It’s a 4-day holiday weekend. The weather is good. I’m going away for the holiday. So I’m feeling generous.
So I decided on the spur of the moment to offer Poker Copilot for $10 off for the duration of Easter.
Between now (April 2nd, 2010) and Easter Monday (April 5th, 2010), you can get Poker Copilot for US$49.95 instead of US$59.95.
Currently Poker Copilot tournament chips are shown as dollars and cents. 1500 tournament chips is $1500.00.
This small but annoying issue is fixed in the next update of Poker Copilot:
I tried a couple of different obscure symbols but nothing seemed quite as clear as the letter T. So now 1500 tournament chips is T1500.
Good question. Boy has this become a monkey on my back!
[Warning: Technical computer programming stuff ahead. If this stuff bores you, jump directly to the last paragraph.]
The current situation: the dynamic library I built from poker-eval to calculate equity value doesn’t work on PPC-based Macs. Let’s make that clearer. Poker-eval works. But my dynamic library doesn’t. It gives wildly wrong values. I think this is because poker-eval has many optimisations to work as fast as possible, and one of those optimisations relies on the CPU’s Endianness. If you don’t know what Endianness is, if the concept has never entered your life, I envy you.
I’m currently dusting off an earlier version of the Mac OS X Developer Tools that I can install on the PPC Mac Mini. That will allow me to do some PPC-dependent work. Then I hope to include two dynamic libraries for calculating equity value. Poker Copilot will choose the right one depending on your Mac’s CPU.
I’m also finding that some of Hold’em Manager’s (HEM) All-In Equity Value calculations are puzzling. I’m pretty sure some of their calculations are wrong in unusual situations. So my aim now is not to produce exactly the same All-In EV results as HEM. Instead I want to make a chart that is close enough. Given that All-In EV is a rough measure of luck at best, I think this is acceptable. So now I need to find the biggest discrepancies between Poker Copilot and HEM and decide what to do for each of them.
Estimated time of delivery: end of next week. There. I’m committed now. And for four of those days I’ll be taking an Easter break. If I don’t deliver by Friday April 9th you have every right to bombard me with emails saying, “but, you said…”
Olivier from Integrity Poker has a post in French about BlazingStars, PokerZebra, and Poker Copilot.
Olivier is always very helpful when I need something described in French. If you are a French-speaking Poker Copilot user, I recommend following his blog.
The same post also appeared on the biggest French poker forum.
In this video, see how to view the numbers behind the statistics in the Hands summary, Players summary, Stake Level summary, and Position summary. See how to add additional statistics to the summaries.
PokerZebra is the working name for a Texas Hold’em Poker Odds Calculator for Mac OS X. You can download PokerZebra here. Leopard or Snow Leopard required. I suspect it will only work on Intel macs, but I could be wrong.
I hoped to introduce ranges of hands this weekend. But I chose to be social and hung out with friends instead.
Here’s what you need to know:
I’ve spent the couple of days comparing Poker Copilot equity value calculations with Hold’em Manager (HEM). When I find discrepancies, I tweaked my code to fix the problem.
Below is an unusual case, where the HEM result leaves me baffled. I was the big blind, but didn’t have enough chips to fully pay it. Therefore I was forced to go all-in when posting the blind. I was holding pocket aces.
HEM says my equity was 3.4%. It says my expected value was -85 chips. I’m puzzled as to how this was calculated. Any ideas, blog readers?
Full Tilt Poker Game #17296899286: .COM 250 Play Chip Sit & Go (129805519), Table 4 - 200/400 - No Limit Hold'em - 7:22:32 ET - 2010/01/03
Seat 2: Tarheel Hugo (8,165)
Seat 3: tampaxs (11,920), is sitting out
Seat 4: Beschiii (22,415)
Seat 5: ALLA53 (11,040), is sitting out
Seat 6: Hondaddicted (17,385)
Seat 7: stevoski111 (95), is sitting out
Seat 9: mfgiovani (16,200)
Hondaddicted posts the small blind of 200
stevoski111 posts the big blind of 95, and is all in
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to stevoski111 [As Ad]
mfgiovani folds
Tarheel Hugo folds
tampaxs folds
Beschiii calls 400
ALLA53 folds
Hondaddicted calls 200
*** FLOP *** [8h Ts 9c]
Hondaddicted checks
Beschiii bets 400
Hondaddicted calls 400
*** TURN *** [8h Ts 9c] [7c]
Hondaddicted has 15 seconds left to act
Hondaddicted bets 1,695
Beschiii has 15 seconds left to act
Beschiii folds
Hondaddicted shows [Jd Kh]
stevoski111 shows [As Ad]
Uncalled bet of 1,695 returned to Hondaddicted
*** RIVER *** [8h Ts 9c 7c] [6c]
Hondaddicted wins the side pot (1,410)
Hondaddicted shows a straight, Jack high
stevoski111 shows a straight, Ten high
Hondaddicted wins the main pot (285) with a straight, Jack high
stevoski111 stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 1,695 Main pot 285. Side pot 1,410. | Rake 0
Board: [8h Ts 9c 7c 6c]
Seat 2: Tarheel Hugo didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: tampaxs didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: Beschiii folded on the Turn
Seat 5: ALLA53 (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 6: Hondaddicted (small blind) showed [Jd Kh] and won (1,695) with a straight, Jack high
Seat 7: stevoski111 (big blind) showed [As Ad] and lost with a straight, Ten high
Seat 9: mfgiovani didn't bet (folded)
You know someone really likes your product when he offers to invest in it.
A great idea. Many thanks. I feel that Poker Copilot will go a long way… Are you looking for investment at all? I think the Mac poker software market has a huge gap ripe for exploitation. Feel free to hit me back and we’ll get in touch if you’re interested!
The All-in Equity Value Chart is almost done. I’m now looking for unusual conditions to make sure the results are still correct. My aim is to ensure that Poker Copilot’s All-in Equity Value Chart gives identical information as Hold’em Manager (HEM). That’s because, as far as I can tell, HEM seems to be the gold standard in giving online poker players in the Windows world what they want.
Here’s two simple charts to compare – the first is from Poker Copilot, and the second is from HEM.
These look identical to my eye. Hopefully they do to your eyes as well.
In order to create the Hold’em Manager chart I had to run Windows on my Mac using Sun VirtualBox and install Hold’em Manager. I hate to praise my competitors, but the whole HEM install process has vastly improved since last I looked at the Windows poker tracking software.
Whenever I run Windows on my Mac, I feel a little dirty afterwards, as if I had been doing something that I really shouldn’t be doing. I think I need to have a shower now to wash the dirt away!
I posted this on 2+2 today:
If you play poker on the Mac, and play on the Ongame Network, you’ve probably noticed that none of the Mac OS X hand tracking software gives you a HUD. This is due to strange things happening when one tries to programmatically find out an Ongame poker table window name. If you’d like to see this fixed…