I am a software engineer/semi-professional poker player, sick of the 9-5 grind (which is why poker was always appealing to me I guess). Tired of working unfulfilling jobs for average money, I am now looking to solve a problem in an industry I have knowledge, experience and genuine interest in. You guessed it: Poker.

I have an initial idea of a mobile poker assistant. Something along the lines of PIO, but I have no real direction as yet, and this is on purpose. I would prefer to hear the problems/feedback/opinions of actual pros, and find out what you're struggling with, and what you want. I hope we can work together and find a way to solve these problems.

Please check out the site here and let me know what you think:

https://andiapp.co/

We also have a slack group you can get the link to if you join our mailing list.

Thanks for reading and Ill look forward to hearing from you.

(Note: I am not looking to sell anything. I have nothing to sell at the moment, I am just looking to engage with professional poker players, and listen to your pain points)

Making a solver for mobile phones seems a bit far fetched, this kind of thing requires a lot of computation power so it can't be done on mobile, you can do it on the cloud and it will be very expensive. From my experience, a lot of people in programming/IT share a passion for poker so this market is very well saturated. Still though I wish you best of luck!

Hi Hurakami, thanks so much for getting back to me, all feedback is really valuable to me at this point.

With regards to your point: "Making a solver for mobile phones seems a bit far fetched", I have wondered the same, however if it did exist would you use it? At this point I'm really trying to gauge the demand for it as opposed to the feasibility; having said there's no reason why the mobile app couldn't talk to the cloud!. That way it could remain lightweight. Also the accumulated data could open doors for AI etc.

What do you think?

So the main issue I see is that solvers are respected because they compute the GTO solutions, any adaptation/heuristic/AI or bot might be looked down upon because it'd only provide a (maybe reasonable) guess. Also from what I've heard it's not unusual for high stakes regs to drop 50k$ a year for computational cloud costs of their solvers alone, so the app would need to have some pay-as-you-go structure that could account for expensive computations. Mobile app sounds more of a something what live players could make use of, I can't imagine using this kind of app at my home in front of a much more powerful and much more flexible PC. So perhaps a leak-buster for live players that works with few manually entered hands?

Yeah I think you're right about the AI, most pros will be thinking about the GTO line rather than an exploitative one. I just mentioned the possibility of AI as if its done via cloud computing the app could eventually accumulate a large amount of solved situations, and if the user provided the actual outcome exploitative lines could eventually be offered.

50k a year for computational cloud costs? Presumably this is for their own software? I thought PIO could do all of that on a desktop machine?

I think it would have to be marketed at lives pros as it wouldn't make sense to use a mobile app if you're in front of a computer all day anyway. Although their could be a web UI also.

How would you envisage this working?

Hey im a professional poker player and im happy to engage with you about this idea.

This is the worst idea i have ever heard. If this software ever came to fruition every live poker table would have a blanket ban on all electronic equipment. Sure it would make you a few dollars but the idea that anyone can have a GTO solver on their phone would kill the game.

Hi thanks for so much for responding, I really value your input. I completely agree with you, if done in the wrong way it could ruin the game. I think most card rooms/casinos already have a ban on electronic equipment being used during a hand. If anything software like this could actually ensure that dealers enforce the rule, as I often see this overlooked in the casino I play in.

It would be built more as a retrospective learning tool, you would submit your hand whilst at the table then continue playing. While your playing the app is making computations/running simulations and by the time you finish your session your hand is ready to review.

What do you think?

It doesn't seem feasible knowing how much computing power and memory pio needs. Any hand of interest can be noted down and entered into pio when you get home. Luckily technology isn't there yet that a real time GTO solver is possible on a iphone. We will all be slaves of skynet by then probably

50k a year for PIO + MonkerSolver. Yes you can do it on a powerful desktop machine, but some simulations can take 24h or even more. If you want it done faster you have to do it in the cloud.

wow, that is a lot of money, presumably it justifiable by their winrate. Do you know anyone personally that is spending this sort of money?

Jnandez once mentioned she spends that much, although he might've been collaborating/sharing that instance with someone.

AZURE SAAS API Done I think the biggest issue is going to be licensing unless you roll your own solver people like PIO/Monk aren't going to be happy with someone taking one copy of software and serving it to many

What's your thoughts there?