Hold’em Sidekick version 1.1 has been released.  This release specifically addresses a problem with certain G4 and G5 based Apple Mac computers.

I have also extended the trial period on both Windows and Mac versions to allow Sidekick to run for 30 minutes each time and for up to 30 times.  This gives a total of 15 hours worth of trial period, which should be enough time to see if Sidekick meets your poker needs.

I thought I would create a little (actually lengthy!) post about where Hold’em Sidekick came from and the reasons for its release.

I’ve been playing poker for many years now and have always loved the challenge of writing my own poker software. My first foray into creating a poker game was for the Amstrad CPC464 in the mid 1980s. It was a simple 5 card stud poker game with a single opponent, but this really got me hooked. Ever since then I have created a poker game for each new computer I have bought, so with my recent iMac purchase, I thought I would do the same.

Ever since hold’em poker gained popularity I have been interested in the level to which skill is involved in playing winning poker and not simply chance. Understanding odds and outs, and how to use them to make decisions, will make a massive difference to how often you win. So about 6 months ago I decided to start seriously thinking about the complexity of how to create a poker game that would actually play ‘proper’ hold’em and how to create AI players with different personalities. I found AI a fascinating module when I studied it as a (tiny) part of my degree, and have been looking for an excuse to use some fuzzy logic for more than 10 years!

So I started by writing the core logic of the game. The part that would work out what the current strength of any particular hand was. This would form the basis of my AI and would be the ‘correct’ player decision, before any of the logic that makes up the personality of a particular AI player is factored in. So this looked purely at the hard facts of any hand, calculating strength, ranking, outs, odds and possible beats. In order to get a feel for how the figures reflected real life, I threw together a rough interface and started to use my core AI when playing online poker. I was amazed at how much having these figures beside me improved my game and decision making process. I’m terrible for getting a hand that looks pretty and not concentrating on how strong it really is! I understand all the theory of odds, outs and strength, but have a tendency to get a little excited and stop working things out properly. With my AI beside me, reminding me of the real strength of my hand, I found that I stopped being so loose with my cash and started really thinking about what I was doing.

I realised that although this was the beginnings of my game AI, what I really had was a damn good poker assistant. Now I’d used a few poker calculators in the past, but always found that they gave you way too much information to make sense of in the few seconds you have to make a decision when playing online. Many didn’t even give you the data you really needed and those that did would surround it by so many other stats that it would simply be lost. I found myself being distracted by these other stats and not concentrating on the real decision, should I call, raise or fold. I think that because my AI was built solely to make a good decision in the middle of a hand, it was far easier to read and make sense of (for me anyway). Nothing other than the stats I needed at that particular time were shown to me.

So I tidied up the interface and Hold’em Sidekick was born! I hope others find it as useful and easy to use as I do.

So what next? Well apart from my full poker game, which has taken a bit of a back seat for now, I want to incorporate automatic hand recognition into Sidekick. This is actually pretty tricky, as most online poker rooms prevent this is order to make it harder for people to use AI bots online. Once you get the hang of entering your cards via keyboard, it does become second nature, however I know it would be nicer if Sidekick automatically read the hand for you. Initial tests are proving successful, however I still have a long way to go to create something that can be used on many different poker rooms without excessive tweaking for each site. I hope to have a test version of Sidekick out soon with basic Full Tilt support, so watch this space!

Also remember that if you buy a license for Sidekick now you will get all future updates for free, for the entire lifetime of the product! So don’t worry, I’m not going to take your money now and then charge you again for automatic card reading when/if it becomes available.

Hold’em Sidekick version 1.0 has been released for both Mac and Windows. This is the first release of Sidekick and is available at a very low price of $14.50 (under a third of the price of other similar programs).

A trial version is available to download so you can try out all of Sidekick’s features. The trial is restricted in 2 ways. It will run for approximately 5 minutes and then close down and also it can only be run for a maximum of 30 times. No features are restricted, so this gives you over 2 hours of full use.

Initially payment is only accepted through PayPal, although you do NOT need a PayPal account to purchase Sidekick. You can pay with any major credit or debit card. I am currently setting up eSellerate as an alternative, second method of payment.