I hope this is an allowable post, it's semi-commercial (as much as a hobby app can be that is) but does include a time sensitive offer

I released a new poker calculator for the iPhone today. It calculates equities for Holdem, Omaha Hi,Omaha 8 or Better, Deuce to Seven triple draw, Badugi, and Ace To Five. Does board cards, dead cards, 1-3 draws, but still pretty simple, no hand ranges yet. I wrote GM for myself because I was curious about draw games & other mix games and couldn't find any good calculator apps for anything other than Holdem (PokerCruncher rules that game obviously), and mix games is where the focus will be if I enhance it in the future.

[delete and edit] I'll let the above stay. I think it's borderline and can't guarantee another mod will allow it. But the rest of your post clearly goes over the line.

Sorry. Buzz [/delete and /edit]

and the app/link is?

I'm not sure I'm allowed to say, so you will have to search the iTunes store yourself.

I do think it's a little silly to categorize this as "commercial". I've been looking for something to do triple draw calculations for years and finally spent a great deal of my free time writing my own out of frustration. Maybe Buzz doesn't realize that calculators for draw games are non-existent, and that this offers benefits to the community, esp. those who want to do equity based analysis on draw games.

My post originally described a special price intended for friends and twoplustwoers that only lasts a short time. Deleting that is just going to lead to some forum members missing a deal. This isn't some sort of clever marketing plan. I'm starting a real job (contracting gig) shortly and won't be able to spend much, if any more time on the calculator for quite a while. I'm just trying to get it out quickly before starting the contract.

Now I am charging for it, but I also put a great deal of time and effort into it. I would have to sell thousands of copies (never gonna happen, 100 copies may be optimistic) to come close to compensating me for the time put into it. It is almost certain it never will be an ongoing business, I likely will never again put more than part-time effort into it. So the rules 2p2 has for full time commercial businesses seem pretty harsh for a hobby program that fills a big void.

Cat,
I just bought your app (btw app name is in thread title). Even though I only play Hold'em for real money and barely know Omaha I thought it's good to have a full set of games anyway. And also to see what apps/programs fellow players and devs are producing.
Good V1. I hope that contract gig doesn't eat up all your cycles and you can also keep doing app work on the side : ).

Do you lack the capability to send a private message?

Buzz

It's not commercial if you give it away. But when you sell it, then it becomes commercial. That's my interpretation.

Are you giving it away? (It doesn't seem so to me).

I have no problem with you wanting to be compensated for your efforts. But this is not the place for you to request compensation.

There are costs involved in keeping the site running and on-line... office site, equipment and paid employees... programmers, technicians, attorneys, site manager, and such. (Moderators are unpaid volunteers). And these various costs have been defrayed by charging for advertising.

In other words, 2+2 is able to offer this site free to users by gaining enough from advertisers to pay for the operational costs. (That's my understanding).

I do realize that. And that's why I'm cutting you some slack. (I didn't delete your whole post, just the monetary details and the links).

Anyone interested in your product can send you a private message, and you can reply to them in a private message. (Just don't post it in this forum, please).

It might not be or seem clever to you, but nonetheless it is a marketing plan.

If you want to market your product in this forum, please have Mat Sklansky or Bobo Fett approve your plan and notify me of their approval.

Buzz

: ) I didn't see leaving an edited post up if it were in fact "commercial." so I assumed it was a mistake there was no link : ) Thus the question.

Ah. Sorry. I should have realized that.

I have mixed feelings myself. On the one hand, advertising should not be allowed on this forum. On the other hand, I want to leave stuff that may be of benefit to readers and posters of this forum. And DesertCat has been a regular positive contributor to this forum.

Anyhow, thanks for your reply.

Buzz

Please send me any feedback you have, if you find any bugs or errors I will make time to fix them. New features are going to be a whole nother story after this week tho.

You can use the copy button to paste results into a PM/email.

And thanks for the kind comments.

Ignore my rant, I've been working over-time without a full nights sleep for a while and it's been frustrating to try to get this out before the contract of doom drops on me. I appreciate your consideration, and understand.

thanks,
Randy

Is this only available on the iphone then? And Will that change if so?

Playing around with this now. Good stuff!

Trying out the deuce calc, nice job.

It's going to be iOS only for quite a while, just don't have time/resources to port it and there isn't much of a market.

I just submitted version 1.0.3 to Apple which fixes the 08 simulator, I broke low equity calculations in 1.0.1.

More importantly it supports simple hand ranges, allowing you to enter multiple hands per player. I'm hoping it successfully makes it through review before next weekend.

I've submitted version 1.0.4 to Apple Store, probably available end of next week. Fixed a bug comparing high card hands in flop games, and updated the badugi output to make it clearer.

I'd like to thank Buzz for not locking this thread. I contacted the admin on the commercial software forum over a week ago asking for permission to start a thread but never got a response so this is the only place I can offer updates or answer questions.

I just want to say I like that you called it Galt's Motor. For anybody who doesn't know the book/movie, this is (as far as I can tell) a reference to Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, which y'all should read/watch.

Terrific little ap, despite the bummer of a name. Great to review spots in-game. Thanks for making it.

ANDROOOOOID!!

This.

I wish I had time for Android, but niw full time on my new contracting gig. No time to even play poker now

FYI: I submitted a new version of Galts Motor to the store today. It's changing to be free with inapp purchase, so I wanted to warn anyone thinking about buying it to please wait a week or two for Apple to review/post the new version. If you already own it, all new features should activate for free as long as the older version is installed on your phone.

New features include

- Combination weighted hand ranges for increased accuracy.
- Random hand ranges to simulate hands yet to act.
- Hand histograms show hand distributions/equities on each street to determine how often hands are playable.
- New hand editor makes it easier and faster to enter hands and hand ranges.
- iOS8 compatible.

New Draw Game calculators features
- Pat/Break/Fold decisions now editable, calculate equity based on opponents tendencies.
- Uses position to incorporate previous opponents drawing decisions in players decisions.
- Faster, easier unsuited hand entry for Badugi with same accuracy as suited hands.

Are you actually able to use some of it for free, or do you need to pay for any/all of its features?

If I'm allowed to ask - Buzz please delete if need be - does this work on iPad's as well as iphone's

The release version works fine on iPads as an iPhone app. I'll double check the new version today to make sure it's still true.

Unfortunately this is just a side project and I must get back to work on commercial projects, so wasn't able to find time for the extra work to take advantage of iPads extra size and split view controllers in this release.

If you play holdem and don't own PokerCruncher, I highly recommend it. I can't imagine anyone doing a better holdem calculator, the depth of features and attention to usability is really excellent. It's way faster than anything I can do within Galts, and you can create and save ranges to re-use (I have basic ranges by position saved on my phone) and send calcs to friends or yourself for more discussion/work later.

The author also did a great job on his iPad version that shows how the iPad split view controllers can make a poker calculator faster/easier/more productive to use. If I ever find the time I hope to do something similar for Galts, but it will probably be a while. I'll likely never be able to match the slickness of his UI and his level of attention to detail given my time constraints and trying to support so many games.

Buzz, I'm just going to do my best to answer questions here as I'm unclear on the line myself, please go ahead and edit/delete anything I write that you think is over the line.

My current approach with inapp purchase is to give away the basic holdem calculator, and charge for the other games and more advanced features. I'm treating it kind of like an evaluation version, hoping if user is comfortable with how the Holdem calculator works hopefully they'll be more likely to buy the other games. There is also a simple eval mode built in, so you can try every calculator once for free.

Important Note: If you bought the full Galts Motor version 1, all new features should activate automatically and at no charge when you update. But make sure you have it on your phone when you install. If you install version 2 without having version 1 on your device, it has no way to know you were a previous customer and it will run as Free with InApp version.

I'm viewing the market as two general segments. Part time Mix players, ie. poker players who occasionally play mix or a game from the mix and are curious about relative hand values in the games, but don't usually put much time into getting better at poker. My other segment is even smaller (tiny?), "Pros", players who play mix or games from the mix regularly at reasonable stakes and are willing to put time into improving their game play.

There is also a third segment, Holdem only players. I'm assuming lots of users will just download the free version for holdem calculator, use it, and ignore the other features. But they are likely never care to pay for anything, and if they wanted more advanced h=Holdem features they would be better off with PokerCruncher anyways, so I’m ignoring them.

So for part time players, I’ve priced basic version of the Badugi and Deuce calculators at $7 each. They don't support hand ranges or random hands, but do support 2-6 players, 1-3 draws, and dead cards. I'm assuming they wouldn't use or know how to make use of more advanced features.

For the "pro" players, I have a "pro" or "all features" version. All features and game calculators are activated. This includes advanced features such as hand ranges, random hands, hand histograms to view how playable hands are and the calculation history list. Right now pricing this at $29, assuming its reasonable for anyone who plays mix regularly and seriously. Of course I dropped $2,500 last night playing mostly 20-40 so maybe my perspective is screwed up about value and pricing

I'd love feedback if anyone has it on pricing, the inapp purchases, etc. I've probably spent at least 600 hours working on Galts Motor. Version 1 has sold 32 copies since February for total revenues of $397. Including Flop only and Deuce only versions total units were 46 and revenues $450.


Any way you slice it, the most unprofitable app I've ever written by an order of magnitude.



That doesn't bother me, as it's really a labor of love, but the more revenues it generates the more I can justify spending time enhancing it, which I would really like to do. I did consider making it free given how tiny revenues have been, but decided if it can make even a couple hundred bucks a month it would make it far easier to justify spending more time on it (and easier for my wife to tolerate me spending time on it . There just isn't anything out there for doing good equity calculations in mix games, if there were I would never have started on Galts.