A "Pause" button was added, for private tables only, with this morning's update. Please chat amongst yourselves if you want to pause the game, to let people know your plan. You must recruit a majority of players for the pause to take effect. For example, if there are 4 (human) players at the table, at least 2 must hit the Pause button. If there are 2 players, then 1 player hitting the pause button is sufficient. When everyone is ready to continue, hit the "Continue" button.
Here's a screenshot of the new buttons, in the upper left corner:
I hope that using this new feature is relatively intuitive. If anyone has trouble with it, please write me with details. I may make changes to this in the future; it's experimental.
By the way, I did not add this to public tables, since I thought that most players, who are not really chummy with each other, would not take kindly to pausing a game.
There are some other, more minor changes.
I have increased the timeouts in 29 (Twenty-Nine) from 15 to 20 seconds for playing a card. It doesn't seem like much, but I hope it makes a difference. Timeouts at private tables are now
I've also deployed a few bug fixes. The site has had a problem with tables freezing in Hearts. I discovered a major bug that could cause that to happen, and it has been fixed. A big thank you goes out to the person who reported this to me most recently!
I've fixed a bug in Gin Rummy that allowed you to knock when you shouldn't be able to do so - another big thank you goes to the player who reported this (including a screenshot)!
Finally, I've added a small improvement to the Euchre bot strategy. This was suggested by a player who noticed that they could use a little fine-tuning. I'm no expert, but I think the bots are getting pretty difficult to beat in Euchre. This is largely thanks to a couple of very helpful Euchre players who have been great about giving me tips. Thanks to you both!
As always, let me know if you see any problems at the site. I'm constantly working to improve it.