The dealer shuffles a standard 52-card deck.

(In casinos, the dealer never plays. A round disc — known as a “dealer button” –

moves clockwise from player to player with each hand. The button marks which

player would be the dealer if the deal were advanced from player to player as the

game went along.)

Games start with the two players to the left of the dealer (the button) putting a

predetermined amount of money into the pot before any cards are dealt, ensuring that

there’s something to play for on every hand. This is called “posting the blinds.” Most

often, the “first blind” — the player to the left of the dealer — puts up half the

minimum bet, and the “second blind” puts up the full minimum bet.

Each player is dealt two cards; face down and unseen by the other players. These are

known as their hole cards.

Betting Begins

A round of betting takes place, beginning with the player to the left of the two who

posted the blinds. Players can call, raise, or fold when it’s their turn to bet. A call

(known as a check when the amount to call is zero) means that the player will match

the highest bet so far put into the pot, minus whatever they have already contributed.

A raise means that the player will call whatever bet has already been made, and raise

the bet by a further amount. A fold means that the player forfeits all money in the pot,

throws in their hole cards, and waits for the next game. The round of betting continues

until every player has either called or folded the last bet/raise, with the consequence

that a player can’t re-raise himself.

The Flop

After the first betting round, the dealer discards the top card of the deck. This is called

burning the card and is done to ensure that no one accidentally saw the top card, and

to help prevent cheating.

The dealer then flips the next three cards face up on the table. These cards are called

the “flop.”

NOTE: Eventually, a total of five community cards will be placed face up on the table.

Players can use any combination of the community cards and their own two cards to

form the best possible five-card Poker hand.

After the flop, another round of betting takes place, beginning with the player to the

left of the dealer (the button). During this and all future rounds of betting, players

have to choose whether to check, call, raise, or fold when it’s their turn to bet.

The Turn

The dealer burns another card and places one more card face up onto the table. This,

the fourth community card, is called the “turn” or “Fourth Street.”

The player to the left of the dealer (the button) begins the third round of betting.

The River

The dealer burns another card before placing the final face-up card on the table. This

card is called the “river” or “Fifth Street.”

Final Betting and The Winner

Players can now use any combination of seven cards — the five community cards and

the two cards known only to them — to form the best possible five-card Poker hand.

The fourth and final round of betting starts with the player to the left of the dealer (the

button).

After the final betting round, all players who remain in the game can reveal their

hands. The player who made the last raise in the river round shows their hand first. A

player can choose not to show their hand if they can’t beat a hand already shown. The

player with the best-ranked hand wins.

Split pots in betting

It is possible for a player to run out of money whilst betting, rendering him unable to

continue betting even though other players might wish to keep betting. In the event

that this happens, the concept of split pots is introduced. The main pot consists of all

money so far contributed by the other players to the pot up to the amount that the

player has so far contributed, plus any other money that was bet by people that have

already folded. This is under contention between all players. Then, a side pot is

created for all the people who still wish to bet. This pot is only filled by money from

those players that still wish to bet and have enough money to do so, and is therefore

also only under contention between those players that contributed to it. If the situation

arises again, a further side pot is created, and so on.

1.Reasoning under uncertainty (opponents’ cards)
2.Dealing with probabilistic outcomes (future cards)
3.Decision-making with multiple options (chips used for bets)
4.Individual differences (different styles of play)
5.Inference of intent (from opponents’ bets)
6.Intentional deception (bluffing, sandbagging)
7.Pattern recognition (detecting trends from flow of game)
8.Economic behavior (factoring impact of amount of bets)

Because of the range of cognitive activities involved, poker provides a broader and more challenging test for cognitive modelling than other games such as chess that focus on a more restricted range of mechanisms (e.g. search). Despite the complexity of aspects involved, it remains a highly tractable domain, partly because it abstracts away from computationally demanding perception and interaction problems. Poker is increasingly being played in online gaming communities where the need for challenging, cognitively plausible agents is increasing. Poker therefore provides a challenging domain at the intersection of fundamental research questions and
potential mass application.

To this end, it is desirable to build a no limit poker game, playing Texas Hold’em, which displays evidence of these cognitive activities. Our project attempts to build such a poker application, with the hopes of competing to the best of poker platforms built to this date.

A lot of times you will need to connect to Flash Media Server , where there is lot of code avialable for AS 2.0 , I was not able to find much code on AS 3.0 . I hope this helps other fellow Action Script programmers out there.

package
{
import flash.net.NetConnection;
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.events.NetStatusEvent;

public class FMSManager extends Sprite
{
private var nc:NetConnection;
private var rtmpNow:String;
private var msg:String;
private var connectText:TextField;
private var posX:Number;

public function FMSManager ()
{
nc=new NetConnection();
nc.addEventListener (NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS,checkConnect);
rtmpNow=”rtmp://timfuzos.rtmphost.com/one2oneChat/room1″; //change the host name to your host
//rtmpNow=”rtmpe:/one2oneChat/room1″;  // if your FMS is hosted in local use this
nc.connect (rtmpNow,”sumit”);
}
private function checkConnect (event:NetStatusEvent):void
{
connectText=new TextField();
msg=event.info.code;
trace(msg);
connectText.width=250;
connectText.text=msg;
addChild (connectText);
posX=connectText.stage.stageWidth;
connectText.x=(posX/2)-((msg.length/2)*(6));
connectText.y=175;
}
}
}

The screen would look like this

Connection Screen

FMSConnect

In the last article we saw that we finalized our research to three technology platforms.

Now before finalizing any particular platform we need to see the pros and cons of each.

Before starting lets recall the requirement of this project.

1. The final game should be deploy able in all Operating Systems (MAC, Windows and Linux).

2. It should be deploy able as a Desktop Application as well as Web Based thin client.

3. It should be easily extended to mobile platform with no or very changes to the server code.

4. It should provide Audio-Video interaction of clients in a particular room.

After analyzing the requirements and the three platforms I came to the conclusion that Adobe Flash, AS3, Flex, AIR and related technologies would be the best to meet all our requirements.

The reasons are listed as follows -

1. Adobe provides Flash Media Server which provides a lot of inbuilt functionality for easily game state management.

2. Flash Media Server makes it very easy to add Live streaming audio video to the game rooms.

3. The same code can be reused for a web based client as well as a desktop based client in AIR with almost negligible code changes.

All in all Adobe Technologies proved to be the best to create such an exciting platform for rich entertainment

Next Step

The first step in developing any successful project is choosing the correct technology stack. Dunno how many software evangelists second this idea, but I have known this with experience in many of the projects whose part I have been.

The technology platform or stack can actually depend on lot of points -

1. Team Competency – How competent is your team in the particular technology, It will be quite an herculean task to roll out something in time if you plan to learn and master the technology and language along with developing the product. You should choose a technology which your team has either masters or at least has fair exposure to.

2. How stable and ripe is the technology – I would not prefer to write a commercial product based on some beta technology or product which is not backed by some reputed vendor. Its better to always base your end product with professionally supported technology stack which has a good developer community and decent vendor support. Else if you are stuck somewhere, you will be stuck up for ages with no support or help.

Open Source can be an option many at times, but again make sure its supported with some premium support.

3. Will it support the Architecture you propose  and how easily?-  This is the most important question the Lead Architect of the team should always ask himself. Its very  important to figure out whether the technology and programming language that you are choosing has all the important aspects and features which will be required by a complex Multiplayer game like online poker.

Typically I would expect the language to support OOPs fully, else it will be very difficult to implement proper design patterns and the end result could be spaghetti code.

Along with this I would prefer that the framework has pre built classes for Server-Client implementation (ease of use).

4. Deployment – The last thing you should bother about the most is how and where your application is going to be deployed. In our case, we want to deploy it to all platforms (Windows, Linux and MAC), make it run as a standalone desktop client and also as a web based deployment inside the browser. Along with this we also wanted the possibility of easily porting the client code for Mobile Deployment, without any changes in server code. Along with this, we wanted to have live poker experience where users can see each other in real time with their web cams and speak over microphones in their respective rooms.

I did my research across the web, scanned through tons of sites , books and stuff, I came up to these final technology stacks.

1. Microsoft – .NET and related technologies

2. Adobe – Flash AS3, Flex , AIR , Flash Media Server and related technologies

3. Sun Micro systems – Java, JavaFX and related technologies.

There were lot many others which made up in my list but these three were worth comparing and mentioning.

I have compared the anomalies and advantages of each and shown how I finally arrived to my chosen platform.

Read on…..

Ok so you want so create a Multiplayer poker game, thats why you are here. Writing a rock solid poker game application has been my keen interest over past 2 years. After seeing so much demand of online multi-player poker rooms, I really wished Globussoft should enter the online gaming market one day.

The first step to develop an Online Massive Multiplayer game is to choose a right technology stack. Iam aware of numerous projects which get doomed the day they get started due to choosing of wrong technology stack. Citing an example, in my previous company my bosses chose VC++ to code a complete client server game , the lacunae being that no body in the entire team knew abc of VC++. Our team got a time span of 45 days to learn a language like VC++, master it and roll out a game like Texas Holdem in a matter of 45 days.

I guess you already by now know what the end result was, the project got scraped by the client, the team was not even able to make a single demo to him.

Iam not bragging on our skill-sets here, but simply stating that if you want to roll out something usable and good , set achievable targets and use a technology stack which you feel will take you to the final end product.

Read the successive articles in this series to know how I researched and then finally decided on which framework we should build this game to make it world’s most successful poker application.

Next…

Texas Hold’em (or simply, “Hold’em”) is the most popular poker game in the casinos and poker card rooms across North America and Europe.
Before you begin playing Texas Hold’em however, you’ll have to learn the rules first. In Texas Hold’em, each poker player is dealt two cards (known as “hole cards”) that belong only to that player. Five community cards are dealt face-up on the “board”. All players in the game may use these cards in conjunction with their own hole cards to make the best five-card poker hand possible.

Our project is to create the NO Limit Version of the game.

In No Limit Texas Hold’em : A player can bet all of his chips at any time.

How to play Texas Holdem Poker

Over a series of articles I am going to post all my learning’s on AS3 along during the development of this game and also a lot of poker that I have learnt.

Iam excited to start an all new venture of Globussoft into Multiplayer Online Gaming.

Rules of Poker

Just give path to a flv file on http and play it

http://www.indiauploading.com/demosites/videoplayer/customplayer.html

If you want to see how it looks, Watch a static video on this player below.

http://www.indiauploading.com/demosites/videoplayer/myflvplayer.html

So if you want to get a custom flv player developed for your do connect back to me asap!