Poker Hand XML - Page 8

MuppetBingo · #71 08-01-2007, 05:21 PM

Thanks for your comment, there's 4 ways to handle antes I think:

1) Have an ante-attribute on <rounds>, it would then be implicit that every player that is not sitting out will pay the ante before the first round.

2) We could assume that ante was taken out before we started the hand (as you suggest), but then we should have a "initialPotsize" somewhere to say how much was taken out in ante

3) The way I have done above, with an <antes> block

4) put antes into the first round as forced actions before small and big blinds.

I initially went with 4), but I think that becomes a bit t cumbersome and I think option 1) is probably the best solution, ie. to remove the <antes>-block and add an optional "ante" attribute on <rounds>.

Having ante taken out of the stack sizes before the hand begins is not as good, because I think paying ante is something that happens during a hand of poker, not before.

---
Version 1.2

* removed <antes> block
* added optional ante attribute on rounds
* changed attribute sittingout to active in <players> block. We now don't distinguish between those that were sitting out before we began the hand, and those who chooses not to pay blinds or antes and "active" is a more generic term.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<pokerhand id="11082740019" timestamp="2007-07-31 11:21:43">
<context>
<location online="true">
<room name="Absolute Poker" />
<table id="562102981" name="Denmark Dr." seats="10"/>
</location>

<game type="texasholdem" format="tournament" bettingtype="nolimit">

<tournament buyin="10" vig="1" id="56210298" currency="USD"/>

<cashgame maxbuyin="400" bigblind="2" currency=""/>
</game>
<players>
<player id="MuppetBingo" stack="1500" seat="1" active="true"/>
<player id="KermitIsGreen" stack="1500" seat="4" active="true"/>
<player id="Animal" stack="1500" seat="5" active="true"/>
</players>
</context>

<rounds ante="2">


<round id="preflop">

<deal>

<cards playerId="MuppetBingo" open="false" value="Ac Ad"/>
</deal>

<actions>




<action type="bet" playerId="MuppetBingo" forced="true" name="smallblind" amount="10"/>
<action type="bet" playerId="KermitIsGreen" forced="true" name="bigblind" amount="20"/>
<action type="bet" playerId="Animal" forced="false" name="straddle" amount="40"/>
<action type="bet" playerId="MuppetBingo" amount="10"/>
<action type="bet" playerId="KermitIsGreen" amount="30"/>
<action type="call" playerId="Animal" amount="30"/>
<action type="call" playerId="MuppetBIngo" amount="20"/>
</actions>
</round>
<round id="flop">
<deal>

<cards open="true" value="7c 2s Qh"/>
</deal>
<actions>
<action type="check" playerId="MuppetBingo" />
<action type="bet" playerId="KermitIsGreen" amount="50"/>
<action type="fold" playerId="Animal"/>
<action type="call" playerId="MuppetBIngo" amount="50"/>
</actions>
</round>
<round id="turn">
<deal>
<cards open="true" value="9h"/>
</deal>
<actions>
<action type="check" playerId="MuppetBingo"/>
<action type="check" playerId="KermitIsGreen"/>
</actions>
</round>
<round id="river">
<deal>
<cards open="true" value="Kc"/>
</deal>
<actions>
<action type="check" playerId="MuppetBingo" />
<action type="check" playerId="KermitIsGreen" />
</actions>
</round>
</rounds>
<result>
<hands>

<hand playerId="MuppetBingo" mucked="false" cards="Ac Ad"/>
<hand playerId="KermitIsGreen" mucked="false" cards="As Ks"/>
<hand playerId="Animal" mucked="true"/>
</hands>
<pots value="278.5" rake="1.5">
<pot number="1" value="278.5">
<winners>

<winner playerId="MuppetBingo" amount="278.5" winningHand="Ac Ad Qh Kc 9h"/>
</winners>
</pot>
</pots>
</result>
</pokerhand>
</pre><hr />

MuppetBingo · #72 08-01-2007, 05:24 PM

btw. I agree with someone who wrote that we shouldn't try to nail the spec completely before implementing anything, though we're still in the early stages.

But when we agree on some pokerhand-xml-definition, people should try to implement a couple of converters to see if everything can be captured properly, and then revisit the spec.

OrcaDK · #73 08-01-2007, 05:28 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I still think I'd prefer cards coactenated. It's trivial to parse them, it takes up much less space and makes the hand a little easier on the eye. But whatever...

[/ QUOTE ]

But they are each a seperate piece of data

[/ QUOTE ]

I've given two advantages of combining them. And the advantage of separating them is?

[/ QUOTE ]

Concatenating them is illogical as each card is a logical unit, not the two (or more) cards together.

Concatenating the cards makes it tough to write proper value validation. Keeping the separate would enable validation through a very simple regexp, concatenating them makes this more difficuelt as there could potentially be an unlimited number of cards, making it nonderterministic (making it impossible to validate through DTD for instance).

Concatenating them makes XPath expressions tougher, most XPath engines don't have a "LIKE" operator so it would be cumbersome to simple make a //card[@value='Ac'] lookup to find all aces of clubs.

The space saving of concatenating the cards is neglectable imho. It also makes it simpler to determine the amount of cards simply by the amount of elements, instead of having to parse an attribute.

Imagine we were to save this XML document in a database (take SQL Server 2005 that supports the XML datatype and inline XPath in SQL), if we were to make a query like "how many cards does the average showdown hand include, combining all games), then we'd have to write complex inline SQL code to count the number of delimiting chars to determine the amount of cards - and this is per hand. It would be a lot easier to just count the number of card elements inline.

OrcaDK · #74 08-01-2007, 05:35 PM

The XML should never contain any textual descriptions of hands. Following are a couple of examples:

<position="3" hand="[Kd Qd] Td 3d 2d (King-high Flush)" result="win">
<position="4" hand="[3c 3h] 3d Kh Jc (Three of a kind)" result="muck">

<player _name="player3" showed_hand="true" ALLIN="1" stack="381" cards="3d4h5h7h6c8h5s" hi_hand="HI: a straight, Four to Eight" lo_hand: LO: 7,6,5,4,3" seat="3"/>

It should be up to the application to determine the hand description. We can have a descriptor that - in a standardized way - says the hand strength, just not using descriptions like "HI: a straight, Four to Eight".

It's going to be a hell to write a validator if we have these inline descriptions, and that's just one more thing that'd have to be standardized for this to be working.

Triggerle · #75 08-01-2007, 05:37 PM

The problem with excluding the ante block is that some games require sitting out players to post an ante, for example tournaments.

It takes some reverse tracking/logic to see if that is the case with the ante as an attribute.

Shoe Lace · #76 08-01-2007, 05:41 PM

[ QUOTE ]
2) We could assume that ante was taken out before we started the hand (as you suggest), but then we should have a "initialPotsize" somewhere to say how much was taken out in ante

[/ QUOTE ]

We wouldn't need any extra fields. The ante's value is what tells us how much was taken out.

Ex.

<hand date="00/00/0000 00:00:00pm" site="Poker Stars" table="Blah" number="#0000000000" currency="$" type="Cash" seats="6" game="Texas Holdem" mode="No Limit" sb="5" bb="10" ante="2">

Here we are being told the ante is 2, and it is assumed everyone who is not sitting out is paying this price every time a new hand is dealt.

During an evaluation of the hand (in PT/HM/web parser/etc) it only has to check who is not sitting out (players who do NOT post any action are sitting out) and multiply this number by the ante to figure out how much the pot size should be.

Small mathematical calculations take up practically no CPU cycles at all. If this was a serious concern we could simply have a "pot" attribute for each "street" element which tracks the pot size.

MuppetBingo · #77 08-01-2007, 05:43 PM

@Triggerle

Hmm, I didn't think of that. Then the ante block should probably be reintroduced.

@OrcaDK
The choice to express card values as a string which may contain more than one card, is makes the xml easier to read for humans, and when parsing the xml is also fairly trivial.

But you do have a point with regards to XPath expressions, so, and to satisfy that I think every card should be expressed like so

<cards (other attributes...)>
<card value="a" suit="h" >
<card value="9" suit="c" >
</cards>

Shoe Lace · #78 08-01-2007, 05:48 PM

[ QUOTE ]
It takes some reverse tracking/logic to see if that is the case with the ante as an attribute.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not really.

Here's a copy/paste of my earlier layout's header with the addition of antes.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
<players>
<seat position="1" name="Jack" stack="998" ante="2">
<seat position="2" name="Jill" stack="998" ante="2">
<seat position="3" name="Jim" stack="998" ante="2" holecards="Kd Qd">
<seat position="4" name="Jane" stack="998" ante="2">
<seat position="5" name="Joe" stack="998" ante="2">
<seat position="6" name="Julie" stack="998" ante="2">
</players>
</pre><hr />

This would subtract the ante from their stack regardless if they're sitting out or not (it's up to the hand history itself to see if everyone is effected or not, but either way it wouldn't effect the end result). This shouldn't need any extra code too because the ante is either 0 or x.

MuppetBingo · #79 08-01-2007, 05:49 PM

@Shoe Lace

We should try to make everything that is going on in a hand as explicit as possible. Having implicit rules that you have to know, but can't read out of the xml itself, is bad.

And having a running potsize attribute on every round doesn't sound like an improvement on an antes-block.

@Everybody

Can't we use the ISO 4217 codes for currencies instead of "$"? (you can see them at http://www.xe.com/iso4217.php)

Dollars is "USD", British Pounds is "GBP", etc.

Shoe Lace · #80 08-01-2007, 05:52 PM

[ QUOTE ]
And having a running potsize attribute on every round doesn't sound like an improvement on an antes-block.

[/ QUOTE ]

It has nothing to do with the ante. You said there might be a need for something like "initialPotSize" somewhere. This is unnecessary because the antes are going into the same pot that is being played for in the hand.

Adding the pot size for each street was just an idea that would bloat the xml file and in return the script parsing the file wouldn't have to calc the pot size on each street.