Hello people, I want to make online Nil Poker (new poker variant) software. By that I mean online poker site where people can play against each other Nil Poker. I am talking about PLAY-MONEY software(not real money). I do not know anything about programming so I will take all the help I can get. I will wrote more detailed questions in next post.Thank you for all the help in advance.

First post will be just about Nil Poker Rules so everybody would have better understandings of what I am asking.

Nil Poker has almost the same rules as poker (52-card deck). The only difference between playing poker (52-card deck) and Nil Poker is that there are 13 Nil Cards added to common deck of playing cards (52 cards) in Nil Poker (all together there is 65 cards; Nil Poker Playing Cards). All 13 Nil Cards look the same. Nil Cards are meaningless cards. Nil Cards have no value (blank cards). Nil cards can not make any combination except from Nil Quads (4 or more nil cards). Nil Quads are more valuable than any flush and less valuable than any fullhouse. Every card is better than Nil Card (2 high is more valuable than Nil Card). All the other rules (blinds, dealer, betting rounds,…) are the same as in poker (52-card deck). You can play any poker variant with Nil Poker Playing Cards: Nil Hold´em, Nil Omaha,…

New Nil Poker combination:
Nil Quads - Four (4) or more nil cards.

Nil Poker Hand Ranking:
… < Flush < Nil Quads < Full House < …

This is example of what Nil Card looks like:



I hope I posted my questions in the right subforum...

Here are some of the questions...

1.) Is there any free script availible online for simple online software(do not know if this is correct word; but I hope you understand what I mean).Or at least something similar to this? So I could just twist it? If not, is this expensive? I would like to make very simple online nil poker software, so that everybody will be able to try Nil Poker online.

2.) If there is any mentioned script (or something similar)... That means this is written in some kind of computer language? So this script can be changed? If I do understand this, there has to be some kind of random number generator that picks different cards from the deck? So I need to add 13 Nil Cards to this database (deck)?

3.) If I am correct until now, the second thing there is needed to be done is to add new poker hand ranking. There is probably some kind of database for poker hand rankings in this script? So I need to add Nil Quads in?

4.) All the other things stays the same?

5.) Is that all that it needs to be done? Am I completly wrong with everything? Am I at least looking in the right direction? If not, how else can this be done? Is there more simple way to do this? I really do not know anything about programming…. Thank you for all the answers. Will take all the help I can get.

I know this sounds impossible for person without any programming knowledge to do…

Generally speaking, I can hire someone to do this, but it would be a lot better if I would understand everything about writting program (or at least some things about programming),… For me, this would be very handy in the future; I have a lot of amazing plans (most of them are not poker related)…

For example, if I would understand programming very good, I would understand better what I am paying programmer to do (If I would decide this is the best option for me)… or how much am I paying…. And why am I paying this much…. and so on…

I have some kind of »deadline« (not very close date from today, but still…) on this nil poker matter also,…

Thank you for all the help in advance...

Easiest way would be to get an open source poker engine, and go from there. Not sure if any are available or how hard/easy it would be to find and modify them.
Starting this from scratch with zero programming knowledge will take you a long time to get done. It's not as simple as it seems.
Adding the cards to the deck is easy, remaking all the calculations for the winning hands, not so much.

Hello, MarcoSilva92.

Thank you for your advice and thank for sharing your knowledge. It means a lot to me.

I would like to say again that I really do not know nothing about programming... So feel free to help me and correct me... Will be very glad you do that... I started learning programming basics yesterday...

Is this what I am looking for? Is this open source poker engine? or poker software script?
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/67613

So programmer has to write how good every hand is against each other - one by one...this is a lot different hands..?

Or can he just add nil quads in between flushes and fullhouse...
and write what nil cards do in general (other than making nil quads(hand combination)). For example can he write some simple kind of "addition script" that will make all nil cards less valuable than card 2(as kicker)? And that this will be true for all the hands? Or something similar to this?

Are you thinking how to program it or have understanding how to hire someone to do it?

do you want to hire a server and run it/maintain yourself.

Unfortunately cant help you with so much how to program it and don't want to doubt it is not possible. It will be however very difficult to explain anyone how to program this. It is a rather big project (cant comment on suggested engines/libraries what ever they are) But since u spoke about deadline would be good to know what youre trying to do and what resources you have.

just to understand where you you aiming for who else is involved, possible timelines and budget.

however asking people how you should go about is a first step which you are doing.

Hello vento. Thank you for reply and thank you for your help.

The reason why I am asking this programming questions is because I would really like to understand everything better. I know how to hire someone(for example: freelancer). But if this is easy to do(if I do just couple of tweaks to some script/engine) than I believe I can do that by myself with a little help of some people. But If it is out of my league(probably it is) I would like to know how much would aprox. cost to hire programmer to do the job.

Yes, this is just first step… asking people that have better programming knowledge what to do. And so on… I think this is cool thing to do..
I do not know yet. What is considered good? Or better? Why?

Basically what I am trying to do is to make the most simplest possible software, where people could try playing nil poker (more specifically nil holdem) over the internet against each other – can be for example only cashgame type of game… And for sure I want only playmoney(not real-money)…

I am sorry but I can not answer your second paragraph. I really can not talk about this publicly. I can just say that my »deadline« is more than 4 months away…

The next step for you as a project manager is to develop a design document. That way when you hire someone, you can have a project timeline with contractual obligations, which is succinct and honorable.

( Or, you could just try to hustle someone into doing it for you for free. )

I can't actually even tell what you want based on your description

A website where people can play? A client you download to play, like pokerstars etc? A mobile app?

Hello, leavesofliberty. Your post was very helpful for me.

I have also checked how people hire somebody on freelancer website...

Hello, RustyBrooks.

I did not decide this yet. Can you and others tell me:

1. Which is the cheapest option of all the 3 options that you mentioned?

2. The cheapest option to program it? And the cheapest option to maintain it?

3. Which is the simplest option to maintain?... And if it is possible, that only one person can maintain it(or at least small group of people)..

4. Which option is considered the best and why?

5. (maybe not smart question; but I really do not know, so...) If for example I will chose website-option, can people play this over the phone also?

6. What do you suggest me and why?

The closest that I come to programming so far is when I made simple website with wordpress, but you do not require any programming skills to do simple website like this....so not very close to programming. But I started learning some programming basics...

The questions you're asking, people are paid good money to answer. I would say that you don't have a prayer of getting something ready in 4 months.

Glad to help. You can diagram what you want your windows to look like, and frame by frame use cases, and fill the images w text that says, for example "LOGO HERE" and so forth, and have a two way conversation on the requirements are, and flesh out the time line, and enter a contract. Good luck on your venture.

Don't try to hack it together w some kid out of high school. You try to do it too cheap and to fast, you'll wind-up missing the timeline and being over budget with terrible code. Do it right or don't do it.

Hello, leavesofliberty. I reallly can not thank you enough that you took your valuable time and helped me.

I understand. Yes, I want to make it right and correct…. I want that programmer and everybody else, who will be involed in my project would be as happy when they will finished it as I would be. So, got to take care of this in the right way…. Happy employee makes things better than not happy employee….

I look at the things like this: When (if) I succeed (big time) with this game. I mean sure everybody would be nice than…. But the most important thing that I will remember (I have good memory) is who helped me on my road and who did not helped me on my road (who (if there was any; or if there will be any) for example was or will intentually try to discredit everything: as some may see this is/will not working very well)… The thing that I am saying is that I really respect people who help someone else just because they want to be kind and helpful (just because they are nice)… This really say a lot about people…. I am nice and respectful person to everybody that is nice (to the others:just one big lol; some mistake being nice with something else)… Just wanted to wrote this… I feel like I needed to say this... Maybe I should post this last paragraph to Business, Finance, and Investing subforum, but as this are just my thoughts and because I am not planning to write any responses back to some possible replies about this paragraph, I hope it is fine to post it here…

Full disclosure, not a professional, but learned about project management in video game design school (which I did not complete), though I do keep myself very busy and am glad to help. I have nothing left to add though.

Here is a free and open source poker engine in Java that supports Limit and No-Limit Holdem:

https://github.com/bubuntux/poker-engine

It looks like it wouldn't be super difficult for a programmer that knows about poker to update the engine to support the four Nil cards, as well as updating the hand evaluator to correctly evaluate hands with those cards.

And since it's in Java, you could host the engine on a server and create a Web Socket-based API for players to play either from the web or mobile apps.

You could also allow people to play bots in a offline-based Android/iOS app.

Hello, Bank. Thank you for taking your time and helping me. Your post is simply amazing..woow... Really glad you post it...

Thank you for every helpful reply that I got here. Now I know all that I wanted to know about this matter. Now I have a lot of work to do...

With the JAVA code, you actually could hack it altogether by your self in 4 months.