If you tried visiting PocketFives.com on Monday, you were met with an ominous message saying the site was changing. Just before Midnight ET, PocketFives.com developers launched a brand new version after months of preparation. Our programmers have spent much of the day on Tuesday ensuring that the wealth of new features works seamlessly. So what can you expect? What’s new on PocketFives.com? Let’s take a quick tour and find out.

For you forum posters out there, you can now jump to the first unread message in a thread. Just click on the little red and white “New” logo next to a thread’s title in the forums and you’ll be whisked away to the newest post. This eliminates having to navigate to a particular page to find out where you left off and represents a major time-saver. You’ll also notice that the forums look different than they did before. Links to Bad Beats, Hand Advice, Poker Legislation, and Training Sites can now be found on the top menu bar under “Other Forums.”

Player profiles have received a major overhaul. For someone like me who does a lot of research for articles, the new profiles are ideal. You can now see cashes for a player broken down by online poker site and view a wide variety of rankings stats, including high points, Sliding PLB scores, largest cash, most recent cash, average cash, and several Sortable Rankings stats. Here’s a look at top-ranked Steve gboro780 Gross’ vital stats:

You can send a private message to another PocketFives.com member by clicking on the “Send a Private Message” link under a person’s profile image. To view your own Private Messages, click on the “Notifications” link in the top menu.

On the bottom of your screen, you’ll notice a red “Show” button. If you click it, you can say hello to our brand new floating menu bar. The feature launched with four quick links in it: “Private Messages,” “Forum Jump,” “Subscriptions,” and “Search.” If you click on the “Forum Jump” link, a menu will pop up showing a list of the various forums we offer on PocketFives.com. More features will be added to the floating menu bar in the near future.

It’s even easier to search for players. Just enter as much of a user’s screen name as you know, change the drop down option to “Poker Rooms,” and sift through the results.

One of the brains behind the new PocketFives.com is Nat N 82 50 24 Arem, who explained some of the background behind the launch: “The new site is built using the most commonly used non-custom big board software and it’s architected to be much faster than the old site. Some new features include read post tracking, expanded profile information, lots of customization options, and less wasted space on the sidebar.”

Arem added that even more features are on the way: “Some of the features coming soon include more badges, style customization options, a custom homepage, and integrated leaderboards. We consider this to be a relatively barebones version of the ultimate vision that we have for the site. Ultimately, PocketFives.com will grow by leaps and bounds in options, features, and traffic as we build it out to its full potential.”

If you’re looking for rakeback, links to the major sites we work with can be found on the right-hand side. The rakeback console details the percentage you’ll be getting back and includes a link to sign up. We run hundreds of thousands of dollars in rakeback promos every month that can be accessed on the bottom of the site under “Rake Races” and “Rake Chases.”

Arem and company have fielded a barrage of questions in a thread in Poker Discussion. PocketFives.com no longer supports IE 6, but the site should operate normally in IE 7 or greater, Firefox 2 or greater, Chrome, and Safari. Give us your feedback by posting in Poker Discussion.