My Poker Software Story

My tryst with poker software began over a year and 9 months ago when I was interviewed for this new job with this gaming company in HK that was looking out for marketing trainees. Bored with my last and latest forays into television anchoring and some more fashion modeling was making me miss two vital elements in my life which were intellectual stimuli and a productive existence. My MBA was kept rotting on a shelf, and except for a brief stint in CCTV in media buying and viral marketing, I was really bored with what I was doing.

So I hopped over to the offices on Nathan Road and there was this guy with spiky hair and a nice hair gel who interviewed me. He was Robert Border, President of the gaming and poker software company. He told me he was hiring me for Sales and Business Development and added, “I like your style, and I endorse it – you’ll get what you deserve. I never liked sacrificial lambs, and I’m all out for whole-scale slaughter!”

So here I was, a trainee lamb out for slaughter – gearing up for a smooth transition from Chanel to Badugi, from sports newscasting to online sportsbook and from Carrefour to poker software. I did not expect the exhilarating effect the days (and nights) to follow would have on me. I was on a whirlwind tour on internet gaming, games and game rules for a good two months which also included hands-on testing and playing on the poker software and other various software my company was developing. I was also asked to do business analyses, forecasts, pipeline management, sales dashboards and zillions of other things that actually made me better and better day on day. The average work day was 16 hours, if one was lucky, and the adrenaline rushes throughout any given day simply cannot be described here! :)

Typically, here is when the panic sets in. With barely any experience in this kind of job you begin to envision a string of very late and stressful nights, feel outside a normal comfort zone and are completely overwhelmed at times. And when you are status reporting on a particular component of a particular poker software, and ask your friendly neighborhood CTO when he wants it done, he answers: Oh yeah...it has to be done yesterday!

Sorry. I guess I didn't see miracle worker in my job description! But that’s how cutting edge technology works, and you do your best to struggle through it initially and then triumphantly get good at it. I was determined, and succeeded. My team, from all walks of life, and as diverse cultures and color and creed as it can possibly get, helped me. What makes us one of a kind is our assorted team of engineers, testers and consultants who have two things in common: they love a good challenge, and they know a good product. Some of them have been in the industry a really long time. Some of them have been in the industry a really, really, really long time - but they don't like it when we bring that up. Many of them were top dogs in their field in their former life, and we use their knowledge to make our poker software even better.

It strikes me that of all the people I've met in my life, a significant percentage of them have dedicated their lives to finding, exploring, and otherwise immersing themselves in a highly productive existence in one form or another. Today, I stand proud of my company’s achievements with which mine are intertwined, and the synergy is overwhelming. Where companies take over 4-5 years to arrive at marketable games software, mine has done it in merely 2 years and 3 months, and with the array of casino, gaming and poker software that we now have, we are poised to take on the best of the best.

3D Poker Software

3d Poker Software brings reality to online card rooms. You probably thought that it was slower, and heaps of gimmicks and useless enhancements would probably slow down your overall game and make it highly boring? Nah, now check the 3d poker software being introduced by my gaming company.

When you are building a 2D gaming engine for a card room, there is only so much that you can improvise and add – in terms of enhancements and features and such changes, without resorting to a drastic technology change. Believe me, there are several people out there who have tried for several years to develop a workable 3D environment in poker software, but only less than a handful have actually succeeded. The constraints and the barriers to entry are the same as those for a top of the line 2d card room software magnified several times. Also, remember that it has to be developed by a dedicated team of cutting-edge technologists that would team up with seasoned graphic artists over a long period of time to give the depth, dimension, interaction, look and the feel that gives it the appearance of being real, yet give that superior functionality that we all look for in an online card room. So, here is the dilemma facing programmers and end users alike: Try making a 3D software with a file size lesser than the current best 2d software out there thus enabling the capacity to download in lesser time! Visit my gaming company website and download the 3d poker software demo and see for yourself. Whereas the 2^nd largest card room in the world has a download file size of 30 mb, our 3D version is 22! Compare that with the best known other 3d card room out there, too!

Creating a realistic gaming experience for the player and combining it with superior functionality has been the challenge for several poker software networks out there, and it takes a lot of time, money and effort to achieve this. Combining 3D gaming technology with skilled MMOG games is a challenge that will bring the future into your home. The obvious next step then would be to get into immersive virtual reality. The essence of immersive virtual reality (IVR) is the illusion it will give to users that they are inside the computer-generated virtual environment. How would it be the logical conclusion to the 3D poker software journey can only be imagined by the likes of me at this point!

Imagine a 3D poker software, a head-tracking sensor, a helmet-mounted visual display that actually will block the player’s view of the real world. Add to it, 3D sound effects and an input gadget which the player will use to interact with his environment – typically to navigate through it, flip or toss cards, and or manipulate and influence virtual objects. Or players will wear a virtual reality apparatus that will position two miniature computer screens near their eyes and electromagnetic position tracking devices will let the desktop or the laptop or even the cell phone know any time the players would change their head location or orientation. Hand movements and actions, facial actions and expressions, body movements would all be traced with other sensors.

The backdrop in the 3D poker software environment would change as the players move their heads – maybe their ceiling or the sunny sky when they move their heads up, or that pizza slice when they look down to reach it. The players can physically touch their cards also, using real object props or computer generated force feedback devices that are already in existence or being built today. The overall multisensory mix of sight, sound, touch, and sometimes taste and smell will give players a uniquely compelling experience of “being there” in the virtual world.

3D poker software is the next thing in card room technology whether one accepts it or not, and here to stay. After a small game-hand video upload on youtube, one of the visitors commented: “too slow for me, thanks, I will stick to ftp.” I had to laugh, that was merely a video recording of ONE texas hold em game hand, done with the help of a cheap 3^rd party video software by one of our testers, not a real-time recording. I also had to compliment the brains that built our software, because, yes those other 3D software out there MUST surely be slow – hence the visitor’s comment – and here was a 3d poker software that is exactly as fast and as functionally cool as the best other 2D card rooms out there; go see for yourself!

Christmas Poker

This time I am not going to miss out on Christmas poker! Well, it’s going to be Christmas the day after, and it’s raining promotions on all online poker rooms :) and baby, I’m going to probably score as many goals I can, because the last time I missed out. I wish I could stretch a 24-hour Christmas day to a long 100 hour day and take advantage of all the promos and gifts and stuff. Time for that Christmas bonus, you card room marketing guys, and time for that 1^st prize in a 100,000 tourney – wouldn’t that be the perfect present to yourself? Santa, give me a million bucks tourney win, please! Or maybe give me a million bucks seed capital and make it possible for me to kick Isildur’s butt on “Christmas poker” day!

If I ever have my own poker room, I am going to celebrate Christmas as Christmas Poker day! I am going to put together a poker gift basket and send it to all my players :o) Decks of playing cards and poker chips with my card room logo, or a T-shirt that they’d love to wear with a matching cap to go. Or a dvd of their favorite poker movie which I would hold a poll to find out – hey, that’s the perfect Christmas poker present! What do you say?

So this Christmas, I am going to play poker on a couple of my favorite online card rooms and win some, the light atmosphere and the high spirits may favor some of the normally tough ones to go a bit loose on me and make my day; or night, lol! I can surely hope, can’t I? :p

On the other hand, there is this swell karaoke den opening up that day where my some of my friends and my colleagues are going to park their butts; of course, after spending the day with their families – which looks pretty inviting; so if I go, my Christmas poker plan gets shelved till another Christmas. I love karaoke and the singing (sometimes: yelling) and dancing (sometimes: kung fu). :p

Either way, I am going to have fun and enjoy my Christmas as I do every year. It’s a long weekend, and I am not working and neither are most of you guys out there. So stay healthy, and enjoy your holidays.

Here’s wishing all of you friends, buddies, blog mates, visitors a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Mahjong Software Story

Being a part of a gaming software company that is headquartered in Asia would mean we would have to have mahjong software in our portfolio of games. Why? Ask any Chinese his game of preference and mostly you would get the answer “mahjong!”

How is the scene in Hong Kong for mahjong software? Hong Kong means “fragrant Harbour” in Mandarin, my native language. Though, Hong Kong is mostly Cantonese with dollops of British influence, I am a rank outsider at times, my origins lie deep in the Imperial North, where Mandarin is mostly spoken. Not only is HK a hot pot of multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan global passions, it also is among the popular tourist spots for mainland Chinese. Whether it is Mandarin or Cantonese, one thing unites all Chinese with the same passion for sitting together and having some fun. It’s mahjong!

The discovery of one form of the game is attributed to Confucius the great Chinese philosopher in around 500 BC. Mahjong is one of the oldest known games in the world, and as it has different versions and flavors around the globe, it also includes the elements of entertainment and skill which would have to be incorporated into the mahjong software we would build.

Chinese people are deeply intertwined with family and culture and gaming is a part of this. I’m talking about family weekends or New Year’s occasions when the family sits down for a huge lunch of mostly assorted dumplings and then topped with a session of mahjong. We even have a five-week crash training course in mahjong offered in the YMCA here in HK.

When not at work, Hongkongers devote much time to leisure. Mahjong is a popular social activity, and family and friends may play for hours on weekends, at festivals and on public holidays in homes and mahjong parlours. Most people are not aware that mahjong software is also available to download online, they prefer the noisy atmosphere of playing it live.

Mahjong is somewhat similar to gin rummy according to some folks, where the objective is to build sets, as well as get the highest point value. In order to do this, each player selects and discards mahjong “tiles” until an entire set of combinations has been made. The mahjong software code has to follow a basic rule structure for eventual variants.

Number tiles: The number tiles are in three suits: Each suit has nine designs, numbered 1 to 9. Thus there are a total of 27 different designs of suit tiles, with 4 tiles for each design.

Mahjong - All you need to know about the objective.

A mahjong competition would consist of a number of hands. In a hand, through a process of drawing and discarding, the players compete to be the first to complete a winning hand. The winner of the hand receives points from the other players, but the amount of points earned varies greatly according to the content of the winner's hand.

Therefore, winning high-scoring hands and preventing the opponents from winning high-scoring hands is the key to victory – a vital cog in the wheel of the overall mahjong software that coders have to evaluate first.

Mahjong - How do you play the game?

Each hand follows these steps:

Shuffle, deal the tiles

Draw and discard

If someone wins the hand, perform scoring for the winning hand.

If the wall is exhausted without anyone winning, the hand is a draw, and all players score zero for the hand.

Mahjong Software - All you need to know about Sequence, Triplet, Kong, and Pair.

Sequence: A sequence is three tiles of consecutive numbers in the same suit.

Triplet: A triplet is three same-numbered tiles in the same suit.

Kong: Four identical tiles can be declared to form a Kong.

Pair: Two identical tiles are called a pair.

As expert Alan Kwan says, while mahjong's competition factor can be maximized by adopting uniform scoring, it is better to optimize the intellectual playability with pattern-building mahjong software. However, excessive rewards for luck-based elements hurts the competition factor without benefiting the intellectual playability; those should be avoided.
 
We had to include 4 variations or rule sets in our mahjong software when we began to develop it: Chinese Official, Hong Kong, Riichi and American style – each has variations in the rules and it took 3 experts to break them down for us. To provide our customers’ players a safe and secure environment with multiple global and local variations, languages, advanced and exciting features with great communications for community play took us five months of hard work. We incorporated simple game play with winning promos, prizes, jackpots, the works into the mahjong software and it turned out to be a big hit among our customers, when players began flocking to their venues.

I am not a mahjong expert player, but I am fairly adequate and considered a good player among my friends. I enjoy the sound of the tiles and the skill required to build your sets quite a lot and our mahjong software has been a turning point in improving my game as well.

The Pachinko Software Story

Our pachinko software was built after one of my business trips to Japan. Well, to start with, what is a pinball machine called in Japanese? Pachinko! Nah, that’s a poor joke but someone needed to go and see for themselves, in order to believe that this funny-sounding game is played by about 13 percent of Japan's population, who fed ¥24 trillion into the machines last year, according to the Japanese government's own statistics.

Pachinko machines were first built during the 1920s for children and then they actually emerged as an adult pastime in Nagoya around 1930. How big is the pachinko business in Japan? Well, it employs a third of a million people, three times more than the steel industry; it commands 40 percent of Japan's leisure industry, including restaurants and bars; and with 30 million regular enthusiasts. Talk about immense!

On my trip to Japan a year ago, I got to see this phenomenon for myself when a group of colleagues took me out for dinner to Ginza Kyuubei, one of the best sushi bars in Tokyo. Great food had to be topped with something special, and that’s how we ended up in one of Tokyo’s better Pachinko Parlours. It wasn’t merely the lights, the glitz and the fun, there were rows upon rows of a dazzling array of pinball machines laid from end to end, just like the slot tables in a Vegas casino and it was jam-packed with people of all ages and sex, with a rattle of the steel balls being hit and rolling towards their destination with noisy aplomb.

The idea of pachinko software would never appeal to me earlier. I’ve never been a pinball fan, and hence it was surprising to see the crowd having a go at their individual machines with the gusto of a baby with its little toys – for, I thought: this thing, a baby could play! My Japanese friends informed me that the term "pachinko" was derived from the Japanese word “pachi-pachi”, which meaning the clicking sound of small objects or the crackling of a fire. It made a lot of sense, especially with all the clickety clack around.

The playing façade of a pachinko table is a variety of colorful layouts (even of characters from the World Wrestling Federation!) and the idea is to shoot small 11 millimeter metal balls into winning pockets to win more balls or a prize or money. Remember that the balls have to be directed to these pockets through an array of plug, pins, holes or an assortment of hurdles. You, as the player control the speed at which you shoot the ball, after that it’s purely physics in motion till the arrays introduce chance into the picture.

There are many types of pachinko machines, but most of them kowtow to a similar style of play. Players use metal balls, which are then shot into the machine from a ball tray with the purpose of attempting to win more balls. The pachinko machine usually has a digital slot machine on a large screen in the center of its layout, and the objective here is to get 3 numbers or symbols in a row for a jackpot.

Where does the 24 trillion yen go? Well, in pachinko, the balls are used much in the way that table games like poker use poker chips. You, the player purchase the chips, oops balls; and then you load them into the machine – in some cases physically; and in parlours it is all digital, of course. By shooting the balls through the arrays into the winning holes as mentioned before, players can win more balls already present in the machine – and later convert them back to money.

I was quite impressed with the hustle and bustle, and above all by the vibrant and busy atmosphere – here, money was being made and spent – this is an economy unto itself in Japan! It would be fun to offer this as an online game and increase our reach in the Asian market.

How would pachinko software work? In the same way one would purchase balls in a pachinko parlour, on the online pachinko parlour, one would purchase virtual balls upon funding their accounts and go to win more credits if they happen to win. The speed to shoot the virtual ball would be determined by pressing and holding the mouse alike online pool or billiards. That would be a simple start.

It took us a couple of weeks for the game design document and for the game mechanics. It was fun but it was a lot of work and it took us a month and a half to develop the first prototype with a simple pinball type design. We collaborated with our Korean designers and brought in a Japanese gaming expert Akina and she put the finishing touches to our state-of-the-art online pachinko software.

Skill In Poker – Empirical Evidence

Is there skill in poker? Or just plain, dumb luck, chance? What would be the perspective from the view of a poker software development company?

My CEO firmly believes that poker is “probability and skill!” and that luck doesn’t feature in it in any way whatsoever. “How is it that the many of the same folks keep winning the big tournaments, if it were not dominated by skill?” is what another colleague asks. “When you lose in poker, you will attribute it to bad luck. It ain’t, it’s bad play!” is what Robert Border advises. 

I had to figure out the various reasons why poker should be a game of skill and not luck or chance. I sat with my CEO and many of my colleagues and found out their reasons for poker as a skill game. Then, I interviewed a few of the players I play with offline and online and gauged their reactions. I quizzed a range of people I knew from some friends who are poker pros to a buddy who is an ace mathematician – thus running the gamut from the WPT to the game theory and the Central Limit Theorem; and it was an interesting journey indeed.

A few observations stood out nakedly, which gave me the impression that the promoters of banning online poker anywhere by saying that it was a game of chance and hence was a form of gambling, were a bunch of nincompoops; and I have no qualms saying this. One observation was that in poker, a skilled player wins against an unskilled one with overwhelming probability. Another one, and I quote from Ingo C. Fiedler & Jan-Philipp Rock (Ingo C. Fiedler, Jan-Philipp Rock. Gaming Law Review and Economics. February 2009, 13(1): 50-57 ): the repeated nature of the game reduces considerably the element of chance, making poker almost entirely a game of skill. A good player should first be able to master the probabilities in the game sufficiently well in order to be able to translate his pocket cards and the community cards to an accurate rank of his cards among the available possibilities. He should then be able to use this information to estimate the probability of winning.

CRF – Critical Repetition Frequency

The strategy of a wining player should be adjusted to that of the other players, as a strategy that is winning against some player may well be losing against another. A skilled player should be able to assess the strength of his hand as a function of his hole cards, the community cards, the number of players still in the game, their betting strategy and the position at the table. He should be able to assess the model of play of the other players, estimate the probability of improving his hand once the next community cards are revealed, and should be able to hide his strategy by bluffing and leaving his behavior unpredictable. Therefore, a considerable amount of skill is required to play well, and the central limit theorem in mathematics proves that the significance of skill increases dramatically as the number of hands played grows.

As per Fiedler & Rock, it is also not surprising that there is no software that plays poker as well as a good human player, although, for comparison, there are computer programs that play chess at least as well as the very best human chess players. Indeed, in many ways poker requires more human skill than chess, as an optimal strategy depends so crucially on the behavior of the opponents.

I tried to put all the findings in a points format like below:

How can skill in poker be measured and quantified?

 

Skill in Poker:

• Poker requires the following decisions.

Folding, Calling, Betting, Raising.

Before the Flop, on the Flop, on the Turn, on the River.

Determining how much to Bet / Raise ( only the No Limit variant )

• Decisions depend on various parameters.

• Parameters have to be recognized, weighed and involved in the decision process to maximize value.

• This procedure requires several skill components.

• The Skill condition can be stated as follows.
 
• If this condition holds for a game, it is a game of skill.

Chance = everything which is cancelled in the long run, is equally distributed between the players and the non-discriminatory

Skill = the outcome, which remains after infinite repetitions of a game (everything which is not chance)

Skill in Poker – Parameters that Influence Decisions in Poker:

• Absolute Position

• Relative Position

• Stack Sizes

• Pot Size ( Pot Odds )

• Strategy of Opponents

• Actions of Opponents

• Hand Range of Opponents

• Hand Range that the Opponents suspect the Player has.

• Risk Preference

• The Players Cards

• The Cards on FLOP, Turn and River.
 
Skill in Poker – Skill Components in Poker:

• Mathematical Understanding.

• Analytical Intellectual Power

• Attentiveness

• Memory

• Ability to make faster decisions.

• Elimination of Emotions from one’s decision.

• Knowledge of game theoretical insights.

• Strategic Thinking.

• Adaptiveness

• Enjoyment of continuous learning.

• Ability to Self–Control and Self–Monitor.

Skill in poker is pretty obvious to me. Like life, poker involves challenges, critical decisions made at the right time, and the consistent ability to meet those challenges head-on.

My CFO put it so very aptly in this wonderfully inspiring sentence:

"Life, for challenges, challenges for overcoming,
and as long as you believe in your dreams,
NOTHING, BY CHANCE!"

Poker Bots

What are poker bots? Initially, when I joined up Cybertech, I often heard about things like “poker bots” and poker shills. When I inquired what it was about, I was told that it was different types of A.I. generated to test software, game rules and server scalability and robustness. Yes, imagine a poker software being built to cater to thousands and even hundreds of thousands of customers - how would you know that it was good enough for that? Mere coding of the software doesn’t cut ice here; you have to be able to test its efficiency and the claims for it standing the crucial test of supporting thousands or hundreds of thousands of players eventually. Programmers solve this question by running the software on their multi-server systems where poker bots substitute for players and the game systems limits are explored. This is the only way that your software’s capability, claims for robustness and player quantity claims can be tested.

Your friendly cyber neighborhood poker bots involve an unbiased coordination of techniques that span the length and depth of poker software development, from simplistic coding nuts and bolts to abstract Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), from user interfaces to multi-threading and sockets. To test the game efficacy and to provide the initial substitute set of “players” our programmers create poker bots or poker shills. These shills are run and managed outside the game server and are alike real players playing. Where else indeed would you get over a hundred thousand or even a million players to test the quality and the utility of your software? For normal game play, we manage with a team of professional testers – these are limited in extent to game rules, proper functionality and features testing. But when it comes to the number of players that your software can possibly host, the poker bots rule!

For poker bots or poker shills, our programmers create these on a separate Poker Game Server that they call as the Shill Server. These bots or shills can be managed by an agent or can even be run unmanaged. A poker shill manager keeps track of the all the shill servers which are registered with it. An agent can modify the default behavior of the shills by forcing moves on it or by making it leave and join a table.

Here is how a poker shill server architecture would look like:

The Shill server is inbuilt with several personalities and initial configuration can enable or disable this behavior.

Below is the typical logic of one such personality for poker bots. We continuously work on refining the playing patterns for shills.

Poker Bots IQ Levels:

1) NOVICE (FISH BOT)

2) EASY (CALLING STATION)

3) NORMAL (LOOSE AGGRESSIVE)

4) HARD (ROCK)

5) TOUGH (WINNING)

Once we have ascertained the poker bots IQ Level, we make groups for hand rankings. Here are groupings of hand rankings for the code logic as follows:

Hand Rankings Preflop:

Group 1: AA KK

Group 2: QQ JJ AKs

Group 3: TT AQs AJs KQs AK

Group 4: 99 KTs QJs KJs ATs AQ

Group 5: A8s KQ 88 QTs A9s AT AJ JTs

Group 6: 77 Q9s KJ QJ JTs A7s A6s A5s A4s A3s A2s J9s T9s K9s KT QT

Group 7: 66 J8s 98s T8s 44 J9 43s 75s T9 33 98 64s 22 K8s K7s K6s K5s K4s K3s K2s Q8s 55 87s97s

Group 8: 87 53s A9 Q9 76 42s 32s 96s 85s J8 J7s 65 54 74s K9 T8 76 65s 54s 86s

Group 9: A8 A7 A6 A5 A4 A3 A2 K8 K7 Q7 Q6 J7

Group 10: All other hands that don’t fit in the above categories.

Hand Rankings Flop/Turn:

Group 1: Nuts

Group 2: Straight Flush, Four of a kind

Group 3: Full House

Group 4: Flush

Group 5: Straight

Group 6: Three of a Kind/Set/Straight Flush Draw

Group 7: Two Pair

Group 8: Top Pair

Group 9: Open Ended Straight Draw/Double Belly Buster Straight Draw/Flush Draw

Group 10: Non Top Pair/Two Over cards

Group 11: Gunshot Straight Draw/Backdoor Flush Draw

Group 12: High Card

Hand Rankings River:

Group 1: Nuts

Group 2: Straight Flush, Four of a kind

Group 3: Full House

Group 4: Flush

Group 5: Straight

Group 6: Three of a Kind/Set

Group 7: Two Pair

Group 8: Top Pair

Group 9: Non Top Pair

Group 10: High Card

Here, now, finally, we construct the NOVICE poker bots. This set of operations is ACTUALLY used!

1) NOVICE Poker Bots:

a) PREFLOP:

Option Call Offset Raise Max

Group1: RAISE 4 4

Group2: RAISE 4 3

Group3: CALL 4 -

Group4: CALL 4 -

Group5: CALL 4 -

Group6: CALL 2 -

Group7: CALL 2 -

Group8: CALL 2 -

Group9: CALL 2 -

Group10: CALL 0.5 -

b) FLOP:

Option Call Offset Raise Max

Group1: RAISE 4 4

Group2: RAISE 4 4

Group3: RAISE 4 4

Group4: RAISE 4 3

Group5: RAISE 4 2

Group6: RAISE 4 2

Group7: RAISE 4 2

Group8: RAISE 4 1

Group9: CALL 4 -

Group10: CALL 2 -

Group11: CALL 2 -

Group12: CALL 1 -

c) TURN:

Option Call Offset Raise Max

Group1: RAISE 4 4

Group2: RAISE 4 4

Group3: RAISE 4 4

Group4: if(fullhouse_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

}else { if(raise_number < 2) raise; else call; }

Group5: if(fullhouse_possible flush_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

}else{ if(raise_number < 2) raise; else call; }

Group6: if(straight_possible fullhouse_possible flush_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

}else{ if(raise_number < 3) raise; else call; }

Group7: if(straight_possible fullhouse_possible flush_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

}else{ if(raise_number < 2) raise; else call; }

Group8: if(straight_possible fullhouse_possible flush_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

}else{ if(raise_number == 0) raise; else call; }

Group9: CALL 4 -

Group10: CALL 2 -

Group11: CALL 2 -

Group12: CALL 1 -

d) RIVER:

Option Call Offset Raise Max

Group1: RAISE 4 4

Group2: RAISE 4 4

Group3: RAISE 4 4

Group4: if(fullhouse_possible){ if(call_offset <= 3) call; else fold;

}else{ if(raise_number < 2) raise; else call; }

Group5: if(fullhouse_possible flush_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

} else{ if(raise_number < 2) raise; else call; }

Group6: if(straight_possible fullhouse_possible flush_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

} else {if(raise_number < 3) raise; else call; }

Group7: if (straight_possible fullhouse_possible flush_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

} else {if (raise_number < 2) raise; else call ;}

Group8: if (straight_possible fullhouse_possible flush_possible){ if(call_offset <= 2) call; else fold;

} else {if (raise_number == 0) raise; else call ;}

Group9: CALL 2 -

Group10: CHECKED - -

Well this blog post pushes the proprietary length of my normal blog post, yet I had to try and be a little bit comprehensive from the poker software developer’s point of view. And the credit that he richly deserves. When the criteria is to make the best of the best software out there, you have to know this one irrevocable fact: Poker bots are here to stay!

Pseudo-Random Number Generator

Programmers also apply what they call as Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) software program to randomly 'shuffle' cards and deal them to the players.

The poker gaming system’s Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) system operates at the highest level of encryption and randomness, to ensure fairness without exception. All online games, at poker sites, use what is called a PRNG. The PRNG is what pulls the cards, rolls the dice, and spins the wheels. A good random number generator is one that generates numbers that are:

· Evenly distributed

· Statistically independent

· Unpredictable 
  
Because the numbers the Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) generates are completely random, both the player and the poker site are assured of complete fairness. For example, if our PRNG were to be biased in any way, players could recognize the bias and use it to their advantage. Virtually any poker game can be turned against the house if the numbers are biased. Therefore, it is in the best interest of the poker site to make the PRNG as unbiased as possible. Any play for free or play for real money, the PRNG is the same.

The complete poker gaming system depends on a single Pseudo Random Number Generator across all the games. This PRNG takes about 10 seconds to initialize for the first time after the server is restarted to ensure complete Randomness. All the Random numbers whether it be for the roll of a dice, stop position of the roulette wheel/slot-machine, or shuffling of the cards is taken from this single PRNG source.

The Pseudo Random Number Generator "seed" is the initial point from which sequences of randomly generated numbers start. It is impossible to predict the sequences resulting from the seed. To ensure that a number sequence will not repeat itself, the seed is calculated using as many factors as possible, such as network activity, time of the day and several other parameters.

The poker gaming system uses the classes provided by Sun called SecureRandom (package java.security). It is a strong PRNG (Pseudo Random Number Generator). It is based on cryptographic function called a message digest. Message digest used in case of SecureRandom class is SHA-1 message digest. The SHA-1 is designed to have the following properties: it is computationally infeasible to find a seed which corresponds to a given sequence digest, or to find two different seeds which produce the same sequence digest.

Additionally, SecureRandom must produce non-deterministic output and therefore it is required that the seed material be unpredictable and that output of SecureRandom be cryptographically strong sequences.

So we see now that most poker sites use Pseudo Random Number Generator to shuffle their decks randomly – and the PRNG is evaluated by experts and certified to make sure that it is indeed creating unpredictable results. Few people know or write about anything technical from the world of online poker, which is what makes this kind of information rarer. As genuine poker buffs would love to have more and more information from around the world they can anytime refer to the Online Poker Guide which is a treasure of useful information and news.

To sum it up, suffice it to say that it would be the biggest thing to happen in the computing world if one were to figure out a way to crack a true Pseudo Random Number Generator, and he would no doubt become a very wealthy person, the ace code-cracker.