call button.

I can think of a couple different ways the software could be improved to prevent this. The simplest way would be for the client to use different screen locations for provisional call buttons of different call amounts, so no call amount would ever be switched out beneath you. The obsolete provisional call buttons would be disabled, but their original call amounts would still be visible. Another method would be for the software to ignore clicks on the provisional call button some number of milliseconds both before and after the provisional call amount was changed, to give humans the reaction time to notice.

Last night, the worst case scenario happened to me. I was dealt an 8 6 offsuit, and was just clicking the provisional call button to call a small bet when someone acting before me went all in. To my horror, PokerStars provisionally put me all in. I frantically clicked to undo my provisional call, but in my panic, I clicked too many times, and actually succeeded in both undoing my provisional call and redoing it! At that point, the action was actually on me, and PokerStars promoted my provisional all in to a real all in. This was all preflop, and one other player had also called the all in. My 8 6 offsuit was up against a pair of queens and a pair of threes. Mirabile dictu, I paired my eight on the flop and made trip eights on the river, to win a pot worth $120,800! Poetic justice for falling victim to a bad user interface? I prefer to think so!

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 83 hands and saw flop:
- 7 out of 10 times while in big blind (70%)
- 6 out of 12 times while in small blind (50%)
- 39 out of 61 times in other positions (63%)
- a total of 52 out of 83 (62%)
Pots won at showdown - 4 of 15 (26%)
Pots won without showdown - 6

delta: $80,600
balance: $1,669,017