Video Poker Engine
by Jeff Lotspiech
This project is
a Java-based video poker engine that correctly calculates the odds and
the optimal play for almost all video poker machines. The base engine is
used in several different applications:
-
There is an applet,
that will play video poker and, if you discard incorrectly, display the
optimal discard.
-
There is also a command-line "strategy" application
that will calculate the net return for a given type of machine,
-
There is a second command-line "rules" application,
using the "strategy file" output from the strategy application, that evaluates
the effectiveness of a user-designed strategy.
-
There is a second
applet that calculates the so-called "gambler's ruin" probabilities
for many different machines. See the
discussion on my Web site.
For the two command-line applications, you need to download the "full"
jar file, poker.jar.
The code is written in standard Java 1.1 and runs on all conforming
platforms. The video poker applet uses the Swing classes; the gambler's
ruin applet uses the AWT. Here is the javadoc
documentation.
This program is an evolution of DOS-based program that I wrote in the
early 80's, and has been on the Web for over six years, with ten of thousands
of downloads. You can visit my
Web site for all sorts of information about video poker, including
free strategy sheets.