Running TST on a slow Internet connection

[CMAZ]

Hi,

Just installed TST on my laptop which also has an inbuilt Wireless Broadband Card (Windows 7 laptop using a NextG Card - HSPA Technology).
After completing my first scan I looked through the data only to discover that TST had reported back saying some of my known Multi Tablers were playing 132 Tables which is not possible.

I did some investigating and feel I have discovered the problem.
Due to my Internet connection there is an inherent lag of approx 1/2sec from the time you select a Pokerstars table through the lobby and the players appear in the Table Window on the right hand side. As a result the same group of players will appear on more than one table.

I figured the best way to fix this problem is to slow down TST (kind of weird but what the hec :) ). I made a bunch of changes and thought I would run this past you in case there is better way to address the issue.
I set the Scroll Speed to slowest (although not sure of this works with Pokerstars), set the selection speed to slowest and disabled the PT3 cache option on the databases. I also unchecked all of the Threading Options in the Performance Tb
This has resulted in the scan time taking 306sec as opposed to the 124sec scan time when I originally installed TST.
I then manually checked all 153 tables and found 8 occurrences (it was 2 instances where the same group of players appeared on 4 tables) where the same group of players appears on 4 tables, alphabetically in order to each other.

This kind of confirms I am on the right rack but I am not quite there yet.
Do you have any further suggestions as to how I can slow down the scanning speed of TST. Alternatively if there is a way I can overcome the lag issue with the Pokerstars client whilst using a slower Internet connection this would be the ideal way to fix the problem.

Apologies of rather long post, however I am hoping you have come across this issue and can advise me on the best way to overcome it.

Thanks for all your help.

Chris

PS - Just completed a scan on my home PC and have discovered a similar problem. On my home PS the same player list ends up on 2 tables. The table names are always in alpahebetical order to each other.
I haven't mucked around with the setting just yet as I am very keen to hear your feedback.

Let me know if you need further information.

Cheers,

[CMAZ]

Hi Zandry,

Thanks for the catch up last night and for investigating my problem so quickly.

I ran a scan test between FTP and PS using the "fastest" selection speed and there is a notable speed difference between the two scans. My TST results are below

FTP - TST scanned 174 Tables in 228 sec
PS - TST scanned 268 Tables in 199sec

I then ran a scan where I placed the PS lobby on my 2nd screen and scrolled through the search results in TST as they came through.
Each time it duplicated the same players across two tables I noted the same thing. The search engine had moved to the next table but the PS client had not updated Table Players list (i.e: lagging behind)

Having said this if I set the selection speed to Slowest I get no duplication on my home PC. I have tried all other setings in between and ended up with duplications.
Using the Slowest Selection speed I succesfully scanned 436 Tables in 514sec.

Hope this helps

[CMAZ]

Hi Zandry,
I apologise for the long post and hope my findings will be of use.
I conducted a few more tests using my laptop and my Wireless Broadband Card.

A scan of NL25 and NL50 6Max only on PokerStars continues to duplicate the player list from one table to the next. The TST stats after the scan are as follows

Tables: 125
Players: 712
Time: 225Sec

Note: I manually checked through the scan results and found 5 instances where the same player list was duplicated across 2 tables. The number of instances will vary at the slowest selection. Having said this I have also noticed that on the Highest Selection Speed I have seen instances where the same player list was duplicated across 4-5 tables, where at the slowest selection speed I have only seen it duplicate the same player list across 2 tables so far.

I also discovered another anomaly with the PokerStars search. It has to do with which table is highlighted before to kick off a scan. If the highlighted table is the one at the very top of the list the player names are not scanned correctly. What you end up with is a bunch of questions marks and the odd underscore for each player name.

Update - I can not replicate the above anomaly on my home PC, regardless which table is selected prior to kicking off a scan the first table is scanned correctly.

If you select a table further down the lobby before you kick of a scan it will scan the first table correctly.

I then repeated the same test (Selection Speed set to Slowest) on FTP scanning NL5 and NL10 6Max only and found no duplication whatsoever. The TST stats after the scan are as follows

Tables: 116
Players: 661
Time: 310 Sec

I ran the same test on FTP but changed the selection speed to Fastest and still got no duplications. The TST stats after the scan are as follows

Tables: 121
Players: 673
Time: 380Sec

Watching the 2 test scans on FTP was quite interesting. On the Fastest selection speed the pace at which it moved from one table to the next appears erratic. Sometimes it would sit at one table for a few seconds waiting for the Player Window to refresh and other times it appeared to move on at a steady pace. When scanning at the Slowest Selection speed it had a tendency to move through each table at a nice steady pace. Even more unexpected were the test results. It appears to take less or about the same time to complete the scan on Slowest speed compared to the Fastest Selection Speed method.

Based on my tests results so far I feel confident the problem is PokerStars specific as I have yet to replicate the problem scanning FTP

Hope this helps. Lets us know where I can be of further assistance.

Cheers,

Chris

[Zandry]

Ok, thanks for all the testing :)

The results you describe on FTP are expected, as it says in the Setup Window "Users with slower internet connections may get faster scans by lowering the selection speed". The reason is, if it's on fastest, it keeps polling the player list for the players, which will actually cause the list to load more slowly if you're on a slow connection. So if you set it to slowest, it is polling the player list for players much less frequently, and it actually goes faster. You might find, that setting it to "Medium" would actually give you the best results for FTP.

For Stars, I can very simply make it wait longer than it already is, but the question is does it really wait the maximum, on slowest it should wait up to 5 seconds before it goes to the next table. And I will have to look at that PokerStars bug you mentioned, but yes I am aware that very infrequently it can fail to read the player list and give ???? instead, and it needs to re-try, I am definitely fixing that in the next update. Anyways msg me next time you're on ICQ and I can try to send you a version to test this duplicate table stuff and see whats going on