Host Online

Click Online from the Main Menu, Select a Tournament and click Continue to continue to the Setup Online Tournament (2 of 2) screen.

See Online Setup Help for additional information.
See FAQ for common online questions.

Local Area Network (LAN) Connection	Local IP Address This text field displays your local IP address of your computer. This is the IP address that you will use to configure your router. Game URL The LAN Connection Game URL is used if you want to play other human opponents on other computers in your local area network (LAN). An example of a LAN can be two or more of your home computers all connected with a router. Another example may be an office LAN, depending on your company LAN setup and policies. In either case, each user is required to have their own licensed copy of DD Poker. In most cases, other computers on your LAN will automatically find the game you are hosting shown under Games Running On Your LAN when they click the Join Online button. If their computer can not automatically find the game you started due to network issues on your LAN, they may still be able to join. You will need to send the entire Game URL to these people. You may do this by clicking the Copy button which copies the Game URL to your clipboard and then pasting it into an email or instant message. Another option is to simply yell over the cubicle wall the Game URL. These players can either type the Game URL in manually or can copy the Game URL and click the Paste button next to Game URL on their Join Game screen. If you are behind a firewall, such as a router, your LAN Game URL will use the IP address assigned by your router. Note: The game can accept connections from both guests using the Game URL on your local area network and others using your internet Game URL (see below).
Internet Connection	Internet Connection: If you wish to allow friends or other DD Poker users to participate in your poker tournament from the internet, you must configure your Internet connection. Click the Configure Internet Connection checkbox to start. Enter your public IP address (if you know it). Otherwise click Get Public IP Address to automatically figure out what your IP address your internet service provider (ISP) assigned to you. This will also automatically generate your Game URL that will be used to host the poker game over the internet. Before you continue to the Poker Lobby, click Test Connection. This will confirm you are able to receive message over then internet and thus host a game. If you received a message saying that the test succeeded, then click, OK, then Open Lobby, to proceed to the Poker Lobby and open the tournament for players to join. If your test failed, likely due to router, firewall or internet security software settings, your internet guests will not be able to join your game. See Online Setup Help for additional information on configuring your computer, routers and firewall to allow in-bound internet connections.   Configure Internet Connection Check Configure Internet Connection if you wish to configure this game to allow players to connect from the internet. this is necessary if you have friends you want to play with, but they are at another location (e.g., not in your office and not on your home network). Note: You can typically only have one computer on a LAN hosting a public internet game at a time. This is because they share the same public IP address and you need to forward incoming poker information to the hosting computer. This is done by port forwarding to the LAN IP address of your hosting computer. Public IP Address Enter your pubic IP address or click on the Get Public IP Address button to determine it. This is the IP address that everyone on the internet or outside your firewall will see as your IP address. This IP address is used to create your internet Game URL. Get Public IP Address Query the DD Poker server to determine your public IP address. This is needed to create the internet Game URL needed for players connecting to the game from the internet. Game URL This is the Game URL that will be used for people to connect to your game on the internet or outside your firewall. It consists of your internet IP address with a game identification and game password tacked on. The Game URL can only be altered by manually adjusting the Public IP Address above due to unique network issues, otherwise the game ID and password can not be altered and the entire line must be used by anyone wishing to join your game. Test Connection Test whether the internet game URL is working via the DD Poker server. The server will attempt to contact your game with a test message similar to the way other players would connect to your game. This allows you to confirm that any required router or firewall settings have been correctly configured to allow in-bound connections. Your test must succeed in order to host a game over the internet. If your Test Connection fails, for sure, you have a problem in one of two places: Your firewall or security software is not configured Your router is not port forwarding to the IP address of your computer. (see above in Setup Inforamation)
DD Poker Public Game List	Current Profile Displays the current player profile in use. Click on the Profile button to change profiles or to online-activate your profile to list public games. Online Activated 'Yes' will be displayed if your profile is online-activated to List Public Games. This means you have gone through the process of registering with the DD Poker server and obtaining a password for your player name. This process is described in detail below. To online-activate and obtain a password for your player name, click the Profile button to go to the Player Profile screen. Choose the player you wish to use, then click the Edit button. The Edit Player window will pop-up, choose Activete Profile, where you can enter your email address and have the password sent to you. Note: The player profile name is what other players see when you join public games and is what is listed on the public DD Poker website. You cannot change this name after it is created, so choose wisely. If you name is already taken, you will be notified and will have to choose another name. Once you enter a valid email address format, click OK. An email from ddpoker.com will be sent to the address entered. It should arrive within seconds, but may take longer based on the email traffic of your internet service provider. If you do not receive the email within a reasonable amount of time, make sure your email provider or your email program is not filtering or blocking the delivery of above email address. You can try sending the email again by clicking the Resend Password button. This button will only appear after your first attempt. The email will contain an 8 digit password. Type the lowercase password into the Password entry on the Edit Player pop-up window and click OK. After verifying your password, your Profile is now configured to List Public Games. Once your Profile is online-activated, you may change your email on the Edit Player pop-up by clicking the Change Email button. Doing so requires re-activation and a new password will be sent to this address. You may also change your password from the auto-generated one to one you can more easily remember, using the Change Password button. Post on Pubic Game List Once you have configured your game with Configure Internet Connection, and your profile is online-activated, you can choose to Post on Public Game List by clicking this checkbox. If you post your game on the public game list, your game will be listed as a public game that anyone in the world with the DD Poker version 2 software can join by clicking the Find Pubic Games button in the Join Online menu. Note: Your game will not actually post until you click the Open Lobby button. If you do not post on the public game list and leave this checkbox blank. You will have a private game over the internet available only to your friends that you forward your Internet Game URL to via email, instant message, or telephone.
Options	Host As Observer Check Host As Observer if you (the host) wish to just be an observer of the tournament rather than a player. Remember, you will not be playing in the tournament and must keep your game running until it finishes.
Buttons	Open Lobby Continues to the Poker Lobby screen showing the players that have joined the tournament and a chat window. Help Displays this Help screen. Cancel Return to the previous menu .

Players	Players These are the players that have joined your hosted poker tournament. You may chat with them in the chat window until you are ready to start the tournament. You may Ban or Mute any player by right clicking on thier name. (See banning and muting players under the online tab in Options for more information.) You may also right click a player to change them from an observer to a player or vise versa. Fill With Computer Players You may quickly change whether you wish to have computer players fill the table based on the maximum number of players you have set in the tournament settings.
Observers	Observers This displays the list of all the people that have joined the game as observers, but will not actually play the game. The maximum number of observers is set in the Tournament Settings. Observers will appear in the chat window in purple with a [obs] next to their name to indicate they are an observer. Note: The right click band and mute options shown above for Players also apply to observers.
Game URL's	LAN Give the LAN Game URL to others in your local area network or other computers on the same router. Click the Copy button to copy the address to the clipboard so you case paste it to an email or instant message. See the Game URL descriptions above under Setup Online Tournament for more information on Game URL's. Internet Give the Internet Game URL to others on the internet or outside your firewall. Click the Copy button to copy the address to the clipboard so you case paste it to an email or instant message. See the Game URL descriptions above under Setup Online Tournament for more information on Game URL's.
Chat	You can chat with others that have already joined the tournament as players or observers as you are waiting for others to join before you start the tournament. Observers will appear in the chat window in purple with an [obs] next to their name to indicate they are an observer. Demo users will appear in the chat window with a [demo] next to their name to indicate they are a demo user.   Send Use the text area to type your message, then hit Enter or click the Send button to send your message to everyone. Your message will be displayed in the chat window. Clear Click Clear to erase all the text in your chat window. This will not clear the text on anyone else's chat window. Lobby Click Lobby to start the chat lobby where you can talk with other players currently running DD Poker.
Buttons	Start! Starts the game. No more players can join once you start the tournament. Edit Brings up the Edit Tournament pop-up screen to allow you to change tournament settings while you are in the lobby. Hint: This is a good place to change the number of players, or if you wish to have computer AI in the game. Note: Changes made to the tournament at this point are for the upcoming game only and are not saved permanently for the tournament. Options Brings up the Options pop-up screen to allow you to change tournament settings while you are in the lobby. Help Displays this Help screen. Cancel Return to the previous menu, the second online setup screen.

• If you are the host of a LAN game and your IP address changes, the new IP address will be used, and the guests can rejoin by clicking your game in the LAN game list. This could happen in an office if you play at lunch and wanted to resume the next day but the LAN changed your computer IP overnight.
  
• If you are the host on an internet game, you will not be able to resume the tournament if your public IP address changes after a power failure. This can happen if you ISP assigns a new IP address when re-establishing an internet connection. This can also happen if your router loses power longer then a brief interruption. In a future version of DD Poker, we will allow you to reconfigure your public internet address while in-game.
  
• Typically, routers try to re-assign the same local IP address to a computer when re-connecting, but depending on the router, it may assign a different number.

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