Well in the light of the other post about the Party Handgrabber loophole, I decided to release my own version of this for everybody to use.

I hope by doing this that this puts an end to all the profit making from this loophole (which I personally think is wrong). Some will not be happy that I released this, but I personally believe this is the 'correct' thing to do, and I am prepared to stand up and support my beliefs...

As was pointed out in another post this really is not a hard thing to do or code up for somebody with a reasonable level of low-level coding knowledge. I spend about 1/2 a day on this, but right enough it doesn't have a flashy interface and it a typical "Juk Hack" for want of a better word.

The zipfile, along with the source can be found here (Right click and use "Save as").

Make sure you read the README.TXT file first, as it mentions some of the problems you may encounter while using FreePHG.

Any problems then just PM or email me and I will try to help. Also, if anybody finds some neat fixes or optimizations then please share. Like I said before I didn't spend long coding this up and their is alot that could be done to improve it.

Juk

PS: This is one of "my" zip-files on my free host - Feel free to re-host and post a new link if there are any problems with downloading it.

edit: changed title to slightly appease the secrecy camp.
edit: twice.
-Sam

juk,

holy holy holy holy hoyl crap.

this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.this is amazing.

i haven't tried it yet as i am too excited will report back later with trip report.

thank-you so much.
sean

edit--my only thought is i wonder if it might be more prudent to take a stealthier approach so not to draw party's notice too quickly (re: the title of the post) ---like with the previous application.

does it track mucked hole cards?

Yes, the HHF format is exactly the same as the old HHF files - 100% the same.

There is a tiny CPU load bug though, which means on slow systems it misses the end of some HH's which have side-pots. I will fix this if it ever becomes a problem, but so far it hasn't caused me any problems (and I have a slow system and get this happening quite often).

Juk

Tell us how you get on, a few people have tested it so far, and I originally wasn't going to release it, but the other thread eventually changed my mind...

Yes, but I think since I am trying to stop the profit making from things such as PartyHandTracker and HHSmithey, the fact that I have openly published it like this (for free) will be in its favour.

Juk

do you think this is comparable to what smithey is doing?

-eric

juk, nice app.

Will these hhf files stay around after Party is closed?

well we tried to contain the other program and that succeeded. the reason for that is because partypoker clearly reads 2+2 and it's an incredibly simple loophole to fix (though i don't think PTH will be effected if they do fix the loophole). i strongly believe that this stuff should be kept underground.

I would guess he used the same methods, but hopefully now people can use this for their own use.

I think the idea of selling data is what really pissed Party off into stopping HHFs, and HHSmithy is likely to eventually do just what Party wants to explicitly stop in their T&C.

If Party want to close the loophole used (which there seems quite alot of evidence that they may not actually want to stop this), then they can easily.

Juk

The HHF file get saved to the same folder where you run the FreePHG executable from, so as long as you don't run it in the PartyPoker folder, they should stay around.

Juk

very nice Juk using it right now!

is there a way we can load more than than 10 observed tables at once without using windows multiple user trick..

how is this an improvement from PHT btw they appear to do the same thing right?

I am not sure if this post may get deleted anyway, but hopefully by then enough people will see their is a free alternative. If Party do read these threads then their are 2/3 existing threads which clearly talk about, and show that this loophole exists.

My intention is not to get this loophole fixed, but is simply to try to put an end to the kind of thing Party gets mad at (ie: other people/companies profiting). As TT pointed out in another thread, it may even turn out they left this loophole for us to use (they also left Dealer Chat for some unknown reason, and today's update hasn't blocked either).

I think if they are going to block this then at worse this simply accelerates the inevitable. Also, it is not the end of the world if they do fix this loophole. This is not the only method which can be used, it is just the most obvious/simple one to implement. If they do decide to plug this loophole, then I will obviously not be as keen publicise any other methods I have looked into and will be forced to keep them underground.

Juk

I don't know of anyway to get more than 10 tables open, possibly multiple accounts on the same XP system?

No improvement (and clearly zero interface, and hacky code). It just does exactly the same thing as PHT does and took about 1/2 a day to code up - therefore its free and will stay free...

Juk

I agree with this ..with the solution free and more players using it Party may be more likely to crack down on any/all loopholes regarding this matter... I like the approach PTH guy had:he was very low key,the app was cheap and it has worked great..not taking anything away from your work at all Juk. If this can be kept low key thats cool if not both apps may get nixed by Party sooner than later.

If this thread does get taken down, then I hope people will keep using this free application rather than PHT.

It was the fact he tried to claim it took some huge level of 'technical know-how' and hours of work to do this that eventually made me decide enough is enough

In reality it took very little time and could just have easily been written in Visual Basic. The Pacific Handgrabber for example is a significantly bigger piece of work (in the order of 20-50x this to decode the raw packet information), and this sells for $5 if I remember correctly.

If anybody goes back to check the original pacific HandGrabber thread, you can see my question about it. When I saw he only charged $5, then I decided against open-sourcing my code which did almost the same (only limit ring games - and it took MUCH more work than this).

Also nobody listened to my 'stealth post' in the HHSmithy thread, and it is that type of thing I fear is much more likely to have huge implications than this type of app. They have made their position very clear on data sharing, yet they seem to have left several easy to exploit loopholes for this type of application.

Juk