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.
A friend and professional translator translated the Poker Copilot website into Spanish. See it here. If you are a native Spanish speaker, your feedback is welcome. Some of the poker terms may need a small tweak as the translator is not a poker player.
If you are playing on PokerStars in Denmark, you’ll need this Poker Copilot update. Thanks to loyal Poker Copilot customer Steen for helping me with this fix.
This update includes all the currently unreleased recent improvements. It also works on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). In the next few days I’ll be officially releasing this update as Poker Copilot 3. This will be a free upgrade for all existing customers.
two HUD layouts – one for ring games and one for tournaments.
much better Merge Network HUD support.
This update still doesn’t work for Mac OS X 10.5 – I’m still working on that problem.
Merge Network Notes
Until recently Poker Copilot had to guess the table size of Merge Network poker rooms. I noticed that Merge has added this information to hand history files, so now Poker Copilot can correctly determine the size of the table. This is a particular improvement for tournaments.
To fully benefit from this improvement, please make sure you’ve set a preferred seat in your Merge Network poker room for each table size that you are playing on, and that you’ve set the corresponding preferred seat in Poker Copilot (Preferences -> Poker Rooms -> Lock Poker). Also, you’ll need to drag each HUD panel to the place you want it initially. After that, they should stay where you put them.
Over the last six months, France has accounted for 20% of Poker Copilot sales. In the last month, this has risen to 25%. Somehow this information eluded me until today.
I’m not sure what this means from a business decision-making perspective. It could mean I should focus on enhancing my French support, by translating the user guide into French and finding a French speaker to help with user support in French. Or it could mean that I need to focus more on countries other than France to compensate for the lesser sales.
