Trading hand histories

[hard2tel]

Some people on the Poker Tracker forum were talking about trading hand histories..and the best way to do it..etc. I kind of took over and created this website yesterday - poker database

The plan is for people to send me as many hh's as they can via email and i would post them on the site for everybody to download...starting in a couple weeks. I've divided the databases by limits..starting from .10/.25 NL and .5/1 Limit to 10/20 NL and 100/200 Limit. Its also divided into FR and 6max..and which poker site the hh's are from.

Also, only contributors will be allowed to download from the site.

If you would like to contribute, email me- hard2telpoker@yahoo.com

[SamIAm]

This is cool. Welcome to the forum.

Here are some issues that are about to rain down on you. (This has happened a few times. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

1.There's no proof that the data's real. I suppose somebody could submit bad data, especially if they think the project is immoral. (See below. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

2.You'll get tons of data on the submitters, more than anybody else. This doesn't concern me all that much, because I don't play at a limit where I'll play long with any good player. I play with fish; if I see a good player or two, i'll probably leave. It doesn't matter what I know about his precise strategy, because I stopped paying attention after "good".

3.This is against Party's T&C. That's never concerned me much; I judge the morals of my actions based on my own decision, not Party's listed rules. But you'll get called a cheater.

Still, good project. I always like free community-oriented projects like this. Plus, if it turns out the project isn't on the up&up, I'm in Atlanta, too, so I can hunt you down. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
-Sam

[hard2tel]

lol..ok, if the project doesnt work out we'll meet at a 7-eleven and fight. That should solve it. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

BTW, i live in Peachtree City and am going to Georgia State for the time being. Too smart to get into Tech IMHO.

But yea, i have no idea how im going to tell if the data's real or not. I guess if a person is that bored to actually create fake hand histories to screw with my database than so be it..lol

About Party's T&C....I dont have any money in my account over there anymore, so they can freeze my account/ban me as many times as they want.. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Ty for the warm welcoming bro.

[hard2tel]

BTW, to send me the hh's..just export the hands from Poker Tracker into a folder on your comp. Since PT will only allow 300 hands per txt. file you will then need to compress all of the files PT creates into a ZIP file. Then u can just email it to me.

You also need to register an account with the wiki and email me your username so i can grant u access to the database.

Contributors will be able to start downloading hh's in a couple weeks. After i get everything up and running.

[Shaggy]

Just checked it out. Looks like a good start.
-Shaggy

[jukofyork]

Just followed through and read the PT forum thread on this and seems like quite a few are interested. I am just thinking ahead to the day when possibly this kind of <u>Small Scale</u> sharing may be the only option to get extra data on players.

There's gona be a heck of alot of data flying around, and if this data is only used for HUD displays, then possibly meta-data sharing would be better than actual HH data sharing?

I got no idea how hard it would be to do this and get it working with existing HUDs, but it would be better if you could just export meta-data somehow from your own DB and send this off to become part of a larger weighted average of everybody's meta-data combined which could then be easily shared.

Also, if users would like to keep themselves anonymous then it would be pretty easy to just delete your own meta-data before passing it on. If you want users to share their own HH files gathered from playing, then they may be scared that a poker site traces it back to them and their is just no way you can mangle the data, keep it useful, and still maintain anonymity.

The hard part would be getting it to merge with your own data which you gather yourself while playing and still get HUDs to display the merged data, but if this could be done then the meta-data idea seems to have alot of advantages over actual HH sharing.

Sadly, if Party does kill the HHF grabbing methods, then I think this is the only real way to go and I can see many small 'cells' of players getting together and doing this to get approximately the same data as they could get mining 10 tables 24/7 themselves.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[MFM00]

Another thing that needs to occur is p2p distribution without a central server. To much time and bandwidth for a volunteer coordinator to handle over the long run. Something like the old music sharing or current torrent mechanism.

Anything in open source for ad hoc collaboration?

[MFM00]

A meta data mechanism for statistical profiling would be very,very slick.

A layman's inital thoughts:

At least one of these heads up programs can collect data from multiple databases for presentation.

Build a separate db for the heads up program to query similarly to Poker Tracker. Presents the same interface as PT for the queries but the back end is whatever is suitable for facilitating profile exchanges.


The db would be built by repeated "importing" of some sort of "summary profiles".

The summary profiles would be the statistical data abstracted or transformed from actual hand history files.

The details are left as an excercise :-)
Unfortunately there are a *lot* of details to be sorted :-(

To begin with I have no idea of how many statistics are actually required by the heads up program, I do know that I only ever use a few e.g. VPIP and PFR but I'm there are others that just "have to be there".

This whole thing needs to be buildable incrementally so that the transformation program (and the following process) can start simply and then change without poisoning the previous data.

Incremental in two ways: (1) Version N+1 of the transform
should be able to add info to the db without "starting over" and (2) If version N+1 adds to the profile in some way then it should be able to take hand histories previously summarized to version N and generate a profile from the old hand histories that brings the db records to version N+1. It should accomodate but not require all of the old hand histories.

N.B this means that the data are "mixed' in that all statistics may not be available for all players or that players may have some data whcih comes from more hands than other data. Implications to be sorted but hopefully not fatal.


Would be very cool if such a thing ever existed!!


P.S. Just deleting one's own data may not be enough to guarantee anonymity iof they ever fell into the hands of the enemy. At least in the case of actual hand histories I'd bet a bunch that for any decent sized number of raw observations one's IP address as an observer of the central server could be determined by the central server without too much work, with a sort of a maximum likelihood, or traffic analysis.

Surely abstracting the data will provide some cover, how much I don't know, but it is an interesting computer science question. A first guess would be that you'd want to mask out "highly informative e.g. unique" observations.

Enough near to sleep ramblings.

[Chris.]

Would you mind updating your page to show how many hands you have per limit? I think it would be interesting to see...

[mikechops]

Isn't it fairly easy for PP to subscribe and find find out who is sharing histories? Even if the user name is masked, it wouldn't be hard for them to track who was sitting in seat 2, when players A,B &amp; C were sitting in seats X,Y &amp; Z.

Anybody sharing histories could have their accounts frozen and monies confiscated.