Today

Today is my birthday. I've gotten really lazy when it comes to blogging. Most of it has to do with my realization that quite a bit of my desire to blog came from making money (believe it or not I have been paid $400 for a single text link, two words/one year, in the past) and further, that the good money is definitely not in blogging (at least, not for me). I wanted to use it to help develop my skills too; but, I don't know if blogging is the best way to develop potential in whatever you're trying to improve.

So much of the time one puts into blogging goes into constructing a skeleton of an article that will hopefully make sense to someone else. You really aren't writing for yourself. Sometimes you get good ideas and suggestions, but, besides a great venue for making friends, most of my ideas were gathered through rigorous trial and error. Try, fail/succeed, then modify. Repeat. Not so much writing about them, as by getting my hands dirty (and my wallet).

Anyway, today is my birthday. I would love to be making a million dollars a year right now. But really, I didn't have any such thing in the works to occur by this day.

My thoughts are terribly scattered. Obviously (I feel).

And I wanted to put the fact that my friend's and my poker bot is functional at the 90 table play money tables (made it to some final tables) and will be functional at the real money tables shortly. I obviously can't give you too many details, what with various big named poker sites trying their best to prevent such things from happening (I would prefer not to have my account frozen and closed).

But in the future, I'll definitely give more details. Making a bot, while time consuming, isn't as hard as it would seem. I don't want to say it's _easy_ as you probably want to be at least a marginally profitable poker player, and most people would say that's difficult (I would have to agree). But it really isn't as hard as some people would like you to think.

This time next year, I hope to have a degree (I missed several years of school in there), a side income from botting, and have taken a step back into the trading ring (I've been doing some micro forex trading recently*)

(*FXCM has some nice software to help making your own automated trading program. And it's free (albeit, you have to sign up to use it)). MULTIPLE PARENTHESIS!

But, things aren't too bad. Another year, another 365 days, another, what is that in moments? We'll have to see how my brain determines that process this year. Let's stay mentally active, fit, and healthy.

Cheers!!!

Poker Botting

Started making a poker bot with a friend early last week (maybe even ealier) using AutoHotkey as the main scripting language. Love it.

Here are a few sites you might want to check out:

Coding the Wheel - an excellent coding site with a famous poker bot series (check the left hand side).

Poker AI - has an active forum dedicated to poker bots and those who make efforts to create them.

AutoHotkey - a simple (yet powerful) scripting language that can be used to make mouse movements/clicks or keyboard clicks. Simple automation.

More notes as things progress (although, I will keep most of the code under wraps).

Planting the Seeds

I really want to see "Exit Through The Gift Shop" with the street artist Bansky.

Don't know much about him, but if he points the finger at himself and his culture every once in a while, I love the guy.

Auto Hot Key

How many people use this program? I have no idea. But it should definitely be in any serious poker player's arsenal. The program allows its user to assign mouse clicks and movements to keyboard keys. Say you want to make a bet, click "B" and AHK will do the mouse actions you have "B" scripted to do. Go from sliding the mouse up and down and left clicking to just pressing "B" and you've streamlined your movements. The more you streamline such repetitive movements, the easier it is for you to play and add more tables.

I love it. It helps me play quite a few tables (a max of 12 on my current laptop setup). Anyway, I wanted to post my script, hopefully helping some other beginners jumpstart their AHK usage.

Anything with a ";" in front of it is ignored by AHK (";" signifies a comment). It's not all that complicated: put the key you want to use as a macro and follow it by "::" and some other code to tell it what to do. I have a modified version of this script that allows me to use a USB game controller =) I may post that later. Anyway, enjoy:

; Fold
u::
MouseClick, left, 367, 448
Sleep, 100
MouseClick, left, 368, 465
Sleep, 100
return

; Check/Call
i::
MouseClick, left, 480, 446
Sleep, 100
MouseClick, left, 516, 477
Sleep, 100
return

; Inc Bet Amount
o::
MouseClick, left, 670, 423
Sleep, 100
return

; Bet/Raise
p::
Random, randxcord, 630, 640
Random, randycord, 475, 485
MouseClick, left, randxcord, randycord
Sleep, 100
return

; Bet/Raise x 2
y::
MouseClick, left, 617, 423
Sleep, 100
MouseClick, left, 617, 423
Sleep, 100
MouseClick, left, 617, 423
Sleep, 100
MouseClick, left, 635, 480
Sleep, 100
return

; AutoPost
NumpadAdd::
MouseClick, left, 16, 425
Sleep, 100
return

; SitOut
NumpadSub::
MouseClick, left, 16, 405
Sleep, 100
return

;close
esc::
MouseClick, left, 682, 17
Sleep, 100
MouseClick, left, 67, 107
return

;no wait for bb
w::
MouseClick, left, 464, 439
Sleep, 100
return

;allin
del::
MouseClickDrag, L, 605, 420, 679, 420
return

;sit out next hand
a::
MouseClick, left, 15, 353
Return

;fold to any bet
d::
MouseClick, left, 15, 338
Return

;sit out next blind
s::
MouseClick, left, 15, 368
Return

;Add chips
t::
MouseClick, left, 350, 75
Sleep, 100
MouseClick, left, 300, 60
Sleep, 1000
MouseClick, left, 130, 350
Return

; WindowNW
6::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
MouseMove,400,300
MouseGetPos, curPosX, curPosY, curWin
WinGetTitle, title, ahk_id %curWin%
WinActivate, %title%
return

; WindowNE
7::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
MouseMove,880,200
MouseGetPos, curPosX, curPosY, curWin
WinGetTitle, title, ahk_id %curWin%
WinActivate, %title%
return

; WindowSW
8::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
MouseMove,200,700
MouseGetPos, curPosX, curPosY, curWin
WinGetTitle, title, ahk_id %curWin%
WinActivate, %title%
return

; WindowSE
9::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
MouseMove,900,700
MouseGetPos, curPosX, curPosY, curWin
WinGetTitle, title, ahk_id %curWin%
WinActivate, %title%
return

; Desktop1
1::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
Click 1157, 1032
return

; Desktop2
2::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
Click 1180, 1032
return

; Desktop3
3::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
Click 1205, 1032
return

; Desktop4
4::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
Click 1225, 1032
return

Useful "Poker" Sites

Here's a list of some sites that I find help with my poker game:

Poker Table Ratings - PTR helps determine how profitable your opponents are.

AutoHotKey - Use to make your mouse movements automated by the stroke of a key (keyboard macros). Makes multitabling much, much easier.

Those are the only two I'm posting right now. I have used PTR extensively over the last two months and it has helped me keep track of my opponents and myself. I just found out about AHK a week or so ago, and I have fallen in love with it since.

More on the way.

Small Update

Made $400 in the last month playing NL Texas Hold'em; I have played the $.02/.05, .1/.05, .1/.25, and .25/.5 limits with a few hands in the .01/.02 (ugh) and the .5/1 (too big for my bankroll). I haven't played anything but a few online tournaments (two offline, but no winnings).

Still a ways to go and more info soon (finals week is nearly here).

Not Dead

Still kicking, just directing my kicks at topics like discrete mathematics for my degree. In my free time (and sometimes in the background while I work) I have been building a poker bankroll and diverting bits to my bank account. Along with other funds, I hope to have a small starting amount for a futures account come post-finals. Until then, I don't really have enough cash on hand to do much in the markets (much less morning time--PST here). I'll try to keep the updates coming.