Documentation Week

What remains of this week is “write better Poker Copilot documentation week.” It’s dirty work but it’s gotta be done.

Preview of Poker Copilot 2.19 Ready to Download

Poker Copilot 2.19 is now available to download.

I’ve spent a lot of time hunting down remaining performance hot-spots. It’s tempting fate to say so, but I feel very positive about this release’s stability and performance. Feedback is welcome. If no major issues surface I’ll make this an official release.

What’s changed:

• The “Mucked Cards Window” now stays hidden between Poker Copilot sessions.
• Fledgling UltimateBet support. It’s ring games only at the moment, due to an UltimateBet hand history problem in tournaments.
• When you select extra columns to show in the Hands summary, Players summary, Stake Level summary, and Position summary, they stay shown between Poker Copilot sessions.
• The Advanced Dashboard for Tournaments shows “In the Money %”

What’s fixed:

• Calculating the take for Ongame Network uncalled bets
• Better handling of PokerStars tournament summaries for freerolls and play money tournament.
• Performance and stability improvements.

Update Instructions:

1. Download version 2.19 here.
2. Open the downloaded file.
3. Drag the Poker Copilot icon to the Applications icon.
4. If prompted to replace an existing version, confirm that you do want to replace.

Now you’re done and ready to hit the tables.

"Sticky Columns" in Next Poker Copilot Update

Poker Copilot allows you to select which columns to display in some of the summaries. The next update will remember which columns you select between sessions.

This is often requested. It’s one of those small things that never are “high priority” but need to get done.

I’ve reworked the “choose your own columns” a little to work more like iTunes. So as of the next update you can right-click on the table headers to choose which columns you want to see.

"In the Money" in Next Poker Copilot Update

The next update of Poker Copilot will include how often you finished a tournament “in the money”.

I put off adding this for a while because I figured it would be hard with the current Poker Copilot database schema. It was easier than I thought.

UltimateBet Tournament Summaries?

Do any of you UltimateBet players know how to get tournament summaries?

I checked my UB hand history folder – no summaries there. I searched through the Mac client – no joy. I perused the UB website – drew a blank.

On the theme of UB: UltimateBet support in Poker Copilot is mostly coming along well. I hope to have a preview release available in the next couple of days.

When to Make a Blind Steal Attempt

[Updated: An anonymous comment pointed out an error in the small blind table. Now fixed]

When playing poker I often attempt to steal the blinds. Too often, perhaps? I want to know which hands pay off for me with blind steal attempts.

If only I had a tool that allowed me to find out…hold on, there’s this Poker Copilot thingy I’ve been creating, marketing, selling, and supporting. Maybe that could help.

Poker Copilot doesn’t seem to have a “Blind Stealing Genius”…yet. So I did a manual query of the Poker Copilot database.

With the aggregate data I have, the following hands on average give a better result when trying to steal the blinds instead of folding. There are some unexpected gaps, probably due to some big losses.

This is only a guideline; actual results are affected by many variables including your table image, the tightness of the big blind, and how you and the big blind play post-flop.

In general: from the button steal with Ax, Kx, Qx, Jx, all pocket pairs, and most connectors. If the big blind is tight, increase the range a bit.

From the small blind you can be more liberal. Steal with any picture card as well as pocket pairs, suited connectors, and the highest unsuited connectors.

Note to self: add to Poker Copilot the ability to find this easily information for your own hands.

Here are the queries I used:

For the button:

select handtype, count(*) as times, sum(takeinbigblinds)/count(*) as return
from gameplayersummary
where
starttime>DATE '2008-01-01' -- forces use of the best index for faster queries
and isplaymoney=false
and istournament=false
and ishero=true
and positionid=3 -- button
and gametypeid=3 -- no limit hold'em
group by handtype
having return > 0
order by return desc

For the small blind:

select handtype, count(*) as times, sum(takeinbigblinds)/count(*) as return
from gameplayersummary
where
starttime>DATE '2008-01-01' -- forces use of the best index for faster queries
and isplaymoney=false
and istournament=false
and ishero=true
and positionid=2 -- small blind
and gametypeid=3 -- no limit hold'em
group by handtype
having return > -0.5
order by return desc

How are Table Statistics Calculated in Poker Copilot?

I’ve updated the Head-up Display docs to include the table statistic calculations.

Fluid: Turning Websites into Desktop Apps

Loyal Poker Copilot customer Miguel unwittingly introduced me to Fluid. This is a nifty Mac OS X app that turns web apps into desktop apps. It solves a headache for me – rapidly switching between web apps and desktop apps to copy & paste or consult. It is a mixture of switching apps and switching tabs.

With Fluid, each web app becomes its own desktop app – including a Dock icon.

Here’s three web apps I tend to have open all the time now converted to desktop apps:

Top Ten Blog Posts

While toying around with Google Analytics I found this list: the ten most viewed pages on The Poker Copilot Blog:

A couple of these have nothing to do with Poker Copilot.

Number 5 (Poker Software on Mac OS X) is one of the few entries I wrote hoping for it to be link bait. It seems it is working. It might be time to update it.

Deadly Drugs

What drug killed via poisoning more people in the UK in 2008 than cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine and methadone combined?

Alcohol. Only heroin killed more.

That’s from one of my favourite websites, Information is Beautiful.