The Party Borgata Network, which includes Party Poker and Borgata, has been leading the online poker market in New Jersey ever since the state launched its iGaming industry in November 2013. Players have had numerous complaints about all of the available operators, ranging from login errors and system malfunctions to a remarkable lack of features in the software. Finally, almost a year after launch, Party Borgata has issued a major upgrade to its software that should significantly ease the tensions of online poker players in the Garden State.
With the network’s most elaborate online poker tournament series, the Garden State Super Series (GSSS), set to kick off this weekend (Sept 7th thru the 21st), the software upgrade couldn’t have come at a better time. Well, it could have come a lot earlier, but better before the GSSS than after. Many features of the software were enhanced, including an upgraded geo-location system, added payment options, augmentations to the tournament lobby and several new in-game features.
According to PartyPoker, mobile players can anticipate “greater certainty and increased accuracy” when logging into their mobile poker account. For convenience during the GSSS, which will run alongside the WPT Borgata Poker Open, it was revealed that players will be able to process deposits and withdrawals directly to their PartyPoker NJ accounts via the cashier cage at the Borgata. While the announcement made it sound as if this a new feature, it’s actually been available for a few months now, but not many players seemed to be aware of it.
The tournament lobby and in-game enhancements are likely to be the most appreciated by loyal members of the online poker network. A new side panel was amended to the tournament lobby that provides much more information than players had access to before, including tournament type, registration status, availability of late registration and/or rebuys, number of presently registered players and open seats, the amount of the buy-in and associated fee, as well as the current or guaranteed prize pool (whichever is greater). A unique icon is also provided to distinguish between types of tournaments, such as satellites.
A new ‘Group Sit’n’Go’ filter allows for instant organization of the SNG menu, making it much easier to find tournaments of the player’s preferred type and stakes range. It is currently available for single-table SNGs only. As for the MTT lobby, it now shows only registering tournaments by default. Players can turn on running and completed tournaments in the filter if they wish.
Another major issue concerning tournament tickets was resolved in the online poker software update. Players can now view all tournament tickets, separated by SNG and MTT. Even better, those unique icons we spoke of before include a special icon that only appears if the player has tournament tickets for that event.
Updated in-game features include several major improvements. When competing in a tournament, a player can choose to activate automatic re-buys/add-ons, and at the same time choose whether to use real money or tournament tickets when available. Heads-up games now offer a rematch request with the option of choosing real money or tournament tickets as well. And finally, hand histories were extended to differentiate between traditional online poker games and the more expedient FastForward games.