Purchasing Poker Copilot via PokerStars Transfer No Longer Possible

People sometimes ask if they can purchase Poker Copilot by transferring via an online poker room. I’ve long had a policy of allowing this, via PokerStars transfer or Full Tilt Poker transfer.

Yesterday, however, when I tried to routinely cash out the money in my PokerStars account, the cash out was cancelled. Here is an excerpt from an email PokerStars sent me explaining why they did this:

Our transfer tool is only meant to help players fund their accounts when they are unable to deposit with deposit options currently available to them. All funds added to your account via transfer must be used to play at our tables.

We are restricted by our license agreement in the Isle of Man and this prevents us from being able to offer a real money transfer service for the purpose of cashing out.

In this case, your cashout has been cancelled and funds have been returned to your account balance. You are welcome to play with the funds or to return it back to the sender.

You should use a money transferring service outside of PokerStars for transfers which are not meant to be played at our tables.

I checked the PokerStars security FAQ and they make the situation absolutely clear:

Q: Can I cashout the funds I received via transfers?

A: As per our Terms of Service, transfers are only allowed for the purpose of playing at our tables.

Therefore I’ll have to decline any future requests to purchase Poker Copilot via a PokerStars funds transfer.

Joined the Poker Copilot PokerStars Home Games Club yet?

There will be two $1+$0.10 tournaments on PokerStars on Sunday in the Poker Copilot Club.

Tournament #1 starts at 12 noon ET, which is 5pm in the UK, and 6pm in Western Europe – good for us living in Europe and the Mediterranean

Tournament #2 starts at 6pm ET, which should suit Americans and Canadians.

Here’s how to join the club:

  • If you don’t already have it, download the free PokerStars software from www.pokerstars.com
  • Open the main poker lobby, then click on the Home Games tab
  • Click the ‘Join a Poker Club’ button
  • Enter my Club ID number: 109376
  • Enter my Invitation Code: Let me in the Copilot Club
  • That’s it! Once I’ve approved your membership request, we’ll be ready to start playing Home Games online together.

Every player will almost certainly be using Poker Copilot!

 

Software will always have bugs :(

Someone uncovered an obscure bug in the Java computer language which has been there since, probably, for ever. Which is 15 years or so in the Java universe. The bug hangs Java when trying to convert one specific string to a floating point number. This also affects some other programming languages which use the same de facto standard algorithm.

A few years back we discovered that Java’s implementation of binary search – also based on a de facto standard algorithm “proved” correct – returns incorrect results under certain extreme circumstances. This one is now fixed. We think.

There are probably obscure bugs in most every modern programming language – and therefore in most every software built using modern programming languages – that can remain hidden for years, even decades.

Poker Copilot 2.81 Now Available

This week’s update is a bit early. That’s because a problem with handling PokerStars Tournament Home Games is causing me a lot of support grief.

Poker Copilot 2.81 is now available to download.

What’s changed:

  • The hand replayer now uses ⌘+left / ⌘+right to jump between streets. You can still use up and down arrow keys to move between hands.
  • Most of the summaries remember column orders. Move “Aggression %” to the first column and it will stay there for next time you open Poker Copilot.
  • Added support for FTP multi-entry tournaments. But read here for limitations. Thanks to loyal Poker Copilot customers who sent me a range of multi-entry tournament summaries.
  • Added “Hero” filter to “More” menu – although it doesn’t quite work as intended in the “Players” summary yet

What’s fixed:

  • PokerStars home game tournaments were not being recognised as tournament, causing the HUD not to work and stats to get confused. If you had this problem already, you’ll need to reset your Poker Copilot database to correct your stats. (File -> “Reset Database”)
  • On Merge Network rooms, such as Carbon Poker, the HUD now works simultaneously on multiple tables at the same stake level.

Update Instructions:

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

Now you are done and ready to hit the tables.

Coming in the next update: Support for Full Tilt Poker multi-entry tournaments

Here are some issues affecting Full Tilt Poker multi-entry tournaments in Poker Copilot:

  • You enter one tournament, twice, thrice, or perhaps four times. Each entry has a different result, and wins different money
  • It may be a rebuy tournament. An entry bombs out, but you buy back in. Full Tilt Poker doesn’t show in the tournament summary whether you rebought once each for two entries, or twice for one entry.
  • Now you want to review the hands from the tournament. So you find the tournament in Poker Copilot’s summary. You double-click to see the hands. The hands can’t be clearly separated by entry as there is not enough information in the Full Tilt Poker hand history files and tournament summary files.

After taking these issues into account, I’ve settled on the following:

  • The Poker Copilot tournament summary combines all your buyins and winnings for every entry in a tournament into a single result. This is shown in the “Take” column.
  • The “Result” column indicates how your BEST entry in the tournament did.

Screen shot 2011-01-30 at 10.37.03 AM.png

Note that Full Tilt is not yet indicating the number of add-ons and rebuys correctly for multi-entry tournaments. Until this is fixed by Full Tilt, Poker Copilot will report incorrect winnings for rebuy multi-entry tournaments.

 

In Which Countries do Poker Copilot Customers Live?

Almost 50% of my customers are from the USA. France, Germany, Canada, and UK all contribute significant numbers. Together with Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, Italy, Russia, Finland, and Belgium, these 13 countries account for 90% of my sales.
Screen shot 2011-01-29 at 7.21.37 PM.png

Normalise for population, however, and USA moves down to tenth position:
Screen shot 2011-01-29 at 7.43.27 PM.png

Now I feel the Poker Copilot love coming from Europe!

Poker Copilot, PokerZebra, and the Mac App Store: Revisited

I submittedPokerZebra to the Mac OS X App Store. I spent 12 days “waiting for review”. Once the review started, within an hour the app was rejected. And fairly. The reason:

…if the user closes the application there is no way for the user to reopen the app without having to quit and then relaunch the application.

I like this. There are a set of automated and manual checks for the quality and conformity of an app in the App Store.

I’ve made the necessary changes and resubmitted. I suspect I’ll need to wait another couple of weeks to find out if PokerZebra is approved.

What has this to do with Poker Copilot? Simply this: the turn-around times are too long. When Full Tilt or PokerStars release an update that breaks Poker Copilot, I can’t wait 12 days for a review of the update by Apple. That’s 12 days of no head-up display (HUD) for Poker Copilot users. Even I changed Poker Copilot to meet Apple’s technical requirements – or Apple’s technical requirements for the App Store changed, it is simply not a workable system. Perhaps if there were expedited reviews of software updates it would be possible.

Poker Copilot 2.80 Now Available

Poker Copilot 2.80 is now available to download.

What’s changed:

  • Menu bar can now show only hands played without winnings, if desired
  • Some summaries now scroll horizontally as well as vertically. This should make things more usable when you have lots of columns showing.
  • Added new chart statistics (Total BB Won)
  • Added the Poker Copilot HUD to the PokerStars hand replayer
  • Added PokerStars Home Game support
  • Added Carbon Poker support

Update Instructions:

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

Now you are done and ready to hit the tables.