Over October

Some picks from the month.

More From Matt Mazur

Mazur, who has blogged a lot on his experience as a bot runner (which i summarised last month) has posted 3 more articles this month in his continuing series – including an account of his fail attempt (monetarily) at a short-stacking cash game bot.

On a side note, Matt has contacted me directly regarding the article I wrote. He clarified some questions regarding the (lack of) Sharkscope/pokershark connection and I updated the original article to reflect this.

Coding The Wheel

I hadn’t visited the blog for a long while. I actually stumbled back on to the site after reading the recent blog posts about a study that shows that coin tosses are actually non-random, and have a slight bias (51%-49%) to the side face-up at the start of the flip. The posts lead back to a much older coding the wheel post that goes in to the study in great detail.

So I dived back in the archives and there’s been some excellent posts since the infamous botting articles, including A 2-parter on colour-coding your opponents (1, 2), and an excellent history lesson of poker tracker software and their use of DBMS).

I remember contacting Roy when HEM was in the early beta-test. Something I suggested was instead of using postgreSQL – which forced users to set up their own database server – to take a look at firebird – a high performance RDBMS system comparable to postgreSQL, but with the added benefit of an embedded database. Databases are self contained single files that can be moved, shared and swapped, and no service needs to be installed. Software just needs to bundle the one DLL I you are ready to go. It even has a complete .NET wrapper. Sadly, the idea never took off.

Anyway, I digress. There’s a wealth on info on CtW, and the articles are always well written even if you find some of the articles a little unpalatable.

What Poker Can Teach Us

Interesting article in The Chronicle.

Sheets on the 2+2 podcast.

A really interesting podcast from the 2+2 guys about the history and current state of tournament
poker in the US, featuring Sheets. It’s no longer the latest on the official site, but you can download it directly with here.