Season 3 Updates and Additions

Ok, so i've been going on about all the new stuff that is coming to Poker Sharks, well here's what to expect for Season 3:


Poker Skill Shop – An unlimited supply of Poker Skill available from inside the Poker Den for the price of 1 Poker Skill for 50 chips. Not the best value in the world but once you have brought everything it will be a very handy place to go and spend those otherwise worthless chips. (with the poker room coming soon this shop will become more and more important)

4 new Poker Sharks – At the moment we have 4 Poker Sharks on our books, well as of next season we will be doubling our work force to incorporate another 4! The new arrivals are: a Bull, Tiger, Nurse and Angel Sharks. (Sneak previews coming soon.) Each of the 8 Poker Sharks will have good and bad abilities at certain Poker Skills, the exact stats are:








These percentage increases and decreases will be effective during Challenges and Tournaments so make sure you use them to your advantage.

Holiday Mode: You'll now be able to miss upto 2 days Poker Skill training without losing out. Each day you are allowed to train up 4 Poker Skills, but if you miss a day the next day you'll be able to train 8 skills, upto a maximum of 12. Any more triaing sessions after 12 will be lost. Please note that this is the only feature that will be included in holiday mode, all other games will still be on a 'once day basis'.

Anti-Bullying clause: You wont be able to Challenge any player more than 10 times (win, lose or draw) per week (7 days). There's loads of players to choose from so instead of challenging the same person over and over, you'll be forced to be a bit more inventive and find a few other targets as well.

24 hour verification: At the moment you have to sign up and then wait for a verification email before you login. This will change to allow players straight into the game after sign up and give them 24 hours to verify the account. After 24 hours the account will be locked if it hasnt been verified. This change has come about as some players have reported the email taking longer than expected to arrive so rather than waiting for it you can play straight away and then verify the account once it arrives.

3 day Free Poker Den - to give all players a taste of what is in the poker den it will be open for the first 3 days of each Season. After these 3 days it will be closed and all benefits like wages, diet value, luck etc will be taken away unless they then pay to get in.

Banners - Poker Sharks will start using the in-game banner to advertise various websites and services. To begin with it seems the online poker rooms will be the most prominent. Hopefully I can get rid of these if poker den memberships increase.

Overtime - This will be working as first intended. Each day your daily wage will go up by 100 chips for a 4 of a kind in the main job game (200 for Aces); and (250/500 for moonlighting). Before these amounts were paid as one offs, in Season 3 they will be treated like promotions so your salary goes up and up.

Poker Den up to £5 - An increase of £1. All the extra development and a dedicated server comes at a cost and hopefully the small increase will help pay for this. This price will be fixed for the next couple of seasons for certain now, hopefully longer!

Poker Den payment schemes: Instead of paying 'per season', Poker Den memberships will now last for 100 days (the length of a season). This means that you can carry over your poker den membership from one season to another - so if you pay half way through a season you'll get about half the next season paid for as well. There will also be a yearly membership that gets you 400 days for the price of 300. By paying for a year's membership you will be paying £15 for 400 days rather than £20. Id like to pass on a discount for our loyal players and at the same time get in some cash to pay for all these updates and future ones - and this does it nicely =).

Challenge History: At the moment all your challenges 'made' and 'taken' are stored in one long list. This will be split in 2 to make it easier for players to know who they've been challenging and who has been challenging them.

WPSS Shark teeth: Rather than just getting a tooth for winning the WPSS there will now be awards for more places:

- Top 10 finish – Bronze tooth +10,000 Value
- 3rd – Silver Tooth +20,000 Value
- 2nd – Gold Tooth +30,000 Value
- 1st – Pink tooth (like Premier Tournament chip) + 50,000 Value

Tournament Freedom: Once a player has won the Premier Tournament they will be awarded the grade of 'Champion' but they wont be able to enter any tournament they wish like before. Only the premier tournament can be entered. This will give the players lagging behind more of a chance to move up grades and not have sharks twice their size entering their tournaments each day.

Other Things:
1. New front page that gives more information about poker sharks to the first time visitor.
2. Forum face lift to make it a bit lighter and more welcoming.
3. A link to this blog on the main game like the tutorial and forum buttons.

These are the updates that are being done right now. As soon as they are ready Season 3 will be launched (approx April 12th).

Straight after this work will start on the Poker Room that will allow players to play live poker against other poker shark players for their play in-game chips. There will be 'sit and play' tables, tournaments, live WPSS on sunday and loads more. I've played just about every online poker room and designed one that incorporates all the good points of them and leaves out the bad points. I hope anyway! It all looks good on paper so i cant wait to see what it looks like in real life. This is scheduled for Season 4 but could make a mid season appearance during Season 3 if development and testing all go to plan.

And thats about it for now. A fair chunk of work to be getting on with I think, well i dont do things by halves!

Already got a great idea for Season 5 but im keeping this one quiet - i've learnt my lesson =)!

Bring on Season 3!