Handcrawler Forum

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First post... on the whole forums!   ;D

I just thought I'd say that I'm extremely impressed with the website you've made here, and I think the tool you've created will be invaluable for all players who are trying to improve. Good luck, I really hope the site takes off!

Thanks froobert.  I appreciate the kind words.  Please tell others people about it, and let me know if there are any improvements you'd like to see!

great, great idea!  2p2 search is ok I guess but anything that means I never again have to ask why it's so stupid is nirvana :)

would it be possible for the "any stakes" box to be a preference or something so that we don't have to pick it every time?  I'm only going to be searching one group of hands so that's never going to change for me (or maybe just make it so that whatever you chose last is there the next time?).

I also notice that when I search something all the "any" dropdowns and check boxes go blank (so I can't see what conditions I initially searched for or make a tweak and re-search) - think those could be persistent somehow or maybe add a "clear all" or something?

Mike,

Good suggestions.  I'll make some adjustments to make the search options more persistent on the next revision.

thanks.

I just had to say one more time what a phenomenal idea this is!  I can already see I'll probably use it as much as pt's replayer.

lots of luck with the site.

I was wondering, would it be possible to search the "LHE->NL" forum on 2p2?  The results could probably be lumped in under the "NL 6m micro" dropdown so I don't think it would need a separate category.  A number of limit players like me are adding NL so it's mostly all micro hands, pretty much all 6m and there's a lot of good/detailed advice in the posts from regular SSNL posters.  It's under "Limit Texas HE" on the 2p2 sidebar.

Just a thought, but is it possible to have something like "late position" and "early position" or
"in position" and "oop" or something in addition to a defined seat?  I realize you're probably using the info in the hh post to make a match but I ask because often IMO it isn't important what my seat is but whether or not I have position on the other(s).  Obv I could pick "button" just to be sure but then I'm guessing all the matches where villain is utg and hero is hj (for example) aren't going to show up.

Sure - I've considered adding this as well.  It wouldn't be hard to do.

I'm thinking (for 6max):

EP = UTG,UTG+1
Blinds = SB,BB
LP = CO,BTN

I can just rewrite the query to be something like this:

if ( $position == 'blinds' ) { $extraquery .= ' and position in ( 'SB','BB' )'; }

etc...

I'll have to experiment with it.

Limit is a whole different beast - I plan to support it in the future, but it basically involves rewriting the entire analysis script because of the different terminology (caps, etc).

-Z

Thanks - the "blinds" was a great add!

Several suggestions:

1. When the user enters a search that's too specific (0 results), they don't get any kind of error and the form resets to the default values.  Retaining their search terms and providing feedback would be very nice.  Suggesting ways to slightly loosen the search would be even better.  It would also be good to let the user know when they've submitted an impossible search (such as AA and flopped a flush)

2. Consider letting the user type the hole cards rather than using a drop down box.  This would also make it easier to support searching for suited hole cards (AKs), unsuited hole cards (AKo), or either (AK).

3. Let the user specify a stakes range that they consider "close enough" rather than the current drop-down that maps to particular poker forums.  I'm assuming that as you parse the hands, you can record the stakes from the text.  As you add more forums, they will each have different layouts and different ideas of what "small stakes" are.

4. For six max, what position immediately follows the Big Blind?  UTG or MP2?

5. The buttons for more search results ("1 2 3 4 5" ) should be above the blurb for the "Handcrawler Investment Guide".  They're kind of hidden right now and it's not immediately obvious that they're associated with the search results.

Cheers,
Daniel

Thanks for the input Daniel - in regards to your questions:

1.  I am working on this and will try to warn people to give more broad matches.  I'll also add stickiness to the original search factors.

2.  I actually like the dropdown, just because people can type in so many combinations of the hand incorrectly.

For example, A clubs K clubs... is it AcKc, AKcc, AKs, AK, etc?

3.  When I introduce the other forums I am crawling, these stakes will be simplified to a broader category

4.  In 6max, the position following the button is generally UTG.  If a converter displays this differently though, there's nothing I can do.  Note though, that you can use the "Early" option to pick either UTG or UTG+1

5.  This is intentional, but I may tweak it a bit :)

Do you prefer bug reports in the forum or via email?

Anyway, I've noticed that some hands are not parsed correctly.  I noticed this while doing a search for hands with "Flop is paired" and "Monotone flop".  Since this is impossible, there should be no results, but I found several fascinating hands where players were somehow dealt less-than symbols. ;-) 

Could your parser determine the relative position of the hero based on the action?  Then you could do some sort of dead reckoning ("2 off the button") rather than the ambiguity of text labels.

The new version of Poker Notes (http://pokersleuth.com/tools_pokernotes.shtml) now has a "Search" button that will open a browser and search handcrawler for discussions on similar hands.  Sticky search settings would be really, really nice so users can see which settings PokerNotes thought were appropriate. ;-)

Shhhh......

I know :)  Just so everyone understands - there are a LOT of different hand formats I'm trying to support.  For example, Leggopoker by itself has something like 6 different variations of their hand histories.  The same goes for FTR and others.

I plan on working on the bugs on the most common formats, and storing the oddball ones for later (to parse or skip depending on how ambitious I'm feeling)

Any progress on adding stickiness?

Poker Notes (http://pokersleuth.com)'s search button is almost useless without stickiness, since the queries it generates are virtually always too specific.

Daniel,

I've been pretty busy with my normal 9-6 job, but I'll take a shot at it this weekend.

Anything I can do to help push this along?  I'd be willing to sign an NDA and help out with your code to get this feature. :)

howdy -

I haven't been playing too much but when I do I still use your genius idea web site  :)  but I take it not many others are?  the scanned hand count hasn't changed from ~38k for a while (just curious).

anyway, thanks for keeping the site up

Ya, unfortunately I've been pretty busy at my regular 9-6 job.  I plan on updating my code to start crawling sites again.  We're getting a few hundred visitors a month, but nothing drastic.

Please tell your friends!  I hope you find it useful.

Do you need any ideas on how to boost visitors to the site?

I'm assuming you've done all the basic SEO stuff like google sitemap etc.

You should change your 2p2 location from spammer to handcrawler.com, and add the URL to the homepage on your profile (you're pooh-bah - that's a lot of respect there!)
Start a blog on the site - this really boosts content which brings new visitors through google search etc.

A complicated but powerful way would be to create a vBulletin plugin (http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/creating_a_product) that uses your search - forums like 2p2 can add the search in at the click of a button. The results could (should) still be shown on their site, but a link like 'Results by Handcrawler.com' is all that's needed. Weaktight.com and deucescracked.com get a ton of traffic just because of their hand converters in this way.