Show HN: Play poker with friends. No cards or chips needed | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Play poker with friends. No cards or chips needed

playcards.live

13 pointsnerf010 comments

Hi HN! I love playing social poker with friends, but often find ourselves not having play cards or chips. I've tried quite a few options, including various mobile apps and websites. Didn't like any of them. So I made my own.

I had two main focuses: easy to use (only requires a web browser; no signup; no download) and good UI for face-to-face poker (track player scores; mobile friendly).

I also included a practice feature where you are pitted against an AI in heads-up.

Due to the social distancing situation, I realized it's not the perfect timing for release. But I do want to put this out there and move on. Hopefully it's useful to some people.

Have just tried a little bit, and from the brief toe in the water so far, yes, I think that some people will find this useful - or fun.

Thanks :-)

Serendipity. I was just looking for something like this.

Looked in to blockchain.poker and PPPoker, but all I really wanted was a way to re-create an in-person poker game with friends. I look forward to trying this out.

Thanks for sharing it.

You can also take a look at PokerTH

This is great. There are few good and truly free alternatives. Been through a few with in-app purchases to limit the number of hands and bloated with ads. Now I can play with friends while in isolation.

Site looks really good. Showed it to my team, I think we'll be experimenting with it this week. I've only tested practice mode so far, but is there a way to increase the blinds after X minutes? Like a Sit-N-Go / tournament mode?

Thanks! It doesn't have tournament mode yet. But looks like this is the most requested feature so far. I'll consider adding it soon.

I really like the design and the UI of this poker service.

Btw I found a way how to abuse the system when playing against AI in the practice mode. Every round I go "All-In" but after some time AI still can not figure out that I am bluffing. I farmed like 10 000 of free cash in 5 minutes; 200 of cash per round.

Also you can think about adding stats and maybe further developing this to become real cloud poker service.

Thanks, and yes you found the exploit :)

The bot tries to play Game Theory Optimal, so it doesn't really care about the opponent's strategy. That's why no matter how often you go all-in, it won't change its strategy.

In theory, playing GTO will guarantee that you won't be beat. However, there are holes in this bot's strategy (to reduce computation). So when you find these holes, you can exploit the bot.

That said, if you play "normally" (don't go all-in on the first action), the bot should be pretty competitive.

> Also you can think about adding stats and maybe further developing this to become real cloud poker service.

Interesting. I was focusing on the "home poker" use case. I'll think about it more. Thanks!

where can I find more about the GTO strategy? Is the algorithm public? Thanks.

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