I’ve been playing heads-up sit and go tournaments (HU SNG) over the last couple of weeks. It’s nice to note that Poker Copilot works very well with HU SNG’s, because there is so much screen space to use. I can see a dozen stats, with labels:
HU SNG’s are a game where you raise a lot pre-flop. Depending on the opponent, when I have position I might raise 50% of the time, 75% of the time, or even more. In fact when I played a HU SNG today, I noticed my opponent folded to 80% of my pre flop raises, so I raised pre-flop 89% of the time from position.
The information I need to help decide when to raise pre-flop is to know whether I have, for example, a top 50% hand, or with a nitty opponent, a top 75% hand. Looking this up manually in PokerZebra does the job but it is slow and clumsy to do this mid-hand.
That’s why I want a tool that shows in real-time my percentage chance of winning. I’m surprised that no-one has yet created and made available such a tool for Mac OS X, as it is not overly difficult to do for a programmer of some talent. So I’m going to try to create such a tool over the next week or so.
There is a problem though. Full Tilt Poker always banned software that showed real-time odds. As far as I can tell, PokerStars allows it, but it is not clear to me whether this really is the case, and whether it will continue to be the case. Other poker rooms lack any clear policy. If Poker Copilot gets banned by online poker rooms, I’m out of business. So I’m going to create this as a separate tool.
Over the next few days, I’ll describe the steps I take to in an attempt to build this tool, which I’m called SeeingStars.
For Poker Copilot’s e-commerce, I use a service called FastSpring. They handle the credit card verification, fraud detection, payment processing, and “thanks for buying” email generation. I’ve been using FastSpring with Poker Copilot since the beginning, when FastSpring was a relative newcomer in a field where many of the competitors had a bad reputation. Many of the incumbents – well, mainly just one incumbent that went by many names – had a reputation for not particularly caring for either their customers nor for their customers’ customers. They tended to make decisions that favoured themselves in the short-term. Other companies weren’t keeping up with the times.
I admire FastSpring for keeping to a policy of excellent customer service, even as they have experienced year after year of rapid growth. In four years of selling Poker Copilot, I’ve never once seriously entertained the idea of moving to another e-commerce partner. Their offering keeps improving. Every customer support issue I’ve had with them has been handled immediately. I’m certainly not one of FastSpring’s large customers, but they always treat me as if I am.
PokerStars released an update today. The only change I’ve noticed so far is a new theme chooser. This I like. It’s good to see the leading online poker room continue to innovate:
Change to PokerStars satellite tournament ticket win descriptions now handled properly
PokerStars audit importing was failing on tournament wins greater than $1000/€1000
Fixed problem where tournament descriptions longer than 100 characters crashed Poker Copilot (Yes, a ROOKIE MISTAKE – that somehow took FOUR years to surface)
Fixed PokerStarsES problem where HUD default layout was incorrect
Hand replayer now always shows hero in same position (top centre)
Added page up/page down/home/end keyboard shortcuts to the hand replayer
Added “Rake” as an optional column in the summaries
Known problem:
Lock Poker’s new Mac OS X software is not supported by Poker Copilot.
PartyPoker’s latest update is not yet supported by Poker Copilot.
Merge Network All-in EV is sometimes calculated incorrectly.
I didn’t think this would happen: Full Tilt Poker has been taken over by PokerStars, it is reopening within 90 days, and all existing non-USA Full Tilt Poker customers will have their funds made available. USA customers will eventually be paid by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) using funds paid by PokerStars to the DOJ as part of a very large settlement.
How large is the settlement? Roughly US$700 million. Which shows just how much money there is online poker.
Read more here and here and views and opinions here and the DOJ press release here.
Full Tilt Poker had, in my opinion, the best Mac software in online poker.
After 24 hours of Mountain Lion, and 24 hours of Poker Copilot being Mountain Lion friendly, I’ve not heard of any problems. This is a huge relief for me. I’ve been running developer previews of Mountain Lion for some months, and it quickly became clear that Mountain Lion was going to cause some grief for small software companies if they didn’t get their software modified for Gatekeeper. Mountain Lion refuses to open many newly downloaded applications. You get messages like this:
There are work-arounds; if you encounter software like this, you can either:
right-click (or ctrl-click) the downloaded application and click Open. You’ll see this:
Turn Gatekeeper off. In System Preferences, go to Security & Privacy, select the General panel, and set “Allow applications downloaded from:” to “Anywhere”:
Today Apple is releasing OS X 10.8, also known as OS X Mountain Lion. This introduces a new technology called Gatekeeper. By default it prevents many applications for being installed, unless the applications have met some standards for ensuring they can’t easily be hacked to contain malicious code.
Today’s update meets the requirements for Mountain Lion and Gatekeeper.
What’s changed:
Changes for OS X Mountain Lion’s (OS X 10.8) Gatekeeper feature.
Hand replayer can now be resized
Improved handling of Merge Network hands where a player goes all-in as a consequence of posting a blind
A friend of mine started using Poker Copilot recently. At first she found the statistics mystifying, so here’s the advice I’d give her – and others. Agree with me? Disagree? Add you opinion in the comments.
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When you start using Poker Copilot, the statistics can be confusing. Here’s how to make sense of the “big three” statistics:
Voluntarily Put $ in Pot (VPiP)
Preflop Raise (PFR) Post-flop
Aggression Frequency (Agg)
The first thing you should do with Poker Copilot is evaluate your own playing style using these statistics.
Voluntarily Put $ in Pot (VPiP)
This measures how often you voluntarily invested money into a hand. Paying the big blind, the small blind, or the ante is not considered voluntary. Therefore this percentage indicates how often you called, bet, or raised. The lower this value, the tighter your hand selection is. The higher, the looser.
What is a good VPIP range?
Tight is right.
Simple answer: between 15% and 20%. This assumes you want to play tightly, you are playing micro-stakes, and you are playing on full ring tables.
Now the more complicated answer: it depends a lot. If you are still learning to play good poker, then you should be very selective in which hands you play, so your VPIP might acceptably be a tad lower than 15%. The less people on the table, the more hands you can play. If you are on a table full of ultratight players, you can also loosen up. An experienced player who understands the subtleties of the game can get away with a VPIP between 20% and 27%.
Preflop Raise (PFR)
Limping is for losers.
The PFR statistic indicates how often you have raised before the flop is seen. A high value is an indicator of an aggressive player. A low value indicates a passive player. Good players are aggressive players.
Your PFR has a possible range of 0% to the value of your VPIP. e.g. if your VPIP is 20%, then your PFR can’t be higher than 20%. Ideally it should be a little lower than your VPIP, but not much lower.
Poor players and beginners tend to timidly fold or call preflop. Good players tend to fold or raise preflop, especially if no other players have yet raised.
What is a good PFR range?
Between 2% and 3% lower than VPIP. If your VPIP is 15%, PFR should be about 12%. These two numbers in combination, indicate that you are only playing quality hole cards, and you are predominantly raising with them pre-flop. In other words, you are playing how most poker books and poker forums say you should play.
Post-flop Aggression Frequency (Agg)
Agg indicates how aggressively you play post-flop. The higher this number, the more aggressively you are playing. This must be interpreted in combination with VPIP. Players who see very few flops will naturally tend to have a higher aggression percentage because they are only playing top-quality hole cards.
Poor players play timidly post-flop. They’ll check or call too often. Good players know to play good hands aggressively post-flop:
because players with speculative hands are forced to fold before they get free cards
because if they hit the flop or have a dominating hand, a bet or raise will increase their return
What is a good Agg range?
50% to 60% is ideal , assuming that you have a VPIP of 15% to 20%. Much higher, and you are probably overplaying speculative hands and bad hands. Leave the bluffing for the movies and for live play. Much lower and you are not playing your good hands strongly post-flop.
Want to know more?
Here are two good, recent books that have excellent sections on using poker statistics:
Up till now Poker Copilot’s hand replayer has always been at a fixed size. The next update will allow you to resize the replayer. Instead of this:
You can have this:
I’ll state clearly now that this is not perfect. The cards don’t scale well, as the card graphics I have are intended to be used at a pretty small size. At a large size they look like they are from an 80’s video game. I looked around the Internet for some free scaleable playing card graphics, but the ones I found were not suitable. They look good when large, but have to
o much detail when small. If you know of some good, free, playing card graphics I can use for the replayer please do let me know.
