The newest update is waiting for you to download. This has no new features. It’s a stability-and-reliability update. In other words I did some bug fixes, including:
support for tournaments with rebuys and add-ons
converting “tournament entry” prizes into a cash equivalent in the stats
a more accurate continuation bet calculation
no more spurious “Change the PokerStars hand history to English” messages
much better performance when you have more than 100,000 hands
the HUD is more stable
better performance in general
For the technically inclined: I rediscovered the beauty of the producer-consumer pattern. I use it often in my enterprise consulting gigs in the form of JMS or ActiveMQ, but I hadn’t thought of applying it to desktop software.
I replaced the communication between the HUD and the rest of the app with a producer-consumer approach. The result is a much more reliable system, less susceptible to oscillating CPU usage. Java’s BlockingQueue makes implementing this a cinch.
I played a tournament satellite and finished equal 1st, winning entry to another tournament. The hand history doesn’t state how much that is worth, but clearly it is not worth nothing. How can Poker Copilot automatically and simply determine the “amount” I’ve won?
Here’s an excerpt from the tournament summary log, showing what the total info available. (I’m stevoski111):
Full Tilt Poker Tournament Summary Sat to the $100K Double Deuce (75824401) Hold’em No Limit Buy-In: $0.50 + $0.10 Add-On: $0.50 Rebuy: $0.50 stevoski111 performed 1 Add-On stevoski111 performed 2 Rebuys Buy-In Chips: 1000 Add-On Chips: 1500 Rebuy Chips: 1000 154 Entries Total Add-Ons: 61 Total Rebuys: 169 Total Prize Pool: $192 Top 8 finishers receive Entry to Tournament #73510655 Tournament started: 2009/01/11 9:24:01 ET Tournament finished: 2009/01/11 11:07:57 ET
1: roycecs, Entry to Tournament #73510655 1: bamafreak, Entry to Tournament #73510655 1: sarotti1, Entry to Tournament #73510655 1: Lucky855, Entry to Tournament #73510655 1: Climber112, Entry to Tournament #73510655 1: stevoski111, Entry to Tournament #73510655 1: Ali3072, Entry to Tournament #73510655 1: floppin fran, Entry to Tournament #73510655 9: LaurenS2, $7.20 10: VinnyVik, $4 11: jacksorbeterz, $2.88 12: CAUSEMAN, $1.92
Sorry to all who downloaded Poker Copilot in the last two days to find that it won’t start. If you download Poker Copilot now, you’ll find that it is now working.
It was a sloppy mistake on my behalf. I’ve now added another step to my “Release Checklist” to prevent the same mistake happening again.
A side effect of creating Poker Copilot is an overflowing e-mail inbox. So far I’ve just managed to keep on top of it. Normally the e-mails are either user support (“My license key isn’t working”) or positive feedback (“I really like Poker Copilot, and I’d like it even more if it comfabulated my data”).
A couple of times I got a nasty e-mail. A stranger writes in a tone they would never use in person. “Your crappy software is not worth half of what you charge”, or somesuch, they write. Even worse, someone posts some bad insults about Poker Copilot on a public forum. But this doesn’t bother me. I told myself the day I started Poker Copilot, “Don’t take it personally”. “It” is whatever crap I might get flung at me.
Thick skin is what you need as soon as you make yourself publicly visible. In any business venture you need to take what happens as “business”. False promises made? Screwed over by a client? Don’t take it personally.
The more successful your software or business or public persona is, the most you are exposed to abuse. The people who give the abuse make up the tiniest sliver of the people you interact with. But if you let them, they can take over your thoughts. Don’t take it personally.
I’ve applied this concept so well that I actually don’t remember the personal attacks. I know they happened, but I let them bounce off my hard skin.
To the people who write me friendly, positive, and polite e-mails: Thank you! To the few others: I didn’t take it personally.
If you are a blogger or journalist willing to write a review of Poker Copilot for Mac OS X, email me and I’ll send you a license, FREE of charge.
The rules:
almost anything goes, you can write a positive review, a negative review, or something in between. I don’t ask to screen reviews.
your blog must be real, not something created in five minutes simply for the sake of getting a free license. At least some months old, with real, regular content.