Opportunity for poker-playing software tester

Poker Copilot is hiring! We’re looking for a part-time and/or freelance software tester who thoroughly understands online poker.

Got an eye for detail? Do you understand phrases like “I was going to continuation bet on the turn but the villain donked first”? Then read the full job advert.

Live Streaming of Poker Copilot on Twitch (and a Giveaway)

iPoker skins come, and iPoker skins go

EverestPoker was on the iPoker network. They recently decided to close down, and concentrate on their other iPoker skin, BetClic Poker. So today’s Poker Copilot update adds support for:

• BetClic Poker
• BetClic Poker.IT (for poker players in Italy)
• BetClic Poker.FR (for poker players in France)

iPoker has two different versions of the software. Here at Poker Copilot, we’ve given the two versions rather obvious names: “iPoker Old Software” and “iPoker New Software”. Currently we support both versions, but we do need to make small changes each time a given skin switch from the old software to the new software. If your favourite iPoker skin is not working in Poker Copilot, do let us know at support@pokercopilot.com and we’ll soon rectify the situation.

Poker Copilot Updated

Last year we started a policy of updating Poker Copilot every two weeks, as much as possible. Why? Because almost every day another obscure bug is reported to us, support for a new poker room is requested, or a poker room adds something new. We don’t want to make all our users have to update for each tiny bug we fix. But we do want to make sure Poker Copilot is working smoothly for most people most of the time. We’ve copied some major software companies and settled on a two-week cycle as a good balance between update frequency and bug count.

Today we have a Poker Copilot update which illustrates exactly the type of problems we encounter frequently:

• On bwin/PartyPoker, if you computer was running in Swiss German, and you were playing a tournament, and if the big blind was 1,000 chips or higher, then bwin/PartyPoker would write the blinds (and just the blinds!) in Swiss currency format. That is, 1’000 instead of 1,000 (UK/USA), 1 000 (France), or 1.000 (Spain), which are bugs we had found in the past.
• PokerStars’ latest update on Mac in Euro-currency hands is using the wrong symbol for the euro sign. Specifically, they are using the de-facto ASCII symbol (character 128, although it depends really), although the hand history files are not ASCII, but are UTF-8. This caused Poker Copilot to think that zoom money cash hands played in euros are play money hands.
• Titan Poker seems to have reintroduced their old software for some customers. We don’t know why, but we’ve had to make Poker Copilot support both the old software and the new software.
• Poker Copilot failed to read 888poker.nj tournament summary files. This one was clearly a bug in Poker Copilot.

When you next start Poker Copilot you’ll be prompted to update.

A feature request: compare and contrast

Loyal Poker Copilot user Gene made an interesting request:

Is it possible to compare my statistics for hands in which I’ve called preflop against hands in which I’ve raised preflop?

Currently it is quite cumbersome to do this in Poker Copilot. It requires you to make screenshots or jot down some notes.

I’d like to take the idea further: Poker Copilot should let you compare any two arbitrary filter settings. Compare April this year to April last year; compare 6-max to 9-max. Compare pocket pairs played in position with 3-bets versus pocket pairs played out of position with preflop raise.

It seems to me that the current “Basic Statistics” or “Advanced Statistics” screen is the logical place to do this. These screens already do compare two sets of numbers: “Today” versus whatever date range you’ve set. So, fundamentally, Poker Copilot already has the capability to compare and contrast any two sets of hands. However the user interface restricts this to just one dimension:

Currently Poker Copilot has a single filter bar, visible in most screens. The “Statistics” screens could have an optional second filter, allowing this comparison to be any arbitrary settings. The idea needs some fleshing out, but I think this is quite doable in a future Poker Copilot version.

The challenge, as with all Poker Copilot screen designs, is to make it simple, flexible, and powerful.

Farewell Full Tilt

Como usar o Poker Copilot

(That’s Portuguese for “How to use Poker Copilot”)

8 Steps to Improve Your Poker Game with Poker Copilot

We’ve published our simple but effective guide to using your Poker Copilot to tune up your game. The 8 steps are:

1. Set the Filters
2. Check Your Preflop Aggression
3. Check Your Positional Awareness
4. Check Your Blind Stealing
5. Check Your Blind Defending
6. Check How You Play Pocket Pairs
7. Check How You Play  Suited Connectors
8. Check your Continuation Bets

Read the whole guide here.

888poker HUD: A tutorial video

I’ve added a new video to the Poker Copilot tutorial videos. See how to configure 888poker for Poker Copilot, see what our 888poker HUD looks like, and learn how to understand the HUD.

Watch me play on 888poker, and watch me use Poker Copilot to help me play.

I first explain how to configure 888poker for Poker Copilot:

• In 888poker, from the “Settings” menu, select “Game Settings”.
• Check the checkbox labelled “Keep my hand history in:”
• Set Days to keep hand history: to 9999
• And click “Apply”
• I need to set my preferred seat…for every table size.
• First 10 Max, then 9 seats, 8 seats, 6 seats.
• Now 5 seats, and 4 seats. Three seats. Heads up…and done!
• Click on “Apply” and then “Save and close”.
• Finally you need to restart 888poker.

Now you can start Poker Copilot. If it is already running, restart it. It is important to restart so that Poker Copilot can detect the changes you made to 888poker’s settings.

Then I show the HUD running on 888poker:

• After the first hand at a new table is completed, the HUD should appear.
• There’s a HUD panel next to each player.
• Above the line, you can see the player name, and how many hands we’ve played against them.
• The higher this number, the more reliable Poker Copilot’s information is.
• Below the line, you can see “VPIP”.
• This indicates how often a player takes part in hands.
• It’s a percentage, and the full name is “Voluntarily put money in the pot”.
• It’s a standard poker term for online play.
• The higher this number, the looser a player is.
• Good players keep this number pretty low, typically around 20% on a full-ring table.
• Next we can see how often a player raises.
• “PFR” means pre-flop raise.
• Again, this is a percentage.
• The higher the number, the more often the player raises pre-flop.
• It shows how aggressive a player is.
• If this number is very low, the player is passive.
• If the number is close to the value of VPIP (which is actually the maximum value it can have), the player is very aggressive.
• The third and final number is “Aggression Frequency”.
• It’s also a percentage. It measures how aggressive a player is in the hands in which he sees the flop.
• Once he gets the flop, does this player fold? call? raise? bet?
• Aggression Frequency is higher if a player is more likely to bet and raise than he is to fold and call postflop.
• If you don’t like the location of the HUD panels, you can move them.
• Click, hold down the mouse, then drag the panel.
• Here in the top-right hand corner we have the HUD control panel.
• I’m not going to explain everything about the control panel in this video.
• What you do need to know is that this config icon gives you a menu of options you can use to fine-tune the appearance of the HUD.
• All this information is explained in full detail in our online user guide.

To get started with Poker Copilot on 888poker, go to our website and download a free 30-day trial now.

PartyPoker “Sit & Go Hero” tournaments now supported in Poker Copilot

A week or two ago Party Poker introduced their variant of the “Jackpot Poker”. It’s a four-handed hyper-turbo Sit & Go game tournament. The prize pool is determined at the start of the tournament with a simulated “spin”. Typically the prize pool is double your buy-in, but can be as much as 10,000 times the buy-in. One player is randomly selected at the beginning of the tournament to have a bounty on their head, too.

Jackpok Poker was pioneered by Winamax as “Expresso”, copied by PokerStars as “Spin & Go” and America’s Cardroom as simply “Jackpot Poker”. Until now the format was always three-max and winner-takes-all.

Poker Copilot now fully supports “Sit & Go Hero”. We’ll be releasing an update this week which includes this improvement.