Poker Hand XML

[Tickner]

Anyone following the Hold'em Manager thread will understand the need for this thread. It's plain and simple. Poker Hands need an "official" XML representation. I am willing to take part in its construction and I will need your help with it. We should use this thread to share ideas and etc, until we can find a suitable XML representation of any poker hand (should work for online and offline hands - universal is key here).

I really need to go to bed but I look forward to getting spending a good chunk of time tomorrow researching XML standards, schemas, and practices. Hopefully some of you will join me in this.

With the influx of poker applications as of late - this is becoming a necessity.

[rvg72]

As long as this is finalized in a reasonable amount of time then HM will use whatever format is agreed upon. Hopefully this thread has legs because this really needs to happen.

rvg

[mikechops]

I-Poker's looks solid. Why not settle on that since it's one less site that would need to be converted from?

[rvg72]

[ QUOTE ]
I-Poker's looks solid. Why not settle on that since it's one less site that would need to be converted from?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not a big fan of their format...

I don't like how they use action ID's instead of the actual play (ie Type="1" instead of saying "posted small blind") and I also hate how they post action out of order and use an Action Number instead.

for example:

<action no="2" player="abc" type="2" sum="$0.50"/><action no="3" player="def" type="2" sum="$0.50"/><action no="1" player="ghi" type="1" sum="$0.25"/>

This really means:

ghi posted small blind of 0.25
abc posted big blind of 0.50
def posted big blind of 0.50

rvg

[mikechops]

Fair points, but if you want a universal format that's easy for humans to read, then maybe xml isn't the answer?

[A.Nironen]

[ QUOTE ]
Fair points, but if you want a universal format that's easy for humans to read, then maybe xml isn't the answer?

[/ QUOTE ]

What about PokerStars? IMO it's human readable quite well.

-Andrzej

[pokergrader]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Fair points, but if you want a universal format that's easy for humans to read, then maybe xml isn't the answer?

[/ QUOTE ]

What about PokerStars? IMO it's human readable quite well.

-Andrzej

[/ QUOTE ]

I think we should pick a format where each action states exactly how much money is put into the pot for that action, a la Party (other than the all-in move).

For example, this is stars:

[ QUOTE ]

Penaflow: posts small blind $0.50
Mr Herpes: posts big blind $1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pokergrader [Ac Ad]
RolexRounder: calls $1
pokergrader: raises $3 to $4


[/ QUOTE ]

The problem is that the message pokergrader: raises $3 to $4 will be the exact same whether I am UTG (and just put in $4), or in the BB (and just put in $3).

I would rather the format be:

[ QUOTE ]

Penaflow: posts small blind [$0.50]
Mr Herpes: posts big blind [$1]
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pokergrader [Ac Ad]
RolexRounder: calls [$1]
pokergrader: raises to $4 [$4]


[/ QUOTE ]

The simpler the hand history is the easier it would be to make hand converters and whatnot without a lot of unnecessary code to keep track of player contributions (problem with stars) and betting levels as the hand goes on (which is the problem with party).

Both of these are solved by my suggestion.

For example, if I was raising out of the BB, it would look like:
pokergrader: raises to $4 [$3]

And believe me, I've put a great deal of thought into this problem, but I was just waiting for somebody who actually was making money from their poker applications to do it.

[JavaNut]

[ QUOTE ]

<action no="2" player="abc" type="2" sum="$0.50"/><action no="3" player="def" type="2" sum="$0.50"/><action no="1" player="ghi" type="1" sum="$0.25"/>

This really means:

ghi posted small blind of 0.25
abc posted big blind of 0.50
def posted big blind of 0.50


[/ QUOTE ]

One thing that you have to realise concerning xml is that you should never ever make any xml standard that is positional depending.

If you have an action section like this:

<hand>
starting stack info, handnumber etc.....
<preflopaction>
<blind>
<player1 kind=sb>$0.10</player1>
<player2 kind=bb>$0.20</player2>
<player3 kind=lb>$0.20</player3>

The sequence of the above <player1>, <player2> and <player3> are not required to be in exactly that order, if they are it is not xml. No order is to be infered by the sequence, it has to be inferred by the attributes, in this case the kind attribute where sb is small blind, lb is live blind.

[advis0r]

some questions that need to be answered:
- should it be easily readable by humans?
- does filesize matter? (bloated xml tags?)
- do you want to automatically validate if a HH is in a correct format? (xml schema)
- do you want to be able to create other forms of representation automatically i.e. BB Code, back to PokerSites-individual Formats (XSLT)
- should it only support flop/turn/river games (holdem, omaha) or others too (stud, 5 card draw?)
- should it allow references to earlier defined info? i.e. one currency tag ($,€,t) on top and only numbers later or seat info earlier with Playernames, and later only use seatnumbers to identify players?
- how do you deal with different information, order, detail in Pokersites own formats?
- regarding the creation of real-life-hhs: how much typing do you have to do?
- does tag order in XML matter to you? (what JavaNut mentioned)

[mikechops]

I'd agree with most of what has been said about the actual format, but I don't think it matters that much. It's more important that a range of applications support it. I'll adapt the Realtime HUD to support anything sensible that somebody implements. If we get another couple of applications then we have standard implemented.

I'd need a program that translates a site format file to the universal format file. It would be helpful if I could pass the program a start point in the file and get back a pointer to the last processed line - that way it wouldn't have to keep reprocessing hands that had already been converted.