I wrote a Texas Holden Calculator in C++.

Was a few of years ago actually. I need to port it over to the newer version of Visual Studio.

The idea originally was to "make money playing poker" by constantly betting on the pot odds. I quickly figured out the idea was flawed before I ever invested any serious $ into it. The program just spits out a % win percentage based on everything you know. Your 2 cards, how many people are still in the hand and whats showing on the board. You can use that information alone to gather pot odds. I won't go into a lengthy description of why betting just pot odds doesn't work. I'll just say that in any heads up situation if your odds of winning are better than 50% according to pot odds you can raise/call to anything. The problem is most high pairs will give you better than 50% odds of winning assuming the opponent can have ANYTHING. In live poker it doesn't actually work that way.

Anyway...... So I sort of just let the program die. Didn't do anything with it. It doesn't do anything that many other apps don't already do. It does pot odds, which many free calculators DONT... but you are required to hand input everything. It doesn't read the game by capturing packets like other calculators. To use it the person would have to be fairly quick. Even me who wrote the program and even added some keyboard shortcuts had trouble keeping up with just 1 table.

So..... How would you monetize it?

One idea I had was marketing it for other derivatives of poker. Maybe omaha or something more obscure like five card draw or 7 card stud. Something not as saturated already with poker software.

The marketing would say something along the lines of "everyone knows the Texas holdem odds but most people don't know omaha odds. Get a leg up on your competition" blah blah blah you get the idea. Sell them some "technique" that works on micro omaha tables or something. Just be patient with pot odds and you can make a consistent income. I actually considered doing that myself like forreal... but I don't think it would actually work long term.

What do you think? I appreciate any of your comments or ideas. Thank you ahead of time.

I'd suggest you use your skills to move onto something new. This things sounds like years old and outdated. You "could" update it and modernize it to other games like you mentioned, but it seems like more work than it's worth considering all of the other tools on the market.

However, that skillset to be able to create something like that is valuable. Continue to brainstorm and use it for something new. Best of luck!

KraftyKyle said:

I'd suggest you use your skills to move onto something new. This things sounds like years old and outdated. You "could" update it and modernize it to other games like you mentioned, but it seems like more work than it's worth considering all of the other tools on the market.

However, that skillset to be able to create something like that is valuable. Continue to brainstorm and use it for something new. Best of luck!

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I started playing online poker in 2005 or 2006. Even back then they had software that does something similar. It could even capture packets from partypoker (or whatever it was that I was playing on) and give you live stats. At least the win % you had. Figuring out pot odds once you have that % isn't all that hard.

I work as an IT tech. There was an intern who was working under me who was studying to become a programmer. He was doing all this cool shit in school that got me jealous. I spent months working on this program. It was my way of trying to get into the game.

Issue is I have no college degree. While programmers get paid really well just about everywhere. It's a tough biz to get into as a beginner. I would have to market myself as "I'm an amateur who has a little bit of experience. But I'm talented and if you teach me I will be very useful". Not many people will actually take the time to teach you. They want someone who already knows how to do it.

So I kind of just gave up on it until very recently. I have considered making a portfolio of just stuff I wrote and then trying to get a job that way. But that's a very time intensive investment. I may be better off doing the same thing with something simpler like PowerPoint.

I used to play this game called "Vikings war of clans" where a bunch of rich dudes see who can out measure each others dicks by spending a ton of $ on the game. I started writing scripts to automate these repetitive processes inside the game. I made some decent $ this way. But it dried up because once someone gives you access to your account they have free reign over it. A few people got burned like that. Now nobody wants to let people have access to anything.

The automation software I used AutoIT can be used to automate all sorts of things. I could probably make 100s of social media accounts with it. Just thinking outloud at this point lol.

Thank you for your input