Poker Season 9 11/20

Poker Season 9 is on so be ready for the next flood of Poker Cards!

I am already seeing complaints about the odds of winning hands (as usual).

Mafia Poker Aces Low

Mafia Poker Season 8

It will take a lot of these to win the top rewards in this, and with so many events going on at once, I'm not sure if this is going to be one of my favorites to do this time.

The rules of the game appear to be the same.

The hand rankings appear to be the same.

The Reward: A Janitor, henchmen [varies]

As you may or may not know you can collect up to 250 cards a day or gifting cycle.  The amount of cards needed to progress through this may not be worth the effort for the loots item. Collectors, of course will want to watch the amount of cards they take in so that you do not miss out on the daily points and boosts from the mystery bags. Even one stat point is better than 1 loot item.

Mafia Poker Season 8 has begun 8/7

Send as many poker cards out to your mafia as you can today

So you can get enough winning hands to get the Punked Canon, weapon, [stats vary]

Earlier Posts on Mafia Poker

Mafia Poker Season 7 is here

More on Mafia Poker

Mafia Poker: Aces Low

UPDATED Gifting Insanity

****UPDATE: Zynga took action, probably too much action, and made many items back to being ungiftable.  Gold Treasure Chest keys being among them, and of course the items needed for the limited time events such as mafia poker.  Some of those are good to not be giftable. UNFORTUNATELY, Special Parts and Exotic Animal Feed are also among the items that are no longer giftable.  Zynga can't get it right to save their lives.  Morons. I RECOMMEND EVERYONE CONTACT CS AND DEMAND SPECIAL PARTS AND EXOTIC FEED BE MADE GIFTABLE AGAIN!****

Well, I am stunned by this recent gifting expansion by Zynga.  It is LONG overdue.  And it's also fraught with error.  Either by oversight or apathy, Zynga has created an unfair advantage for certain players.  Gold treasure Chest Keys are giftable.  The items needed for ALL 3 current limited time events are giftable....which really leaves me scratching my head.  The knob wrenches, the parts for Ripped Rims, AND Poker Cards are giftable....this is obviously a great thing for players with multiple accounts, and an even greater thing for people who have multiple accounts that actually get played often.

I am no judge of people with minis. I have several.  I think minis are one of a few reasons the game survives - they drive the DAU number up considerably.  I'd say AT LEAST half the DAU are mini accounts, if not more than half.  My judgement, as always, is reserved for the idiots at Zynga.

I am, however, excited about the new life this has breathed into the trading community, which was all but dead.  The trading community was a special part of Mafia Wars. Maybe some people who quit playing when trading died out will come back.  I know I will be compelled to do some trading to get my hands on some of these damned treasure chest keys.  I am also pumped that special parts and exotic animal feed are now giftable.

So my final thoughts are: I am saying "Way to go, Zynga" in two very different ways at the same time. One is very sincere, one is very sarcastic.

uh,

{ℳ} Қetąmῗиe Қῗd =Ʀ²Ƒ=

Mafia Poker Season 6 is here 6/24

Prepare for a flood of inbox gifts and send them out as fast as you can!

The prize this time is a Bohemian, Henchmen (various ATT/DEF)

Earlier Blog Posts about Mafia Poker (and issues we've all had)

Poker Season 5

More on Mafia Poker

Poker Aces Low (when a winning hand loses)

Because this is really annoying me now, the third family property is *still* not open.

How long until "soon" happens?

Mafia Poker Season 5 has begun 5/10

Poker Season 5 has begun, so be prepared for a flood of gifts in the ZMC 

Send, send, send!

There are nine days left to play and win this lovely Night Brawler 

Other Mafia Poker Related Posts

Mafia Poker Aces Low  

More on Mafia Poker

Poker Season 3

Poker Season Four is here

Poker Season Four, 11 days to go

Send & Receive Poker Cards from free gifts.

Beat Julia's Hand

Colelct your wins and get the prizes

Earlier posts about mafia Poker 

Poker Season 3 

More on Mafia Poker

Mafia Poker: Aces Low

Just say NO to excessive Mafia Wars stress!

Mafia Chores. This should be the name of the game these days. There is simply tooooooo much going on in this game. But you know what? I am no longer going to stress out about it. I have determined that there is just no way I am going to be able to do it all. So I am actively avoiding the functions in this game that I personally find most annoying.

It started with deciding to not put any effort whatsoever into any of the missions. I am simply not going to do them. Next I decided to not participate in the last new property. It has still not been built. Then I decided not to play even one single hand of the new poker season. I have not even collected one single card. I am in no hurry to make warlord 10. I am gonna get my ass kicked in fights. I am not gonna beat every player I attack. Blah blah blah. Simply put? I have decided that some of this stuff in this crazy game is just simply not going to matter to me. And everything will be just fine.

I love this game, but it has begun to consume way too much of my life. Moderation - I need it, and letting some of this crap go is the first step. I hear there is another new property on the way. Meh. No biggie. I could care less. I want to enjoy Mafia Wars not be a slave to it. I doubt Zynga is ever gonna stop overloading the game with "activities", but I do not have to encourage them by desperately trying to complete every little task. Moderation - I need it. {ℳ} Қetąmῗиe Қῗd =Ʀ²Ƒ=

MAFIA WARS more on Mafia Poker, poker card collection, and limits

I didn't get a chance to play with the new Mafia Poker season in Mafia Wars last night due to the late hour when it arrived in our game. Now that I'm looking at it and reading about it more, I can't say I'm overly impressed. We'll have about 9 more days to try and complete this, but unfortunately right now the only way to get cards is to publish a post to your Facebook news feed asking for them.

I got 14 cards when I made a news feed post; according to customer support, we should be able to get up to 20 cards from our posts. It looks like we'll be able to create that news feed post asking for cards every four hours. I know many of us got ticked off over the flood of poker cards in our ZMC during the first Mafia Poker season, but I have to say it kind of sucks that the Poker Card is not on the Free Gift page.

On the bright side,you can collect more Poker Cards by clicking on the news feed posts of your friends. I collected over 70 (73, to be exact) before I finally got bored of the clicking. This is good for those of us with a large and active mafia, as we can readily find posts to click to gain Poker Cards so that we can keep playing; but it's not so good for players with smaller mafias.

If the number of cards shown in your Mafia Poker game doesn't match up with the number of cards you think you should have, you can check your Inventory for Poker Cards to see the exact amount that you have.

Unfortunately for some players, when they generate a post to their Facebook news feed asking for Poker Cards, those of us clicking on their post get the message that the feed has expired.

This happened to me this afternoon, and I wasted over an hour with customer support trying to get the situation resolved. Since this is a timed event, I felt that they should credit me the 20 cards they told me each post can collect. The customer support agent only offered me 10 reward points, which would only buy me 10 Poker Cards!! I argued with him and finally got ticked enough to ask for a supervisor. The supervisor at first told me the same thing, but after I pointed out that I don't harass customer support and milk them for reward points like many players BRAG about doing, he finally capitulated.

Not surprisingly, I'm not certain of the information that the customer support agent and supervisor gave me. The agent told me we could collect 120 cards per day from feeds. The supervisor told me it was 140--120 from our own feeds, and 20 from other players' posts. Well, I already know that part is incorrect, because I collected 73 by clicking posts earlier today. Given all these issues with expired feeds, I wonder if it's not the other way around.

I suspect there's a hard limit of either 120 or 140 per day. Which stinks. You better have at least a 50/50 win ratio to master this event, if what they told me is correct.

We should be able to get these as gifts.

☟Like this post? Then share it with your Facebook friends and Families!

MAFIA WARS Mafia Poker Season 2 FAQ

From the Official Mafia Wars blog. I glanced over it. It still has old wording in it saying that you can send Poker Cards as gifts. I also noticed it lists Ace as the high card this time. I think it was the low card during the first Mafia Poker season. Use the Share button at the bottom of this post to share this Mafia Poker FAQ with your Facebook friends and Families.

Mobsters,
Mafia Poker Season 2 is back with few changes. Read below for more details.
Mafia Poker FAQ

Important Note:

As you progress towards Mastery Levels, you will receive one Bronze Mastery item – Single Malt after completing 10 wins. Stats of this item will be updated as you progress towards higher Mastery Levels up to Emerald Mastery.

Q: What is Mafia Poker?
A: Mafia Poker is a simple version of the hugely popular game of poker. The aim is to make a Hand of the best possible 5 cards against the dealer - Juliana.

You make your Hand by selecting and discarding cards from a deck of cards collected by you. Ask your friends for cards or send cards to get some in return. You can also buy cards using Reward Points.

The more cards you have the better are your chances of winning.
At any given point only two of Juliana’s cards will be visible to you. You can gain extra advantage by peeking at her remaining cards.
Stack up the wins to gain mastery over the game and win better rewards.

Q: Is there a minimum level requirement?
A: Yes, to play Mafia Poker, a player must be a minimum of level 25.

Q: What do I need to start the game?
A: You should have minimum of 5 cards in order to start the game. Once you have 5 or more cards, click on “Start” to play the game.

Q: How do I get cards?
A:  You can request your friends for cards through feeds and get cards in return when you help them. You can also buy cards using Reward Points.

Q: How do I play?
A: After you start the game, you will play against the dealer – Juliana, with an aim to make a Hand of the best possible 5 cards.

Glossary:

Pack of Cards – 52 Cards (13 cards each in 4 Suites)
Suites – Spades, Hearts, Clubs and Diamonds (all suites are equal in strength)
Order of Cards – Ace is the highest card, King is next … all the way down to a Two
A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Hand – Your best 5 cards (please see Rank of Hands below)
Dealer – Your opponent - Juliana
Draw  – Replace empty slots or rejected cards with new cards

Show – Reveal cards to see who has won

Discard – Reject a card from your current hand to replace it with a new card

Click to Keep – Cancel the discard action chosen for one or multiple cards

Peek - At any given point only two of Juliana’s cards will be visible to you. You can gain extra advantage by peeking at her remaining cards.

Please note:

• All cards that you discard will be permanently removed from your deck of collected cards.
• All cards that you use for a Show will also be permanently removed from your deck of collected cards. 

Rank of Hands:

1. Royal Flush: Five consecutive cards of the same suite, in order of A-K-Q-J-10 form a Royal Flush.

2. Straight Flush: Any five card sequence in the same suite.

3. Four of a Kind: All four cards of the same rank.

4. Full house: Three cards of the same rank (can be in different suite) plus a pair of cards of another rank, such as K-K-3-3-3

5. Flush: Any five cards of the same suite (not all consecutive or in sequence, otherwise it would be a Straight Flush)

6. Straight: Five cards of in sequence, not all of the same suite. An Ace cannot be in the interior of a straight - for example A-2-3-4-5 is not a straight.

7. Three of a kind: Three cards of the same rank and two other ranks.

8. Two Pair: Two separate pairs. That is, two cards of one rank, two cards of a second rank and remaining one card of a third rank.

9. One Pair: Two cards of the equal rank and remaining three of different ranks.

10. High Card: Five cards of different rank and suite or if a hand does not fall under any category above, it is ranked by the highest single card in hand.




Q: Why am I unable to discard from my hand?
A: This may happen when you have exactly 5 cards in your account (which are already used in forming the hand).
At any point of time in game, you should have at least 6 cards in total to use Discard function.

Q: When to use “Peek” option?
A: At any given point only two of Juliana’s cards will be visible to you.
To override this restriction, use the Peek option to view her remaining cards. This way you will know the hand you need to make to defeat Juliana.

Q: My card deck count shows XX (+YY). Why is the count separated?
A: Mafia Poker is based on a pack of maximum 52 cards. Your card deck count carries two parts:
a. Count of cards remaining in deck (XX) while the game is in progress.
b. Count of any excess cards which you may have received or bought - apart from the deck (+YY)
When you reveal (show) the cards to see who won, the card deck will reset and excess cards (if any) will be adjusted towards the deck to complete the pack.
Please note:

• All cards that you discard will be permanently removed from your deck of collected cards.
• All cards that you use for a Show will also be permanently removed from your deck of collected cards. 

Q: What will happen in case of a tie?
A: In case of a tie (for example: both the dealer and you have the same pair), the player having at least One card higher than that of other’s will win.

 Q: What are the different Mastery Levels and Rewards?
A: Every time you win a Poker hand, your progress will be counted towards the Mastery of the game. You will receive one Bronze Mastery item – Single Malt after completing 10 wins and the stats of this item will be updated as you progress towards higher Mastery Levels (Upto Emerald - 120 Wins). You will not receive a new item every time you complete a Mastery Level. Following are the Mastery stats:




Q: Where can I view my Mastery status?
A: The Mastery status and number of total wins will be available on the top of Mafia Poker page.

PS: Help us make better Mafia Wars features and events by completing this very quick survey to let us know what you think of this one.

-The Mafia Wars Team

MAFIA WARS Zynga player survey: Mafia Poker

The Mafia Wars fan page has been running posts for another player survey: Mafia Poker. This is another Mafia Wars feature I think a lot of us will have feedback on. I know I did; I gave it a review and some suggested fixes a few days ago. I think this could potentially be a fun feature or event, were Zynga to make some changes and a couple of important fixes.

http://zyn.ga/FPX <-- Take a quick survey about this event.

P.S. Don't forget, the Mafia Poker event ends tomorrow night. Will you get the emerald Fortune Teller?

Mafia Poker Extended

Zynga has extended the Mafia Poker event, much to my annoyance since I had just accepted 50+ Poker Cards that turned into Mystery Bags upon accepting them. And yes, I have submitted a ticket to CS, not that it will do ANY good whatsoever (my last 2 experiences with CS were an absolute nightmare and a complete waste of my life). Nonetheless, you now have roughly 1 day and 17 hours and a few minutes left to complete this event. My work schedule had kept me from getting very far, and I doubt I will be finishing this one, which is unfortunate since it seems you do not lose the Fortune Teller you previously had. I am working on Gold Mastery and I have both a Bronze AND a Silver Fortune Teller in my inventory. Anyway, there's my two cents before I leave for work. Good luck.

Mafia Poker for Mafia Wars, review and fixes

A few days back, the Mafia Poker event was added to Mafia Wars. At first I thought this was actually a rare win for Zynga, as some of us really enjoy poker, plus this event was less obnoxious about the BUY BUY BUY aspect, yet still provoked us to send lots of Mafia Wars requests in the form of Poker Cards. We got a cool feature to play with, and Zynga got to make money off of it.

Well... now that we've all had a few days to digest this event, here's my two-penny ante: 

Mafia Poker for Mafia Wars is not as great as I first thought. 

The first major failing was the timer. When I realized how much of my daily allotted gifts were going to be used up in order to get the emerald mastery Fortune Teller loot item in the given timeframe, I quickly lost interest and have all but stopped playing the cards. To heck with the loot. Zynga needs to stop trying to force us to fever-pitch over this game. It might help their numbers in the short term, but the longtime and obvious trend now is that people are leaving the game because of things like this. Zynga is hurting themselves, and they don't seem to care.

And the fact that they're calling this event a "season" suggests there's going to be more of them. There's a few approaches Zynga could take to make this more palatable.

1. Double the timer length without altering the game in any other way; this still gives us a time limit to work for, but reduces the stress of having to choose which gifts to accept, and the frustration over the Poker Card black hole currently going on in our ZMCs.

2. Or, not even count the Poker Cards as Free Gifts. If there's got to be a limit on what we can collect, make that limit exclusive from our Free Gifts limit. 

3. Get rid of the "season" limited time event idea altogether and make this a regular feature, periodically updating the loot prize, maybe every 2 or 3 weeks.

This is the other thing that significantly reduced everyone's enjoyment of this event. Players found that hands that absolutely should have won, were still losing. Considering Zynga also has a separate Poker game, it's rather ironic that their Mafia Poker for Mafia Wars turned out this way.

Worse yet, instead of bothering to fix the problem, Zynga told players to stop using scripts. SRSLY!! I highly doubt most of these occurrences were due to scripts, or else I would've been having this problem too.

Furthermore, Zynga shouldn't be telling us how to play the game. Not at this point. At this point, Zynga should be happy and grateful for every single one of us still playing Mafia Wars, not telling us "Hard Luck" and blaming their problems on scripts.

That's just my $0.02 worth. What do YOU think of this event?

Mafia Poker: Aces Low

How, exactly, does a pair of aces and a pair of nines NOT beat a pair of Jacks?

Ohhh right. This is Zynga Poker, not the real thing. This image was posted in the MwG group. The "dealer", Juliana, has a pair of Jacks. The player has two pair--a pair of aces and a pair of nines. I am not a Poker mastermind, but PokerStars could attest that I'm not much of a loser, and yet I've never seen a hand like this lose. Hard luck, indeed.  (I wonder what Gesus would say about this hand).

Zynga wants to blame this sort of "error" on multi tabs or scripts, but there are just too many reports of this. Including, reports of the same from people who are known not to use scripts.

Like I said, jokingly, yesterday, my money is on this just being a Zynga bug. Zynga would be well advised to address issues on their side, instead of attempting to place blame elsewhere. Particularly when there are lots of players who don't use scripts and are even adamant about not using scripts. My guess would be that one or two players may have submitted an uncropped screen shot showing bookmarklets on their browser bar and so Zynga jumped to a quick case-closed.

I use scripts. Daily. I use multi-tabs. Daily. Yet I haven't encountered this issue. I may be a small fish in the pond, but this suggests, to me at least, that the problem might not be limited to script users and multi-tabbers. The problem might just be Zynga, after all.

Please contain your amazement and surprise.

A Slow News Day for Mafia Wars

 ...and thank gawd! I've had my head buried in text books much of the day. I managed to stay plugged in to Mafia Wars nonetheless, but I wasn't very engaged. It was very nice and appreciated to not have 10 million new things in the game to deal with, for once.

I saw earlier today that they have brought back those lame group sales. We haven't seen one in awhile, and last I checked, participation wasn't that great. I guess Zynga thought otherwise, as there's another group sale in the Mafia Wars marketplace and also the home page banner, for the Rivet Leather, AND this one is going to last a whole week ::yawn::. The idea is, the more people buy the item, the more its stats increase...but so does the cost for anyone who buys later rather than sooner. Supposedly this is meant to prompt you to buy quickly, but this tactic hasn't ever worked on me. I think their prices are laughable for a loot item that isn't that great and will be quickly outdated.

Speaking of over priced, Zynga is still trying to push these "collector's edition items" on us. Not surprisingly, they aren't faring any better than they did last year. Not even 1500 sold on this round of the Scion Heavy Machine before it was finally yanked from the home page a short while ago. I've always mocked their pricing, and reducing their prices in order to gain more sales is apparently not something within Zynga's scope of understanding. I am not gonna pay 35 reward points for a piece of loot. But what do I know?

Oh, I finished mission number 7 in the End Of Days mission event awhile ago--Armageddon, and had a funny thing happen. The New Year's Resolution screen popped up again out of the blue, right underneath the Mission Complete drop-down. I'm pretty sure I saw someone post about this a day or two ago; you'd think Zynga would have already fixed that? And no, sadly, I wasn't able to claim more Ms. PAC Partys :(

Although, predictably, the option to waste reward points to buy more votes was still there. Go figure.

And it would be a day at Zynga without some bug or problem, right? Apparently the Draw button wasn't working for some players, and some winning hands weren't winning--well, I did say the house odds would probably suck!

I haven't personally, encountered any problems with the Mafia Poker, at least not that I noticed, and I did play a few dozen hands. In fact it crossed my mind that this was a rare 'win' for Zynga. An easy ingame 'feature' that doesn't completely suck, doesn't force us to BUY BUY BUY, yet still prompts us to send Facebook requests in the form of Poker Cards--Zynga makes money when we send those requests.

Anyway, Zynga is blaming whatever issues people were having on the players using scripts and multi-tabs. I guess that could be the case, but my money's on it being a Zynga bug.

Hello Mafia Players,

We are aware that some of you are experiencing the following issue:

Mafia Poker Issues

Issue: Some players report that their "Draw" button goes missing. Others report that, even after understanding that we consider the Ace the highest card, not the lowest, they will sometimes lose with a winning hand, such as two pairs vs. the dealer having just one.

Status: We have determined that most, if not all, of these issues are the result of playing Mafia Wars in multiple tabs/windows and/or with scripts. Please try disabling any scripts you may be using and playing the game in only one tab or window. If, after doing this, you still experience any issues with Mafia Poker, please add your details to this Bug Report.

Workaround: Disable scripts and play Mafia Wars in only one tab/window at a time. If you know of another workaround for this issue, please Submit A Workaround.

Thanks,
The Mafia Wars Team

One last thing--two, actually. Earlier today when I was accepting gifts from my ZMC, the gifts weren't disappearing after I accepted them, which I found much to my liking. It's easier to pick and choose which gifts to accept when the whole dang ZMC screen isn't jumping around due to previously accepted gifts going poof. It was like that for a couple of hours and I'd thought it was something new. But now the gifts are back to disappearing again after I accept them. Doh!

I've had a comment here and a couple of emails from people asking what I mean when I refer to the ZMC. By ZMC we mean "Zynga Message Center". It's the little envelope in the upper right of your Mafia Wars screen that holds your gifts. And now you've learned something today.

Have a great weekend!

Mafia Poker

Ah, so that's what the Poker Card is for. A mini poker game in Mafia Wars called Mafia Poker. The Playing Cards turned up in my game earlier tonight, and now Mafia Poker has made its appearance. The Fortune Teller is the prize; win 10 hands for the bronze mastery of the Fortune Teller, up to 150 hands to get the top mastery level for the Fortune Teller. I'm betting the house odds aren't so great, but good luck! I'll check it out more tomorrow.

CLICK HERE TO SEND PLAYING CARDS