Live streaming with Pokeit

Pokeitbot helping out in a twitch stream!

Today we’re proud to announce the launch of Live streaming with Pokeit. Live streaming with Pokeit makes it easy to share information about a poker session with an audience. This new service includes two major components: a chatbot for Twitch called Pokeitbot that will respond to commands regarding your current session of online poker, and a live homepage where you can publish graphs and reports to the web. Both products are now available for all Pokeit members at no additional cost.

We begin this blog post with a brief overview of poker streaming on Twitch. Next, we identify how the lack of poker-specific tools for live streaming is limiting audience engagement. We then introduce the solution, Live streaming with Pokeit, which includes the Pokeitbot chatbot, and the live homepage. Finally we wrap things up with a new mission: helping players communicate using their poker data.

Live streaming and online poker

Live streaming has become a major part of the online poker community over the past few years. Poker fans have enjoyed watching their favorite poker players as they make deep runs in online tournaments or mix it up in the the world of high stakes cash games. Hosted primarily on the gaming website Twitch.tv, poker streaming routinely cracks the “Top 10” in viewership and has introduced thousands of new players to the game.

Before streaming on Twitch became a popular pastime, following online poker came with a steep learning curve. Even knowing who was playing required encyclopedic knowledge of hundreds of faceless usernames and the ability to decode arcane jargon and statistics. Live streaming on Twitch changed all this by introducing the human element to the online game.

Showing the game from the perspective of a streamer gave people someone to root for and a community of followers to share in the excitement. The interaction between the viewers and the streamer conducted through chat is key to this experience. This conversation between viewers and streamers and among the viewers themselves builds trust in the community and helps to educate the audience about what’s happening on-stream. Monitoring chat and answering the same questions over and over can often take a lot of time and attention. To help streamers manage, programs called “chatbots” can be added to any channel.

Chatbots (such as Nightbot) let you program in responses to any number of commands. For example, you can find out how long a stream has been going with the !uptime command, or ask what song is playing with the !song command. However, these “general purpose” chatbots aren’t able to tell you anything about the poker being played. This limitation means that many questions go unanswered. Five months ago, we started work on a solution for this problem and today we’re proud to announce the launch of Live streaming with Pokeit.

Pokeitbot: A chatbot designed for internet poker

The first component of Live streaming with Pokeit is a poker-specific chatbot called Pokeitbot. Pokeitbot feeds off the data stored in your Pokeit database, which is updated automatically every time you finish playing a hand or tournament. Pokeitbot can operate in real-time, or on a delay of your choosing. Some sample commands include:

!session – Returns the number of hands, net profit/loss and other stats for this session
!hand {id} – Returns the result of the hand with the given id along with a link to a hand history and re-player
!tourney {id} – Returns your results for the tournament with the given id
!player {player name} – Returns the stats you have on this player for the current session
!visualizations – Provides a list of all the visualizations you’re currently streaming live along with a link to your live page

Pokeitbot can also be configured to automatically post new hands and tournaments to chat after they finish. Check out the bot commands page for the full list of commands along with example responses.

Pokeitbot commands can also be accessed directly from our live streaming API. After enabling the API through your account page, commands can be run directly from your browser by visiting a web address. The API is helpful if you’re already using a chatbot such as Nightbot and don’t want to add a second bot to your stream. For a full list of API endpoints, as well as instructions for adding custom Pokeit commands to Nightbot, visit the bot API page.

A live homepage for your visualizations

The Pokeit web application is a powerful tool for gaining insight from your poker data through fully-customizable graphs and reports. We focus on graphs and reports, or visualizations as we call them, because seeing your data visually is often the best way to understand it.

The second component of Live streaming with Pokeit is a live homepage allowing you to share the visualizations you create with your audience. Visualizations shared this way will update automatically as new data comes in. Timeframes can be added to limit the data displayed to a single session, week or year and other options include the ability to hide holecards, player names, and the hand histories themselves. That way, only the information you want out there will be shared. Live visualizations run off the same delay as Pokeitbot so everything you share remains in sync.

For example, if you wanted give your followers access to all the hands you played this session, as well as a graph of your results, you’d share the “Hand Browser” and “Hands Graph” visualizations. Anyone with your Live streaming link will be able to view these visualizations while you’re streaming. We’ve also included several commands in Pokeitbot which provide information on what’s streaming on your page, along with links to the live content.

Helping players communicate with data

When we started Pokeit, one of our original goals was to give poker players a better way integrate their own poker data into the conversations they were already having online. We wanted players to be able to share the insights they were gaining from their data with others just as easily as they swapped tips and strategy on poker forums.

It’s this promise we deliver on with the launch of Live streaming with Pokeit and we look forward to hearing your feedback.

The Pokeit Team
Chaz & Bryon

Introducing Pokeit HUD beta!

It's the Pokeit HUD, Finally!!

We’re thrilled to announce the beta release of Pokeit HUD! With Pokeit HUD, real-time statistics detailing your opponents’ betting patterns and playing style are displayed directly over their seats at the poker table. Pokeit subscribers can visit this page to download the Pokeit HUD standalone program.

We’re releasing Pokeit HUD in beta with the following features:

Cash & tournament support for 19 games across 9 sites & networks: Hold’em, Omaha, Stud, and Draw variants of poker are supported making Pokeit HUD the first commercial product compatible with mixed games. The eight sites & networks include PokerStars, 888Poker, Winamax, PartyPoker, iPoker, Winning Poker, Merge Network, and Boss Media
An editable HUD profile: Select from 64 pre-built stats or create your own using the Pokeit Formula builder. A color palette is available for styling, and filters can be applied allowing you to see only the data that’s relevant to you
Favorite seat picker: Right-click on a HUD box to assign it as your preferred seat for a given site and table size
OSX & Windows compatible: Installers are available for OSX version 10.6+ and Windows 7+
Regular tables only: The beta version is not compatible with fast fold tables

Right now, the beta version of Pokeit HUD requires also running the existing Pokeit app you’ve been using for uploading hands.

Throughout the beta program we’ll be focusing on fixing bugs and adding functionality. Here’s what’s on our roadmap for version 1.0:

Integrating the legacy Pokeit app: Pokeit HUD beta requires the existing Pokeit app to be installed in order to sync your poker data with your online database. We will be incorporating the syncing functionality into the Pokeit HUD app in version 1.0 so only one program will be required
Multiple HUD profiles: Want to display different stats for the different games you play? In version 1.0 we’ll be adding the ability to create multiple HUD profiles, which can be assigned to individual game types
Mucked cards: Mucked card display saves you the effort of going back through the hand histories to see what your opponent folded. After the hand is over, the mucked cards will be displayed on top of the table
Helpful widgets: Star hands for later without having to visit the Pokeit website. Keep track of player notes and write new ones on the fly
Loading individual visualizations on your desktop: Your favorite visualizations will be accessible directly from the Pokeit HUD tray menu

All versions of Pokeit HUD (beta and beyond) will be available to Pokeit users at no additional cost. We expect to release version 1.0 in the first quarter of 2018. Several other features stand out as must-haves to be added later in 2018:

Player detail: Curious about your history against an individual player? Simply right click on their HUD box and open up a detail window with loads of additional statistics and analysis options
Population statistics: See where a player lies along the population distribution. Determine the significance of newly-observed data given what you’ve seen before
Fast fold support: PokerStars Zoom poker is a priority and we’ll turn our attention to other sites once that’s complete

With all that said, go ahead and download Pokeit HUD beta. We’re looking forward to your feedback.

Thanks,
The Pokeit Team

Introducing visualization and database sharing

We’ve introduced two new ways for you to share your poker hands, stats, and graphs. The first, called Snapshots, lets you share a single visualization. The second, Secure Share, is for granting access to your entire database.

Snapshots

Many of you have asked for a way to share whole reports and graphs instead of just single hands. After you finish a tournament you may want to send the hands you played to a friend or coach to help you review. With the new Snapshots feature, all you would have to do is open Hand Browser, add a filter for the tournament, and then click on the new sharing button in the top right corner of the toolbar. Other visualizations can be shared just as easily.

You may not always want to share everything about your poker data when you make a snapshot, so we’ve included three privacy options for your convenience. Hide Player Names obscures the player aliases at the table and replaces them with their seat number. Hide Holecards only reveals holecards if they’re shown or mucked at the end of the hand. Hide Hand Details disables the detail side panel so hand histories and the replayer cannot be seen. By default, the snapshot name will be the name of the visualization but it can be changed as you see fit. This is useful if you’ve added a filter to the visualization and want a distinct title to reflect that.

Visualizations shared via Snapshots do not update when new data is added to your database. You can remove or alter the privacy options of your shared snapshots at any time by visiting the “Snapshots” section of the Account page.

Secure Share

With other poker programs you would have to use a screen sharing application or share your own password if you wanted to show someone else your database. This can be cumbersome, time consuming and is most of all insecure. We’ve solved this problem with a new feature that lets you securely share your entire Pokeit database.

We built Secure Share with coaches and backers in mind, but you can share your database with anyone as long as they are a Pokeit user. You can grant access to another user from the “Secure Share” section of the Account page and that access can be revoked by you at any time. All they have to do is accept your invitation for access and then they can switch between their own database and yours by clicking on the Account icon in the main header of the app.

Up next

We’ve been fairly quiet over the past few months. Two new yet-to-be-released features are in the final stages of development. We’re really excited about what’s in store and we look forward to telling you all about these features in the coming weeks.

Thanks,
The Pokeit Team

See your game at a glance with the new Pokeit dashboard

All these filters right at your fingertips

Now, every time you login, you’ll be greeted with a dashboard snapshot of your results.

Featuring all the capabilities and power of the new Pokeit, the dashboard is graphically interactive with toggles for hands and tournaments, timeframe and currency. Filters added from the metadata menus will update your dashboard automatically.

Visualizations can be loaded into the app just like before and are displayed in a widget to the right of the graph. We’ve also included a new tips & tricks box with suggestions for getting the most out of Pokeit.

The new dashboard answers your most common poker questions while enabling deep dives into visualizations to answer the harder ones. We’ll be adding more capabilities to the dashboard in the coming weeks so look out for more updates like this one.

Pokeit now supports the Winning Poker Network

All these filters right at your fingertips

Long awaited, support for the Winning Poker Network (WPN) is finally here! Currently ranked 2nd in US cash game traffic and 9th worldwide, the Winning Poker Network includes the popular skins America’s Cardroom, Black Chip Poker, True Poker and the Spanish language site YaPoker.

Pokeit is now completely compatible with WPN cash and tournament hands and all five games spread by the network (Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7-Card Stud, and 7-Card Stud Hi/Lo). You can also track tournament results by saving the complete WPN Tournament Transactions page to file and then adding the file ‘PlayerTransactionHistory.html’ to a Pokeit synced folder. We will be updating your Pokeit database with any previously uploaded WPN hands in the coming days.

We have also added support for Ignition Casino – the successor to Bovada. In order to start tracking hands, you’ll need to add the Ignition Hand History folder to Pokeit once you’ve downloaded the new Ignition Casino software.

In other news, you may have heard that the Chico Poker Network no longer saves hand histories to file with its new software. This makes it impossible to track the network, forcing us to discontinue our support for the Chico Poker Network.

If you have any questions about this update or just want to talk, feel free to email us at any time at info@pokeit.co.

Good luck at the tables!
The Pokeit Team