Here in the lab, Poker Copilot is now branded as “Poker Copilot 3”:
This is simply a change of version number. The current update of Poker Copilot 2 is 2.101 and it is a vastly improved product from Poker Copilot 2.00. So it seems right to reflect this in an update of the major version number.
Before I make this the official update, there are some things to do: I want to get the translations up to date; I plan to update the user guide; I need to update the demo video.
If I was a good businessperson, I’d be releasing a new major update every year and charging current users an upgrade fee. This is common practice in the software business. However I’m not a good businessperson, so there will be no upgrade fee for any existing customers of Poker Copilot, no matter when they bought it. Partly this is because I can’t think of an appropriate date in the past to nominate as the cut-off purchase date to receive a free update. Partly it is because I’m too lazy to handle the extra work created by the upgrade-versus-new-customer process. Note that I do reserve the right to change the free upgrade policy in the future, even though I most likely won’t.
I’ve made the spreadsheets for translating the Poker Copilot strings a little better. You can now see the English text that you are translating all the time. I’ve added a column in which you can write “Yes” once you are done downloading. This makes it possible to filter out the strings already translated:
You can also now see the total number of keys, and the number already translated. I figure seeing an updated counter makes it easy to see if much has happened since you last checked the spreadsheet.
Thanks to the volunteer translators who have already started on the updates I made two days ago to the list of strings to be translated. I’ve put up a unreleased build that you can use to see how the strings you’ve translated look in place. Download it here.
Updating the website screenshots has been on my to-do list for a year or so. Today I did it. The screenshots show just how much Poker Copilot 2.101 differs from Poker Copilot 2.0.
The HUD as it was:
The HUD now:
There are now player icons, colour-coded statistics, and table stats.
The hand replayer as it was:
The hand replayer now:
It is now sexier, it shows odds of winning, it shows the HUD stats, you can record the hand as a video, you can jump straight to the flop, turn, or river, there are keyboard shortcuts, and you can get the hand history text formatted.
Here is the bankroll chart as it is:
And now:
The bankroll chart has barely changed, but the screenshot lets you see how the whole interface has developed.
I didn’t notice that addition to PokerStars last October: Hotkeys built-in. Although we’ve had the free BlazingStars to help with on Mac OS X, it is even better when Hotkeys are part of PokerStars itself.
You’ll find Hotkeys in PokerStars’ Options menu:
I think they’ve done a nice job in the user interface for defining Hotkeys:
As is now clear, PokerStars released an update on Saturday that broke Poker Copilot. Fortunately I was able to quickly release an update that fixed the problem. (Download Poker Copilot 2.101 here if you are still affected by the problem).
I woke up on Saturday morning and checked my emails before getting out of bed. Bad habit, I know. My Poker Copilot inbox was overflowing so I knew something was afoot. I read the first few messages and they were all variations of this:
“help! after the PokerStars update, my HUD is not working!”
Okay, I thought…let’s do this right. Shower first and have some breakfast – including a nice strong café con leche. I had a suspicion of what the problem might be, due to something I had encountered and fixed for the new PokerStarsDK (Denmark-specific PokerStars) a few days earlier.
Before doing any coding and answering any emails, I read through all the emails and the Poker Copilot discussion forum. I have some clever users who often work out the problems for me. And there it was: a clever user indeed posting as ‘nerd’ had found the problem: a slight change to the first line of each PokerStars hand in the hand history file.
I had already fixed this in the latest unofficial Poker Copilot release. I updated PokerStars, tested it with Poker Copilot, and found it worked as expected, so I could simply make the unreleased 2.101 update the official update.
However there was another problem: a flaw in Poker Copilot’s ‘auto-detection of updates’ code. It thinks that 2.101 is an earlier release than 2.99, because mathematically, 2.101 < 2.99. So nobody is being automatically informed that there is an update. This means that I've received a steady flow of emails reporting the problem. I've been doing a lot of 'copy & paste' emailing.
The variety of tone in the emails is fascinating. A few are slightly panicking. One or two people are rather demanding, some are apologetic as if it is their fault, others admit they’ve become addicted to playing with the HUD. Most people are warm and civil.
Secretly I like these emergency problems. They are highly motivating and they give me a chance to demonstrate speedy support. In the first year or so of Poker Copilot these situations happened often and I always seemed to have a uptick in sales afterwards.
Unfortunately existing updates of Poker Copilot will mistakenly not recognise this new update’s availability, so please don’t wait for Poker Copilot to tell you to update.
What’s changed:
Two HUD layouts – one for ring games and one for tournaments.
Much better Merge Network HUD support (table sizes now detected correctly in all cases)
Search tournaments with free text search
The bottom bar now includes more info – # of tournaments and database size
You can view the all-in equity chart in currency ($) or in big blinds (BB)
Searching for players and tournaments tells you how many matches you have
You can use Poker Copilot in any available language without changing your computer’s language
The Poker Copilot website is now available in French. See it here. If you are a native French speaker, your feedback is welcome. Some of the poker terms may need modification.
A few things I’ve learnt from the French and Spanish translations:
Outsourcing is wonderful – if you find the right supplier. You give someone a task. You answer a couple of emails seeking further information. You spend a few days with your visiting friends enjoying Barcelona over New Year’s Eve. You receive the finished work. You do a few small changes. You upload, pay your supplier, and you are done.
French domain names (.fr) are expensive compared to .com, .es, and .co.uk
Changing language can lead to unexpected layout problems
Translating a website involves more than just changing the text. You also need to think about where off-site links lead, about which currency to display, and whether additional information needs to be translated or changed.
