Excellent collection of free icons

I’ve looked high and low for a collection of low-cost or free icons I could use with Poker Copilot. Typically you have to buy a set of 300 fonts or so, even if you only need one. The search left me empty-handed and frustrated. I had given up and was ready to commission some icons.

However a few days ago I stumbled upon Silk Icons, a set of 1000 icons, all suitable for use with Mac software. Elegant. Professional. Price: $0.00.

Website Redesign Coming

A few weeks ago I went to the “European Software Conference” in Berlin. More than once I introduced myself and got the response, “I think I’ve read your blog”. Ah, the warm inner glow of name recognition and ephemeral fame.

I learnt many things, met many people, and drank a lot of fine German beer at the conference. I jotted down notes all through the conference, notes about improving my software, improving my marketing, improving my customer support, and improving my sales. Afterwards I summarised my notes into a “Post-Conference to-do list”, which I keep on my Mac desktop, as a continual reminder to actually do the things within.

Amazingly, I’ve actually been working through the list, although sporadically. The next major item on my list to get the Poker Copilot website redesigned by a professional. I heard often that this is an important step to improving sales for small software companies. I’ve found the person I would like to do this, but as this will be the largest amount of money I’ve spent on a single part of Poker Copilot, I’m still a little hesitant. Nevertheless I’ve made the decision and I’ll stick to it.

Versions: Top-notch Subversion client for Mac OS X

I love IntelliJ IDEA. It’s almost the perfect IDE. But only almost. Its Subversion integration causes me no end of headaches. So I went searching for something better for accessing Subversion. And I found it. Versions is everything Mac OS X software should be and everything a Subversion client should be. Not free, but highly recommended. I finally feel like I have my Subversion source code repository under control.

Discovered Stack Overflow Yet?

Software developers, programmers, and Informatiker (as they say in Germany): have you caught on to Stack Overflow, the forum for coding questions that is actually helpful?

By cleverly taking into account the sociological aspects of a discussion forum, the Stack Overflow team have created an excellent site. I find that when I post a programming question there, I get a sensible, working solution in less than 30 minutes. I’ve asked Java, XML, and Objective-C questions and have always received just the right answer.

More info about the New Heads-up Display

A loyal reader asked if the new Poker Copilot HUD will support 6-max tables. Indeed it will. The HUD will work for:

  • 6-max tables
  • head-to-head tables
  • 9-max (Full Tilt) and 10-max (Poker Stars)
  • Tournaments and cash games

So far I’ve been solely testing against Full Tilt Poker. I intend to release support for Full Tilt and PokerStars together, although it is possible PokerStars support will come a little later.

I played two tournaments simultaneously a couple of days ago and had functioning HUDs on both tables. So I’m quite convinced the concept will work.

The New Heads-Up Display

Work is coming along nicely on the revamped Poker Copilot Heads-Up Display (HUD). I’ve got a prototype working with Full Tilt Poker 9-max tables. There are still a myriad of issues to resolve, but I’m conquering them one by one.

Poker Software on Mac OS X

It’s asked over and again on poker forums: what are the Mac OS X options for poker software? Here are the choices that I’m aware of:

Poker Rooms for Mac OS X:

  • Full Tilt Poker has full-featured Mac software. As well as their outstanding and innovative user interface you also get all the advanced options such as saving hand histories for later analysis and tracking. The downside: the minimum stake level for ring games is pretty high, especially for Hold’em Limit players. That’s not so good if you have a small bankroll.
  • PokerStars has native Mac software. It’s good, although not quite as slick as Full Tilt. PokerStars is an excellent choice for micro-stakes, with plenty of tables as low as $0.02/$0.05.
  • Party Poker can run within a browser, and therefore can be used on the Mac. On the Mac, however, it lacks some of the features I expect, such as table filters, table resizing, and saving hand histories.
  • Absolute Poker also has a low-feature version that runs within a browser on the Mac.

Poker Tracking and Analysis Software for Mac OS X:

  • Naturally I’ll start with Poker Copilot for Mac OS X – it’s my software, after all. Poker Copilot is the only poker hand history analysis software for Mac OS X that supports both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, as well as cash games and tournaments.
  • There’s also MacPoker Pro. Although this showed early promise, the developer seems to have abandoned it. Apparently it chokes and becomes unusable due to slowness once you’ve got 10,000 hands or so in your hand history.
  • FlopZoom caters only for tournament players on Full Tilt Poker. At the time of writing there is no PokerStars support.

If you are really hankering for the options your Windows-using friends have, then you can use Parallels or VMWare to run Windows poker tracking software. I’ve successfully run Poker Tracker this way, although it was somewhat cumbersome. And let’s face it: you didn’t buy a tasty Mac expecting to have to use Windows.

My preferences are Full Tilt Poker for tournaments, PokerStars for micro-stakes ring games, and Poker Copilot for Mac OS X to track my play and analyse my poker statistics.